IER News & blogs

In April the CIPD launched the first report from its new UK Working Lives Survey . It found that whilst half of respondents would work even if they didn’t need the money, over half of respondents also said that their jobs fail to provide decent career development. A team from IER helped develop the survey tool and analyse its results, with Dr Sudipa Sarkar seconded to the CIPD as part of this work.

‘One by One’ is a national research project which aims to help UK museums of any size better define, improve, measure and embed the digital literacy of their staff and volunteers in all roles and at all levels. The project aims to deliver a transformative framework for museum workforce digital literacy. The project, funded by the AHRC, runs until March 2020. The first phase of the One by One project mapped the ways digital skills are currently supplied, developed and deployed in the UK museum sector and pinpointed current changes in the demand around these skills. Read the phase 1 report for more findings.

Research has shown that providing participants with high-quality learning material is not sufficient to help them profit most from online education. The level of interaction among participants is another key determinant for learning outcomes. However, merely proposing interaction does not automatically lead to fruitful discussion and collaboration. Specifically, social presence and facilitation activities add value to online discussions.

In this paper, co-authored by Professor Alan Brown with colleagues from the EmployID project, a framework for analysing online asynchronous discussions was applied in a workplace learning context and generated deeper insights into the dynamics of online discussions.

Read the journal article here.

Daria Luchinskaya has contributed to a new report, led by Dr Nikos Kapitsinis at Wales Public Services 2025, describing existing business rates arrangements in Wales and exploring proposals for changes to the business rates system. This is a topical question: business rates revenues have the potential to become a more important source of local government revenue in the context of austerity, with cuts to local government grants and potential limitations to relying on council tax. The report discusses a business rates incentivisation scheme for Wales, which would enable regional growth partnerships to retain a portion of the business rates they generate and incentivise them to grow their business rate tax base

Read the report here.

We are delighted to announce the new stage of the Futuretrack study, which will catch up with the Futuretrack cohort of students who applied to university in 2005/2006, most of whom graduated in 2009/10, eight to nine years after their graduation.

This is the fifth stage of the Futuretrack longitudinal survey, and is funded by the Nuffield Foundation. For more information read here.