Photo Credit: CMLC

LearningCITY Summit

LearningCITY 2023

Imagine a city whose citizens think creatively, adapt, and thrive in this fast-changing world. A city where bright minds come together to dream big, start an adventure, and build something great. A city where people proactively develop new skills and are ahead of change, not chasing it. Imagine a city that attracts talent and investment from across the globe because it’s known as a city that is not only resilient but a city that embraces change, a city that learns. This is a LearningCITY.

Transforming Calgary into a LearningCITY demands that we rethink learning and recognize that learning extends beyond a classroom and is embedded where we work, live, and play. This forces us to redefine how we assess and value talent. This requires us to harness Calgary’s rich and diverse learning-employment ecosystem, encompassing 3,000 learning organizations and 48,000 employers.

This is why the theme for LearningCITY 2023 is Connecting Calgary’s Talent Community.

Committed to Action

At LearningCITY 2022, the LearningCITY Collective and our community partners released Calgary’s Skills Development Framework. This framework was the culmination of four years of community consultation. The framework is anchored to four drivers: adaptable, accessible, empowered, and open. Each priority is defined as a series of specific priorities and actions.

Though the LearningCITY Collective is a 100% volunteer-driven initiative, over the past 12 months, we have made significant progress in delivering on these priorities:

  • LearningCITY Board Established: A diverse board of community leaders from across the learning–employment ecosystem was established to guide ecosystem priorities.

  • Framework Approval: The board unanimously approved Calgary's Skills Development Framework.

  • Non-Profit Formation: The board voted unanimously to incorporate the LearningCITY Collective as a non-profit organization.

  • Open Learning Lab: Launched the 15,000 sq ft. pilot LearningCITY Lab in Bow Valley Square as a community space focusing on ecosystem collaboration and experimentation. This was the top priority in the skills framework.

  • Downtown Learning Study: Launched the downtown learning study, incorporating 15 researchers from five postsecondary institutions.

  • Calgary Career Pathways Program: Launched a program promoting diverse career pathways, including a poster program, table-toppers, and a monthly live event.

  • LearningCITY Roundtables: We hosted LearningCITY Roundtables to explore a path to scaling LearningCITY.

The priority of the LearningCITY Collective is to continue our vision of connecting learning communities. This starts with everyone in the system recognizing their critical role, whether they are We launched the 15,000 sq. ft. pilot Open Learning Lab in Bow Valley Square as a community space focusing on ecosystem collaboration and experimentation, whichtalent seekers, talent developers, talent stewards, and learners; this begins with connecting Calgary’s Talent Communities.

LearningCITY 2022

The Skills Development Framework

The kick-off of the LearningCITY program was at a community event in August 2019 that included 120 employers and educators. Since this first event, diverse community partners have researched and run pilot projects on innovating the learning and skills development ecosystem. The culmination of this work was the development of Calgary’s skills development framework.

LearningCITY 2022 was a hands-on working session that asked all attendees to roll up their sleeves, collaborate and contribute their expertise to the challenge of developing talent. Now is the time to come together to co-create an actionable path to our LearningCITY.

Who Attended?

Delivering a LearningCITY is not about any single organization. It is about harnessing Calgary’s rich and diverse skill development ecosystem to work together to face the future head-on. For this reason, invitees were as diverse as the ecosystem itself, including employers, educators, skill developers, and policymakers.

LearningCITY 2022 hosted 250 participants from 149 organizations across Calgary’s learning system, including employers, educators, and policymakers. LearningCITY 2022 was an interactive format, focusing on thought-provoking panels and facilitated small group discussions. The final report identifies nine consolidated insights emerging from this process. The advisory committee then connected to the Calgary Skills Development Framework, including goals, priorities, and measures.

LearningCITY 2019

Path to a LearningCITY

Like much of the world, Alberta is facing an unprecedented pace of change driven by technology, demographic shifts and globalization. Boundaries between traditional disciplines, sectors, and skills are blurring, resulting in 66% of Canadian employers reporting difficulty filling entry-level positions and 40% not finding candidates with the required soft skills. This skills gap significantly impacts an organization’s competitiveness and an individual’s ability to pursue personal and professional goals. This is the high-impact talent challenge.

A simple checklist of skills does not define high-impact talent. Rather, high-impact talent is driven by the unique labour market dynamics of a region, sector or organization and is anchored in an individual’s capacity to adapt and thrive effectively in perpetually turbulent market conditions. These dynamic capabilities enable people to identify emerging opportunities and reconfigure or acquire new skills to thrive. People with dynamic capabilities are future-ready. They lead trends they don’t follow. While the entire education system must ensure that we develop future-ready students, universities uniquely support a graduate’s professional transition.

Collaborating to Close the High-Impact Talent Gap

“Dynamic capabilities enable people to identify emerging opportunities and reconfigure their skills or acquire new skills to thrive. People with dynamic capabilities are future-ready.

To confront this challenge, Mount Royal University’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is leading a research program exploring our dynamic labour market and how this impacts the development of adaptable high-impact talent. To support this, the Institute and MRU Career Services has developed a free open-access Designing YOU series, including 12 books and 14 podcasts, to support young adults in planning their personal and professional development.

As part of this initiative, we hosted the LearningCITY Summit 2019, exploring how new and innovative approaches to work-integrated learning could contribute to developing talent that will thrive today and in the future. Questions we will explore include:

  1. What knowledge and skills do innovative employers require today and in the future?

  2. What is the gap between employers’ emerging needs and the knowledge and skills graduates possess?

  3. What role can work-integrated learning play in ensuring graduates are ready for the future?

  4. What are global best practices in work-integrated learning today?

Who Attended

Because the challenge of developing high-impact talent is systemic, many solutions will require collaboration across the high-impact talent ecosystem. Therefore, the Summit includes talent seekers, talent developers, talent stewards, and learners. The meeting was a hands-on working session. All participants rolled-up their sleeves, collaborated and contributed their expertise to developing high-impact talent.

The Program

The Summit program was interactive, focusing on thought-provoking panels and small group discussions. As part of our discussions, we explored four radical proposals included in Stanford 2025 - An exploration of undergraduate experiences in the future and how they could contribute to developing high-impact talent. These include:

  • Open Loop University

  • Paced Education

  • Axis Flip

  • Purpose Learning

Panel 1: The Future is Agile. Should it be for Higher Education?

Educators, employers and policymakers advocate for more agile and responsive university learning formats. At its core, this challenges the future of a traditional university degree format. In its place, many believe that agile and adaptable talent development should be rooted in a portfolio of diverse learning and experiences, including work-integrated learning and micro-credentials. So, what is the future role of a university and a traditional university degree in this new learning model?

 Panel 2: Can Work-Integrated Learning Develop Soft Skills?

Research suggests employers increasingly prioritize foundational soft skills, including communications, organizational, critical thinking and interpersonal skills over task or discipline-specific skills and knowledge. This panel explored the opportunities and challenges that work-integrated learning may offer to systematically develop and track these essential skills during a student’s post-secondary education.

What was the Outcome?

The Summit's outcome was a series of prioritized questions. Some of these questions were big, with long-term implications demanding increased collaboration, while others were small enough to be actioned by participants in a classroom or workplace. Mount Royal University and Calgary Economic Development acted as a conduit, facilitating partnerships among individuals and organizations to develop evidence-based and actionable intelligence. Armed with these insights, leaders in industry and universities can confidently move forward with implementing coordinated programs and policies that could significantly impact the high-impact talent challenge.