State of the EHS Nation- Exclusive results from ISHN’s 28^th annual White Paper Reader Survey.

BISHKEK, 20 July 2016 - A series of three-day training courses for police investigators on investigating murders which were committed with the use of explosives, firearms and cold arms are being held from 14 July until 6 August 2016 in Bishkek, Balykchy and Osh cities by the OSCE Centre in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry and the Kyrgyz State Judicial Academy.

Some 150 officers will be trained during the courses, which will see them acquire knowledge and skills on techniques for crime scene screening, searches, questioning of suspects and witnesses, and other methods of investigation. Forensic expertise will also be covered.

“Investigative authorities have important law enforcement functions. The outcome of their work forms the basis for the consideration of criminal cases in court, the imposition of just punishments, and the fair administration of justice,” said Pavel Khalashnyuk, acting Head of the OSCE Centre’s Police Matters Programme. “The investigation of serious crimes requires high professionalism and the guarantee of mandatory enforcement.”

The courses are being organized as part of the OSCE Centre’s project on combating organized crime.

ASHGABAT, 10 June 2016 – Some 30 journalists representing national broadcast, print and online media from across the country as well as journalism instructors from Turkmenistan’s institutions of higher education completed an OSCE-organized training course on journalism reporting skills in Ashgabat today.

During the three-day training course, journalists shared views on the changes in the media landscape as a result of the development of multimedia and the role of journalists in the modern information environment.

International experts from Lithuania and the Russian Federation elaborated on the elements, structure and objectives of journalistic reports while highlighting the specifics of TV and news reporting and techniques of planning multimedia materials.

“The introduction of new technologies has challenged the traditional form of journalism due to the growing demand for real-time reportage of events, interactivity and multimedia content. As free and plural media is a vital precondition for international development and security, media development remains as important as ever,” said Radovan Znasik, Officer-in-Charge at the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.

“We believe that this course will contribute to enhancing the capacity of Turkmenistan’s journalists to work in a modern media landscape.”

The course included practical exercises, in which the participants discussed case studies related to journalism ethics, practiced interviewing skills and developing detailed scenarios for multimedia reports.

The OSCE Centre in Ashgabat organized the training course as part of its activities to assist the host country in the area of media development.

Related Stories

• Representatives from Turkmenistan discuss media reforms during OSCE-organized study visit to Latvia
• OSCE Centre’s event in Turkmenistan addresses media regulation practices
• OSCE seminar in Turkmenistan promotes freedom of religion and belief

BISHKEK, 20 July 2016 - A series of three-day training courses for police investigators on investigating murders which were committed with the use of explosives, firearms and cold arms are being held from 14 July until 6 August 2016 in Bishkek, Balykchy and Osh cities by the OSCE Centre in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry and the Kyrgyz State Judicial Academy.

Some 150 officers will be trained during the courses, which will see them acquire knowledge and skills on techniques for crime scene screening, searches, questioning of suspects and witnesses, and other methods of investigation. Forensic expertise will also be covered.

“Investigative authorities have important law enforcement functions. The outcome of their work forms the basis for the consideration of criminal cases in court, the imposition of just punishments, and the fair administration of justice,” said Pavel Khalashnyuk, acting Head of the OSCE Centre’s Police Matters Programme. “The investigation of serious crimes requires high professionalism and the guarantee of mandatory enforcement.”

The courses are being organized as part of the OSCE Centre’s project on combating organized crime.

Related Stories

• OSCE Centre in Bishkek supports summer school on topical issues of police reform
• OSCE Centre in Bishkek hands over Mobile Police Reception vehicle to police in Issyk-Kul to boost public security
• OSCE Centre in Bishkek trains defence lawyers and prosecutors on right to liberty and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention

The OSCE Mission to Moldova held a training event on essential debate techniques for 37 high-school students and 7 teachers from both banks of the Dniester/Nistru River on 1 to 3 July 2016 in Vadul-lui-Vodă, a town by the river. The event, which gathered students from Balti, Bender, Cahul, Ceadir-Lunga, Comrat, Parcani, Tiraspol and Vulcanesti, aimed to enhance youth engagement in civic processes at the local and national levels.

