Lumify Group Launches New Training Provider Lumify Learn

Lumify Group, the leading provider of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) training in Australasia, has today announced the launch of Lumify Learn (RTO no. 45994). Lumify Learn provides quality, self-paced, vendor-certified and nationally accredited ICT training, leveraging 30 years of experience, skills and knowledge accumulated by the wider Lumify Group as industry leaders.

Bringing a unique offering of nationally accredited qualifications with built-in vendor-certified content (in partnership with the likes of Microsoft, AWS and CompTIA), Lumify Learn tackles the growing problem of skills shortages in Australia’s technology sector. With a recent government-backed survey revealing IT university graduates were the least employable out of 10 sectors surveyed, and nearly one in five IT graduates feel their degree has failed to prepare them for the working world, Lumify Learn’s courses offer students the opportunity to graduate with a vendor-certified qualification and a nationally accredited qualification. This leads to stronger employment outcomes and enables students to secure the right balance of foundational IT skills and the specific vendor-certified competencies that organisations are suffering a shortage of most.

With all courses delivered 100% online, Lumify Learn allows students to study their way, from anywhere, at any time. All students are supported by a team of Australian-based ICT experts currently working in industry, who are available to guide students through the course material. Additional to nationally accredited and vendor-aligned courses, Lumify Learn also offers a series of tailored bootcamps in high-demand skillsets, including Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, that take students with zero industry experience to employable professionals in as little as 6 months.

Lumify Learn courses are designed for both beginners looking to make an entry into the ICT industry and those looking to advance their careers, and require limited prior knowledge or experience. The business has also announced the launch of its industry-leading program, Lumify Edge, that provides dedicated support and careers advice to help graduates land their first role in the ICT industry. The program also assists Australian tech companies tackle skills shortages by providing them with a fresh source of qualified, industry-ready candidates.

“Just as much as graduates need core foundational skills in the basics of IT, they also need specific vendor-certified competencies in the systems that organisations are using on a daily basis. Increasingly, we are seeing ICT training providers fail to deliver in both of these areas, resulting in graduates with poor employment outcomes and skills shortages that aren’t addressed. Furthermore, the rigid academic structures of traditional TAFE and University courses don’t offer the flexibility that many students need to take the first step into an ICT career. We have launched Lumify Learn to fix this problem, and get qualified, competent IT professionals into the market in a timely fashion, ” said Jon Lang, CEO of Lumify Group.

Lumify Learn is part of the wider Lumify Group, which trains over 30,000 students per year with campuses across Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. Lumify Group also includes Lumify Work, which provides training for government and enterprise customers; Lumify People, a strategic and advisory services provider; and Nexacu, the leading provider of instructor-led Microsoft app training for end-users across APAC. Together, the four business units provide extensive training options tailored to both organisations’ and individuals’ needs – from vendor-certified courses to customised training, including bespoke in-house developed courses.

Plain English Foundation Appoints New GM

EdventureCo Digital Asset Denise Farrell 1

EdventureCo is pleased to announce the appointment of Denise Farrell as the new General Manager, Plain English Foundation. EdventureCo is a premium provider of digital, soft, and future skills training, committed to developing lifelong learners for the roles of the future. Denise will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the company, continuing to build on the outstanding reputation as Australia’s leading provider of plain English training, consulting, and editing.

Denise’s priority is to support our diverse and inclusive teams to drive innovation and accelerate growth. With a passion for quality customer care, Denise will be supporting our committed teams to deliver exceptional experiences for all our clients. Her aim is to build a strong workplace culture and robust systems so that all employees can excel and reach their potential.

“We are thrilled to welcome Denise to the EdventureCo team,” said Nicola Fowkes, General Manager of the EdventureCo Group. “Her extensive experience, as well as her passion for learning and helping people develop new skills, makes her the perfect fit for our company. We look forward to seeing the positive impact she will have within the group.”

“I am thrilled to join Plain English Foundation. The thought of leading this exceptional team, developing new strategies, and achieving business objectives fills me with excitement and a sense of purpose. I am excited to dive into the challenges of this new role and make a meaningful impact on the company’s success and to create a positive and productive work environment. It is an honour to join a team with such a strong track record, providing hundreds of organisations to improve their writing skills and transform their documents over the last 20 years”.

