Skills prioritisation using card sorting

Connected Places Catapult brought in a design agency to run a research project to understand the skills gaps and shortages in the aviation industry.

As part of their earlier research, they had drawn up a list of skills that the aviation industry is going to need in the next 5 or so years.

They ran a closed card sorting exercise with further education providers, to:

• review the list of skills
• identify challenges and opportunities they might have in teaching those skills

The session:

• was a small online workshop
• used the Mural online whiteboard tool
• lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes

Participants came from different colleges. They were mainly people responsible for curriculum development for science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) courses.  

The workshop was divided into 4 sections:

1. Introduction and setting the scene
2. Review of possible categories of skills
3. Sorting and grouping the skills according to each college’s remit
4. Sorting and grouping the skills according to each college’s ability and capacity to deliver courses to teach them
5. Wrap up and next steps

The session had a lead facilitator and an appointed note taker. Each participant had their own space on the online whiteboard to work in individually.

Once everyone had completed a task, each person shared the logic behind their card allocations with the rest of the group.

Facilitators used prompt questions to promote discussion and unpick why people had sorted the cards the way they had.

Prompt questions included:

• What label would best fit this category?
• Would you consider any other category for this skill? 
• Why might you move this skill to another category? 
• What is the approach to teaching this skill? 
• What are the challenges of teaching this skill?  
• Is there a specific reason why you think this skill is out of scope?  
• Are there any plans to teach this skill in the near future?

By the end of the activity, they had a list of skills that: 

• are already being taught
• could be taught in future by the colleges alone
• could be taught in partnership with another organisation
• are out of scope

After the session the design team looked for skills that participants consistently sorted into the same categories. And they referred back to their session notes to understand outliers. They then made a list of skills that could be provided in future by collaborating. This insight will be used in future to help colleges make the right connections and partnerships.

Using card sorting tool was very effective way of getting feedback from lots of different participants at the same time. The results were good because they had the right people in the room, who had enough expert knowledge of the subject to speak accurately about it.