“This event has equipped me with skills that will be vital for both my professional and private life,” said Daria Bogdanova, a student from Tiraspol. “Engaging in debates is an excellent way to help us convey our thoughts more convincingly, search for compromise and exercise objectivity.”

The training event introduced students to the Karl Popper debate format that teaches students how to conduct and participate in academic debates, demonstrate leadership, make public speeches, co-operate in teams and apply critical thinking. The aim of the event was to develop students’ analytical and debate skills in order to strengthen their professional opportunities and civic engagement.

The students attending the training will apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills in a series of two debate tournaments to be held in the autumn. The training sessions and tournaments are organized as part of a one-year project implemented jointly by the OSCE Mission to Moldova and the Comrat-based NGO Piligrim-Demo that aims to actively engage young people, including those representing national minorities, in civic process at the local and national levels by developing their debate skills.

Related Stories

• OSCE Mission to Moldova trains lawyers from both banks of the Dniester/Nistru River on addressing discrimination
• Psychologists and professionals working with domestic violence victims trained at OSCE-supported events in Moldova on both banks
• Three-day debate training to be held for national minority youth in Moldova

How can I redirect a task at work that I do not possess the skills to complete and cannot learn how to do in a timely manner? Sometimes I know it immediately, and sometimes it takes me a bit to find out. I usually say, "Hey, I don't think I'm going to be able to address this in a timely manner because it's not part of my wheelhouse. Could we delegate it to someone else on the team?" when I am working with a manager. Is this the right route?

Example scenario: I have been asked to address accessibility issues on a marketing website. This task requires an understanding of accessibility requirements, code overrides, and the website host (Framer) in general. I've already gotten two tasks totally wrong because despite my best efforts to learn as I go, I'm a visual designer, not a front-end developer!

I initially asked a developer colleague I don't know very well for guidance, but today I admitted to him that I am out of my depth and asked if he could please address the failed tickets instead of me so they're done correctly. I cannot tell if this is diva behavior. Is it okay to essentially say "I'm not the right person to do this," when asked to do something? Should I be trying harder?

I slept poorly last night because I hate inefficiency but dislike being viewed as incompetent even more.

Criminology student David Hayes has excelled as an ROTC cadet and emerging entrepreneur since arriving at Penn State, using the leadership skills gained in ROTC alongside the knowledge from his liberal arts courses to drive his success.

Forming memories around shared experiences, whether something fun like grabbing a pizza or as emotionally straining as an employee strike, has a way of binding people together. But it could also motivate those performing different roles within the same company to socialize more and strengthen their working relationships, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Encouraging pre-kindergarten children to write affords teachers the opportunity to provide scaffolds to improve spelling development. Teachers, however, tend to provide more support than necessary to guide children's early spelling, which may stifle children's opportunities to engage in important thinking that helps them to grow in their literacy knowledge.

As job market improves substantially along with technological advancements, it becomes essential to keep up the pace with ever-changing economy.

Startup companies today are using various innovative approaches to test the caliber of an employee during the interview process. Along with number of degrees, a lot of other skills are expected from the candidate to get placed in a startup firm.

Guest Resources announces expanded accredited skills training, focusing on human resource learnerships and national certificates. These programs aim to empower South Africa's workforce by bridging the skills gap and enhancing employability, supporting economic growth.

Put a hundred small business owners in a room and you are likely to hear a hundred different stories of how they became successful. You will find people as different as night and day. People from all walks of life and with varying strengths and skills. But look closer and you’ll begin to see commonalities. While their stories will differ, there are also common talents among those who are successful. Take a look and see if you recognize yourself.