EdventureCo Announces Rebrand of Corporate ICT and Digital Skills Training Provider DDLS to Lumify Group

arowana edventureco lumify group rebrand

EdventureCo, the education platform of award-winning impact investment firm and global B Corp, Arowana, announced that DDLS Group has rebranded to Lumify Group, uniting all its digital training brands under one umbrella.

A long-time leader in corporate ICT and digital skills training in Australasia, DDLS has continued to expand its services into new industries and regions. The group recently acquired Auldhouse, New Zealand’s largest ICT training provider, and Nexacu, Australia's leading provider of Microsoft end-user training. It launched the Australian Institute of ICT (AIICT), an online learning business, and opened its DDLS Philippines campus. DDLS People, the company’s business consultancy arm, also experienced significant growth over the past few recent years. These separate business divisions will now be consolidated under Lumify Group.

Under the new structure, Lumify Group will serve as the overarching brand for the businesses and incorporate the introduction of Lumify Learn, Lumify Work, and Lumify People. DDLS Australia, DDLS Philippines, and Auldhouse will now be known collectively as Lumify Work; DDLS People will now be known as Lumify People; and Lumify Learn will be launched in the new year, as its all-new ICT Consumer training arm.

Rebranding to Lumify Group

The rebrand addresses two main objectives for DDLS. The first is to unify its business units under a single brand architecture. The second is to allow the company to focus on its mission to narrow the digital skills gap by equipping the workforce with future-focused, in-demand skills.

“The existing DDLS brand doesn’t do justice to the progressive, modern organisation we’ve become. While it has equity with our existing customer base, the name itself has no connection to what we do as a business,” Lumify Group CEO Jon Lang said.

“To move forward and continue to dominate the ICT training market in Australasia, we needed to move our separate brands under one umbrella. The rebrand is an important milestone for us and reflects our ongoing commitment to closing the digital skills gap across the APAC region by providing world-class training to our future tech workforce. In Australia alone, 286,000 people will need to enter technology jobs over the next four years just to keep pace with growth. Lumify Group’s ultimate mission is to meet this demand, by giving people and businesses the skills they need to flourish in a future where technology rules.”

“The next few years will see us continue to expand into other regions, target new markets, and increase our investment in digital, flexible, and customer-focused delivery and courses.”

The meaning of the name

The new name ‘Lumify’ means to illuminate; chosen to reflect Lumify Group’s belief in the power of learning and its ability to enlighten and transform.

“We wanted to design a modern, digital-first brand identity that communicates who we are now- and where we are headed. With so much growth and expansion, we felt the time was right to unite all our different brands and services under a single brand. But to do that, we realised we needed a new name. A name that truly reflects who we are, what we’ve become, and where we’re headed,” Lumify Group Marketing Head Michael Crump said.

The rebrand comes at a time when the company delivers an extensive and varied portfolio of 600+ courses to more than 30,000 students annually across 90 classrooms, along with a growing range of virtual and self-paced online options. It will have no impact on the day-to-day operations of all business units or the student experience.

For more information, please watch the Lumify Group Video here, and visit the website at http://www.lumifygroup.com/.

Stay tuned to the Arowana website for more news & insights.

EdventureCo acquires Plain English Foundation

The Directors of AWN Holdings Limited (“Group”, “AWN”), which is part of Arowana & Co.
(“Arowana”) are pleased to announce that its education platform, EdventureCo, has completed the
acquisition of all the issued share capital of Plain English Foundation Pty Ltd (“PEF”) from its
founders.

PEF is Australia’s leading provider of clear communication training and editing services. Founded
by Dr Neil James and Dr Peta Spear, in the past 15 years PEF has trained over 30,000 professionals
and evaluated over 50,000 documents for more than 300 business and government organisations.

Based in Sydney, PEF has a blue-chip client base of government and corporates including the New
South Wales and Victorian Departments of Premier and Cabinet, University of New South Wales,
AIG, Aware Super, Savills Australia and TAL Services.

