Continuing education (CE) is often one of the most responsive parts of postsecondary institutions. It is where many institutions move quickly to respond to changing workforce needs, emerging industries, community priorities and the growing need for lifelong learning. That role is becoming more important as workers must adapt quicker, employers respond to changing skill requirements and postsecondary institutions support learning across a longer span of more people’s lives. What we don’t have is a clear picture of the impact, volume and scope of the work continuing education does as a sector. When continuing education is not clearly measured, its full contribution is hard to see.
CE units are often built for speed and flexibility, developing, delivering and revising programs quickly in response to emerging technologies, regulatory changes, employer-identified skill gaps, shifting labor market demands and institutional priorities, to name some of the drivers. CE units are frequently reviewing, revising, adding and sunsetting programs. Training in CE does not remain static when the skills work and community life require are changing rapidly.
Continuing education trains the workforce, supports upskilling and reskilling, and helps employers adapt to changing skill needs, new technologies, processes and ways of working. It also strengthens relationships with industry and community, creates access points for adult learners and provides institutions with a different window into emerging workforce and community needs. However, across the sector, we still do not have a clear or consistent picture of the full scope and impact of this work.
With clearer evidence of impact, policymakers can better understand continuing education’s significant contribution to workforce development, institutions can make more informed investment decisions, industry can more easily identify the value of partnerships with CE, and adult learners have more information about programs that support their goals.
Measuring What Matters
Many CE units are already collecting meaningful information on impact and outcomes by asking learners to report on their experiences after training, for example, whether learners are applying new skills, whether their learning is relevant to their work, whether it has helped them advance in their roles and whether they are seeing tangible benefits in their workplaces. At my institution, for example, the CE outcomes data we collect includes asking learners how often they use what they learned, which provides valuable insight into relevance and real-world applications.
However, this data is collected locally and is often primarily used to inform programming, curricula and service improvements within individual institutions. As a sector, we do not have widely shared common outcomes. Questions are framed differently, outcomes are defined differently, and results are reported differently, which makes it difficult to develop a broader understanding of continuing education’s contribution.
The Challenge of Shared Definitions
A key challenge is also differences in nomenclature; institutions don’t always use terms in the same way. This may seem like a technical issue, but it has practical consequences. Terms such as student, learner, program, course, instructional hour, workforce-relevant learning and microcredential do not necessarily have consistent meanings from one institution to another.
Microcredentials are a good example. Institutions define them differently and may use them to represent different levels or types of learning, or the way institutions count learning hours for asynchronous courses can vary widely. With different words and definitions, sector-wide data collection becomes difficult, and the broader impact is harder to understand.
Shared language does not require institutions to organize their work in the same way or adopt identical terminology internally. Each institution can use definitions that reflect its structure, mandate and community. At the same time, the sector needs enough common ground to translate local activity into a broader understanding of impact.
Building Sector-Wide Understanding
Achieving this level of coordination is not easy, but there is already encouraging momentum. CAUCE’s annual survey is an important contribution and a valuable starting point within the universities’ continuing education sector. It helps bring visibility to university continuing education activity that does not generally appear in standard reporting. However, the survey does not capture the full continuing education sector in Canada, since it currently includes only universities, and not all universities choose to participate annually. The overall volume and scope of CE across postsecondary institutions in Canada are significantly larger than what is reported in the survey. When only a partial picture is available, there is a risk that the scale and impact of continuing education may be underestimated.
In terms of outcomes, the CAUCE Data Collection Committee’s recent initiative to develop a voluntary shared outcomes survey will help move toward greater consistency. This work can help us understand not only how much activity is taking place but also what difference it is making.
As we move forward as a sector, opportunities to connect CE data more directly to labor market needs and trends should be further explored. Labor market data can point to where demand is emerging, which sectors are evolving and where skills gaps may be growing, while CE outcomes data can show how learners are responding and where training is helping to meet workforce needs. These insights can help institutions anticipate future needs and training impact, while helping industry identify postsecondary partners and government better understand continuing education’s role in upskilling, reskilling and workforce resilience.
Balancing Insight and Agility
All this said, we also need to be mindful of the tension this data collection would create. More shared data can help make our work more visible, but if the process becomes onerous, it can affect the speed and agility that are central to continuing education and negate the value of the data. The goal is to find a balanced approach. Continuing education as a sector would benefit from increased awareness of its breadth and scope as well as its impact on learners, employers, institutions and communities in supporting upskilling, reskilling and lifelong learning.
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