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Intimidated by negotiations? Focus on these five simple negotiation skills first and get much better.

Think of all the times in your business week you negotiate:  with new hires and existing employees; with sales prospects and long-term clients; with vendors and suppliers. If you're a business owner or leader, you need to know how to negotiate. This is non-negotiable.

Here are the five most important negotiation skills you should focus on first. Each of these skills has proved to be worth millions to my clients and to me over the past 25 years. This all recently came to a head when I had 35 of my top business coaching clients join me for a day-and-a-half program on negotiation in my hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. These were 35 of the most successful entrepreneurs and business owners in the United States.

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The good folks from One Peace Books have just sent us details for an up coming manga Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills?!. Manga by...

In a world where everyone receives a Class and Skills at the age of ten, and where such revelations have a huge impact on one's life, Arel, ...

Expert tips to improve and perfect your various paddleboarding techniques and skills.

The online versus traditional classroom debate has been going on for some time now. You can't get through one blog on eLearning or modern education without finding a discussion of the pros and cons of the digital classroom and online degree programs. The debate has been going for some time now and has seen many different facets and opinions. While online schools were shunned from the start, today they have grown and flourished into highly regarded institutions for higher learning. Today, rather than simply disregarding online learning as a lesser option to brick-and-mortar schools, people are beginning to see the two entities as options for different learning styles and lifestyles. There are many people who can benefit and really grow from their experience in the online classroom. Online learning facilitates many of the same skills traditional learning does, but has a few added elements. As our society becomes more and more married to the online and digital world, a comfort and ease in these areas becomes very important in the professional world.  The following three skills, essential in the corporate world today, are established and perfected in the online classroom.

Have you ever met an adult who didn’t know how to do a basic life skill that you thought should have been obvious? It’s amazing sometimes what people aren’t taught when they’re kids. If you don’t want any of your kids to be that occasionally helpless adult, make sure...

The post 25+ Basic Life Skills Parents Need To Teach Their Kids appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Introducing the new e-book by Ken Evoy "Make Your Content PREsell." It's the only book of its kind. It will make you more effective, every way, every day. Every communication that you write will be better. Not just your web pages, e-zines or personal e-mail. Everything you ever write will simply be more effective.

Leadership skills training development courses, programs, tool kits, books, seminars and workshops are great ways for creating, building and enriching energy in your life, your career and your organization! This weblog uses leadership skills-related quotes, articles, research, findings, practical examples and assessments to help you plan, organize, conduct and growth through leadership skills training and development endeavors.

Frederica is interviewed by her friend Katherine Mowers about how to really listen to other people.

The cost of broadband and devices can be a barrier to getting online, the Doncaster charity says.

Kenilworth woman's campaign to give people the best chance of surviving a cardiac arrest.

The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics (ELM) software, a research-based bilingual interactive multimedia instructional tool, and its potential to develop emerging numeracy skills. At the time of the study, a central theme of early mathematics curricula, Number Concept, was fully developed. It was broken down into five mathematical concepts including counting, comparing, adding, subtracting and decomposing. Each of these was further subdivided yielding 22 online activities, each building in a level of complexity and abstraction. In total, 234 grade one students from 12 classes participated in the two-group post-test study that lasted about seven weeks and for which students in the experimental group used ELM for about 30 minutes weekly. The results for the final sample of 186 students showed that ELM students scored higher on the standardized math test (Canadian Achievement Test, 2008) and reported less boredom and lower anxiety as measured on the Academic Emotions Questionnaire than their peers in the control group. This short duration pilot study of one ELM theme holds great promise for ELM’s continued development.