PEF was founded with the mission to improve the quality of public language by making clear,
concise communication a business and government standard. The business was instrumental in
establishing the international definition of plain language, which was officially adopted by the
International Plain Language Federation. Plain language is the ideal standard for all workplace
writing and public language because it is clear, precise, readable, usable and efficient.

With a recent survey by Deloitte Access Economics and Ipsos finding that three in four interactions
with government agencies now take place online rather than face-to-face or via the telephone, the
importance of clear written communication has never been higher.

The acquisition of PEF complements EdventureCo’s existing businesses and is consistent with
AWN’s strategy of building a premium provider of digital, soft and future skills training that
prepares the workforce of today for success tomorrow.

DDLS launches DDLS People solutions

Today, DDLS announced DDLS People, a diversification from Australia’s largest provider of corporate IT, into strategic advisory and project management services.

The new business unit builds off DDLS’s 20-year history of delivering complex logistics and supply chain projects, as well as learning and development activities to the Australian government, primarily the Department of Defence.

DDLS People will continue to provide these services to the Department of Defence, while increasing and improving its offering to include strategic advisory and project management services. The new investment is aimed at expanding the company’s reach into the greater public sector, as well as private enterprises.

Jon Lang, CEO of DDLS commented: “This is an exciting step for DDLS, as we continue to expand our reach into strategic advisory services. The launch of DDLS People is our commitment to innovate the way we service our clients with skilled consultancy. DDLS People has a long and established history working with the Department of Defence and a range of government organisations and corporations to deliver successful programs and outcomes.”

DDLS People currently services some of the largest agencies within the Department of Defence and has a solid track record of delivering results with commitment and passion for the past two decades. Since its inception, DDLS People has delivered over 200 Defence projects and upwards of 1,000 logistics systems training courses per year to organisations such as the Navy, Army, and Air Force.

The DDLS Portfolio of business units now consists of DDLS Training, The Australian Institute of ICT, and DDLS People, with eight offices across Australia and Asia.

AIICT expands course portfolio to help Australian ICT skills shortage

The Australian Institute of ICT (AIICT), a division of DDLS, has introduced a new series of industry-certified bootcamp programs and nationally-recognised qualifications to meet the surging demand for skilled ICT professionals in Australia.

AIICT is a startup launched in 2019 by DDLS, Australia’s largest provider of corporate ICT and cybersecurity training. Since launch, AIICT has enrolled over 500 students, with enrolment numbers continuing to grow month on month. Through its unique Industry Partner Program, AIICT connects recent graduates with leading employers to help them secure a frontline role while simultaneously tackling skills shortages in the field.

The bootcamps support the Morrison government’s recently announced Digital Skills Organisation (DSO) pilot, which recognises the importance of non-accredited training to support the skills development of the future workforce. The bootcamp programs run for six months and comprise of several vendor-specific certifications. The courses include “Cloud Computing Certified Professional”; “Certified Microsoft Full Stack Developer”; “Certified Artificial Intelligence Professional”; “Growth Marketing Professional”; and “Certified Project Management Professional”.

The decision to introduce the bootcamps follows the VET sector’s increasing move away from nationally recognised qualifications to vendor-specific, industry-certified training. According to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, preference for accredited training courses has declined steadily in recent years, with employers increasingly less satisfied that these courses provide their employees with the most relevant and important skills for their business. This has led many organisations to prefer non-accredited training provided by private technology vendors such as Microsoft and AWS.

Jon Lang, CEO of DDLS said: “Our customers are definitely showing a growing interest in non-accredited vendor certifications. One key reason for this is that employers want to develop skills that are highly relevant and specific to the programs and services their organisation uses daily. Non-accredited vendor certifications can be customised to the specific needs of the business, compared with traditional accredited courses which contain more broad course content.”

“While our industry certified bootcamp programs continue to gain popularity, there will always be a place for nationally-recognised qualifications, which cover all of the fundamentals and provide students with a solid foundation to launch their careers in technology. We understand that every individual and business have different training preferences, and it is imperative that we provide more training options in both the non-accredited and accredited realms if we are to tackle Australia’s critical ICT skills shortages.”

