As we look to the future of training and education we can see a myriad of possible outcomes, with technology revolutionising the way that it is delivered, undertaken, tailored and measured. To find some structure in these possibilities the UK Governments Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, with support from UK Industry, developed an evaluation approach that assessed what training and education might evolve into to uncover what technology and policies will need to be in place to deliver this shining future.

Through a process of examining current MOD strategies and industry technology roadmaps the team developed a broad set of future training scenarios, from “Just in time learning” to a “Holodeck on every Barracks”. These scenarios were distilled into a final concise set of 7 by the broader community including UK Academia by applying critical analysis. This set of scenarios were decomposed into their constituent technologies or “bricks” which were analysed across all of the scenarios to identify commonalities or “superbricks”. Once identified these superbricks were built into roadmaps describing their path to maturation. The technologies were not looked at in isolation; their impact on people (from trainees to procurers) and the policies and processes that would enable their use were also investigated. Finally through refinement the scenarios were distilled into 3 philosophies: People – where the focus is on the learner as the driver of change; Technology – where the focus is advances in technology; and Environment – where the focus is on where the training is delivered.

This paper describes this analysis approached, highlights some of the findings and outlines how they are being used to drive future research programmes and policy updates. As we look to the future of training and education we can see a myriad of possible outcomes, with technology revolutionising the way that it is delivered, undertaken, tailored and

Keywords
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION;EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES;LEARNER ANALYTICS;PERSONALIZED TRAINING;TRAINING

Additional Keywords
futures