Last month, MIT hosted the Governor’s Convening for Digital and Lifelong Learning.

The conference on new ideas in digital learning focused on a number of topics, including new opportunities for the early education and care workforce.

Speaking at the conference, Governor Charlie Baker asked:

“How do we as a commonwealth, given our rich and important history as a player in education find a way to maximize the opportunities associated with digital learning and innovation on behalf of our students and, frankly, our working people here in Massachusetts?”

Baker said that he and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito, “run into employers over and over and over again who say that their single biggest impediment to growth is their ability to find people who can work for them.”

It’s a problem that’s well known in the early education field.

Fortunately, there are also emerging solutions.

The conference highlighted one innovative approach – competency-based online learning – during a panel discussion on early education that was facilitated by Carlos Santiago, commissioner of the Department of Higher Education.

The panelists were:

• Kim Burns, dean of Academic Innovations and Professional Development at Northern Essex Community College

• Jody Carson, associate professor of Early Childhood Education and an instructional coach at Northern Essex Community College

• Winnie Hagan, associate commissioner for Academic Affairs and Student Success, at the Department of Higher Education, and

• Carol Landry, director of the Children’s Place, an early education program located at Phillips Academy (this is the practicum site for students from Northern Essex)

Why does the early education workforce matter to the economic future of Massachusetts? Santiago asked Hagan.

It matters, Hagan answered, “because the early childhood education industry makes a great deal of other work possible in other industries. A lot of employees are able to go to work because of the child care industry.”

Early educators also make up the largest workforce in all of the education sectors, Hagan added, “with the added assets of being the most linguistically and racially diverse, and the best match in that regard for our youngest citizens. But this workforce has the least education and training and the least access to higher education and professional development.”

This is where Northern Essex Community College comes in. Using a grant of $180,000 from the Department of Higher Education, Northern Essex worked with Middlesex Community College to create more academic access for early educators.

The two schools have developed four new early childhood classes that “can be completed through competency-based learning, which recognizes student’s prior knowledge, allows for acceleration of their learning, and promotes mastery of the content,” a press release explains.

The classes are offered online, and each “will have four to seven competencies that align with professional standards and must be demonstrated in order to receive credit. Students will receive ongoing and personalized support from faculty and a learning coach.”

Stay tuned for more progress on digital learning.

Northern Essex “plans to launch those courses in the fall of 2018 and is currently working with six other community colleges and Cambridge College to create a pathway to a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education delivered in a competency-based format.”

And after the panel, Secretary of Education Jim Peyser praised the “learn as you go” model of competency-based learning for early educators, and added, “I can’t tell you how critical this work is to strengthening the quality of the early education system. This is absolutely at the core of our strategy to increase the quality of that experience, to set up young children for success when they get into school. It’s all about the quality of the workforce.”

As Sara Mead wrote last spring in U.S. News and World Report, “Today, as early childhood leaders, policymakers and philanthropists seek to elevate the early childhood workforce, we have an opportunity to create new approaches to early childhood educator training that are both more accessible and affordable than existing higher education options and better in quality.”

For early educators, digital learning could provide these badly needed innovations.