Aim/Purpose: This paper presents a study about changes in computer science and software engineering students’ perceptions of their soft skills during their progress through the Computer Science Soft Skills course. Background: Soft skills are often associated with a person’s social, emotional and cognitive capabilities. Soft skills are increasingly sought out and are well recognized by employers alongside standard qualifications. Therefore, high importance is attributed to soft skills in computer science and software engineering education. Methodology: Content analysis was applied to interpret, categorize and code statements from students’ course assignment answers. Data analysis was performed gradually at the three main stages of the course and by the two students’ study populations. Contribution: The paper highlights the variety of (a) soft skills that can be learnt in one course, both on the individual level and on the team level and (b) assignments that can be given to students to increase their awareness and motivation to practice and learn soft skills. Findings: Data analysis revealed the following: (a) five individual soft skills categories, with 95 skills, and five team-related soft skills categories, with 52 skills (in total, the students mentioned 147 soft skills); (b) course assignments and particularly team-based activities elicited student awareness of their individual soft skills, both as strengths and weaknesses; (c) students developed their reflection skills, particularly with respect to team-related soft skills; and (d) significant differences exist between the two groups of students in several categories. Recommendations for Practitioners: It is important to provide undergraduate students with opportunities to integrate soft skills during their training. Establishing a meaningful learning process, such as project-based learning, enables students to apply and develop soft skills when accompanied by reflective thought processes. Recommendation for Researchers: A similar course can be taught and be accompanied by similar analysis of students’ learning outcomes, to examine the influence of local culture on the characteristics of soft skills. Impact on Society: Increased awareness of soft skills in scientists and engineers’ undergraduate education. University graduates who will strengthen their variety of soft skills in their academic training process and will be more meaningful employees in the workplace and in society. Future Research: Our future research aims (a) to explore additional innovative ways to increase students’ learning processes, awareness and practices in relation to soft skills and (b) to research how students’ soft skills are developed during the entire undergraduate studies both on the individual level and the team level.

Aim/Purpose: This paper investigates the changing paradigms for technical skills that are needed by Data Engineers in 2018. Background: A decade ago, data engineers needed technical skills for Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. With the advent of Hadoop and NoSQL Databases in recent years, Data Engineers require new skills to support the large distributed datastores (Big Data) that currently exist. Job demand for Data Scientists and Data Engineers has increased over the last five years. Methodology: This research methodology leveraged the Pig programming language that used MapReduce software located on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Data was collected from 100 Indeed.com job advertisements during July of 2017 and then was uploaded to the AWS Cloud. Using MapReduce, phrases/words were counted and then sorted. The sorted phrase / word counts were then leveraged to create the list of the 20 top skills needed by a Data Engineer based on the job advertisements. This list was compared to the 20 top skills for a Data Engineer presented by Stitch that surveyed 6,500 Data Engineers in 2016. Contribution: This paper presents a list of the 20 top technical skills required by a Data Engineer.

Aim/Purpose. This study seeks to determine the impact of a card game intervention in improving the English verbal communication of nursing students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Background. Many international students studying in Australia experience setbacks in their university studies due to English language difficulties. This paper outlines how an educational card game designed can be played by nursing students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds as an intervention for their English verbal communication development. Methodology. The study used a descriptive qualitative approach to analyse the learning experiences of forty-five (N=45) nursing students from CALD backgrounds undertaking their second semester at a metropolitan university in Victoria, Australia after being introduced to an educational card game developed by the first author. The card game was designed to explore the use of English pragmatic markers, which are words, phrases, or verbal cues that signal or emphasise the intentions of the speaker. Following the intervention, participants were queried in a survey about their experiences with English language speaking and how the game improved their verbal communication skills. Contribution. This paper provides knowledge about how a game can be designed to enhance the English verbal communication skills of nursing students from CALD backgrounds which could help them in their clinical placements and their adjustment into Australian society. Findings. Three intertwining themes that emerged from the data analysis were education content, skills development, and fun and creativity. These themes signify the importance of providing opportunities for learners to creatively practise the educational content in simulative contextualised situations within a safe, comfortable, and inclusive learning environment. Recommendations for Practitioners. Educators still need to consider the importance of inclusivity of students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds as part of successful integration into the culture of their host countries. Recommendations for Researchers. The findings emphasise the need for educators and researchers to understand the challenges facing these students in relation to marginalisation and discrimination and how they can design an intervention that is engaging and inclusive. Impact on Society. The findings also put forward the awareness of pragmatics as part of both English language learning and integration into the society of a host country as students learn how to express intention appropriately in various interactions. Furthermore, the themes presented in this paper suggest that not only should an educational game or an intervention contain relevant educational content and practical activities for skills development, but they must also be enjoyable by encouraging creativity and social interaction. Future Research. The results of this study also open possible future studies that involves the adaptation of a digital version of the card game or possible implementation of the game in other health professional programs in universities and other educational institutes.