Education Data and Insights: EdTech Adoption (Part III)

As we explored in our last instalment of Education Data & Insights, the education sector has never had to confront a challenge as wide and deep as the COVID-19 pandemic. As some countries reinstitute lockdowns and school closures, others are starting to focus on the long-term landscape.

In this report, we examine a Citi Research report on EdTech across the education industry. We assess the industry’s adoption of EdTech and online learning, and the potential impact of the pandemic on future use.

We can say firsthand that at EdventureCo, the pandemic has accelerated both our adoption of EdTech and the digitisation of our businesses. Just as digital classroom initiatives will continue to have a place in the classroom long past COVID-19, we expect the impact across the industry to have lasting effects well beyond the end of the crisis.

Education Insights: impact of COVID-19 on vocational education (Part II)

The global education system was not designed to deal with extended shutdowns like those imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers, administrators, students, and parents have worked hard to keep learning alive. While the rapid transition many have achieved from face-to-face to an online environment is admirable, the reality is that these efforts are not likely to provide the quality of education that’s delivered in the classroom.

In this Education Data & Insights presentation, we look at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across multiple sectors of the education industry. From K-12 to higher education and corporate learning, the education sector has never had to confront a challenge as wide and deep as that posed by the health crisis’s effects.

As some countries start to ease lockdowns and a sense of normalcy starts to return, it will be intriguing to see which short-term changes become part of the longer-term landscape.

Click here to view the presentation

Education Insights: 10 years of investing in vocational education (Part I)

This month marks 10 years since Arowana first invested in education.

Our initial focus was on vocational education and training (VET). VET encompasses the cohort of students who do not pursue an academic-based higher education degree following completion of compulsory schooling. Instead, these students pursue more vocationally-focussed education commonly associated with trades and technical training. This is the world of accredited training, certificates, diplomas, TAFE, and registered training organisations (RTOs).

Of late however, we have expanded our focus to include professional education and training. This covers students who are already in the workforce but are seeking to reskill and/or upskill. This sector is about corporate training, short courses, certifications, and bootcamps.

Together, we call these vocational and professional education and training (VPET), and we have executed our investments in VPET through our education platform, EdventureCo.

As we have formed EdventureCo and worked closely with its leadership, we have gained a degree of insight into the VPET industry that we now wish to share through regular releases of data and insights. We hope that these snapshots provide a wider audience with a better understanding of our investment thesis, the VPET landscape and what the future may hold, particularly in a post-COVID-19 world.

To start things off, we have looked at some data and insights related to human capital. We focussed on two reports: one from Deloitte and the other from Citigroup. Both present data gathered pre-COVID-19, but in doing so, provide a base case that will be interesting to compare and contrast with future research. Notwithstanding the timing, their findings remain relevant.

We have started with human capital because this is where we think private education businesses should be focussed. Ultimately, their students enrol seeking some form of employment outcome, whether it is as a new career entrant seeking their first full-time job or an experienced worker seeking to reskill or upskill.

Human capital is also where the greatest disruption is being and will continue to be felt from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Evolving work demands and skills requirements are creating an enormous demand for new skills and capabilities. Rapid and ongoing changes in the nature of work is modifying the relationship between learning and work, making them more integrated. Consequently, employees see education less as a phase of life and more as a lifelong endeavour, and are willing to participate even if they must pay for it. We hope you gain some new insights from this first release and look forward to sharing our further thoughts with you in the future.

Click here to view the presentation

DDLS partners with New Horizons Worldwide to provide IT training

EdventureCo is proud to announce that New Horizons Computer Learning Centers has partnered with DDLS to provide IT and Professional Development Training to Australia’s workforce.

Shelley Morris, COO of New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, said: “New Horizons and DDLS have a long history of collaboration in the IT training and education space. This partnership broadens our course and training programs and accelerates the growth of both companies. The global market continues to digitally transform, and the shortage of IT professionals continues to increase. We are pleased to announce this partnership brings together two leading companies able to address Australia’s talent and skills gap.”

Congratulations to Jon Lang and the DDLS team on this partnership, which will expand course schedule options, provide access to a worldwide delivery network of training centres, and build on the pathways for students to learn through online and offline delivery.