Aim/Purpose: To investigate the impact of the evolution of Information Technology on global workforce skills and explore emerging approaches that address the IT talent shortage faced by diverse companies in finding skilled IT workers. Background: This paper explores diverse approaches to bridge the skilled IT workers shortage gap, especially in the context of the widening gap following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study emphasizes the need to consistently leverage business and information technology strategies for competitive advantage. Methodology: This study followed the systematic literature review methodology on 809 articles from ACM, IEEE Xplore, and Scopus digital libraries by utilizing an integrative mixed methods approach with topic modeling and manual content analysis. Contribution: This paper aims to understand and describe the impact of the evolution of the IT industry on its workforce. It contributes additional evidence to our understanding of IT workforce development to support researchers and educators working towards developing effective strategies to bridge the IT talent gap. Findings: On the one hand, the study finds that the evolution of the IT industry produces a shift in required skills and knowledge, resulting in workers needing to adapt and embrace lifelong learning. On the other hand, the evolution of IT creates new opportunities for workers and results in a more globalized and interconnected workforce. Recommendations for Practitioners: Practitioners are recommended to adapt to the shifting skills landscape, encourage lifelong learning, explore new opportunities for workers, and embrace a more globalized workforce. Recommendations for Researchers: Researchers are encouraged to further explore the identified themes and delve into the nuances of the evolving impact of information technology on workforce skills. Impact on Society: The findings have implications for industry growth, emphasizing the importance of aligning business and IT strategies to address the shortage of skilled IT workers on a global scale. Future Research: Future research should focus on the continuous evolution of information technology and its impact on workforce skills, considering the identified themes as a foundation for further exploration.

Aim/Purpose: This research investigates the influence of soft skills on graduates’ employability in the technology industry, using the technology industry sector in Malaysia as a case. Background: Organizations are looking for appropriate mechanisms to hire qualified employees with strong soft skills and hard skills. This requires that job candidates possess a set of qualifications and skills which impact their employability. Methodology: Fuzzy Delphi analysis was conducted as preliminary study to identify the critical soft skills required by technology industry sector. The preliminary study produced ten critical soft skills to form a conceptual model of their influence on employability. Then, an online questionnaire survey was distributed in two industry companies in Malaysia to collect research data, and regression analysis was conducted to validate the conceptual model. Contribution: This research focuses on the influence of soft skills on graduate employability in the technology industry sector, since the selection of the best candidate in the industry will improve employee performance and lead to business success. Findings: The results of regression analysis confirmed that Communication skills, Attitude, Integrity, Learnability, Motivation, and Teamwork are significantly correlated with employability, which means that these soft skills are the critical factors for employability in Malaysian technology companies. Recommendations for Practitioners: The model proposed in this article can be used by employers to give better assessment of candidates’ compatibility with the jobs available. Impact on Society: This research highlights the critical soft skills required by technology industry sector, which will reduce the unemployment percentages among graduates. Future Research: More studies are required to examine the soft skills found in the literature and to define the most important skills from a general perspective of the industry. Future research should assess the moderating role of other variables, such as skills gap, employee performance, and employee knowledge. Furthermore, it is recommended to conduct similar studies of soft skills for employability in other countries.