In Türkiye, not every student has an equal opportunity to access the resources to have sufficient information about career planning. YTNK TV is a free-to-use digital training platform that supports young people's career development within the framework of equal opportunity through various training programs and live broadcast recordings. It raises their awareness about their careers and enables them to make career choices per their qualifications. The entirely free platform fosters young people's adaptation to the skills required in the 21st century and provides them with broadcast recordings and training content to develop the skills and competencies that will make them stand out in their career paths.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
The use of online education platforms is becoming more widespread every day. Especially with the Covid-19 pandemic, online training, which has become increasingly popular, is a subject that is the focus of young people's attention. The Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Human Resources Office has implemented various projects to support the career development of young people, increase their employability, and enable them to make career choices following their qualifications. The YTNK TV (TALENT TV, https://ytnk.tv/) platform was established to provide training programs and other activities supporting young people's career development and planning processes. The entirely free platform fosters young people's adaptation to the skills required in the 21st century and provides them with quality and unique training and activities.
In line with the Office's research during the platform's preparation phase, it has been revealed that not every student has an equal opportunity to access the resources to have sufficient information about career planning. For this reason, the Career Planning Course is the first training program implemented on YTNK TV to create career awareness among the youth and equip them with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies they will need in their professional life. The course is the first one designed at the state-level to appeal to all university students in Türkiye. Universities are encouraged to include this course in their first-year curriculum. More than 450 thousand students had the opportunity to take the Career Planning Course, which is given in more than 185 universities in Türkiye until the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year. The training content and career programs offered by YTNK TV to support the development of students within the framework of a common standard and equal opportunity are diverse. Besides training programs like Career Planning Course, information technologies, and occupational health and safety, there are live broadcast recordings of programs that promote young talents (Söz Yetenekte), and recordings of career talks, project competitions, and national talent fairs. The platform has been viewed approximately 11 million times in a year and a half. More than 20 training contents are ready to upload to the system under the "Information Technologies" and "Occupational Health and Safety" categories.
Thanks to the YTNK TV platform, all young people can access rich content regardless of time and place and can develop the skills and competencies that will make them stand out in their career paths. Furthermore, within the policy framework of strengthening the relationship between education and employment, the dissemination of the Career Planning Course and the YTNK TV platform among students is included in the National Youth Employment Strategy Action Plan.
In addition to all the opportunities YTNK TV offers to students, the platform is also a resource for academicians and employers. Through the platform, it is easier for academicians and employers to reach young people and contribute to their career processes.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
YTNK TV is a free-to-use digital training platform that focuses on creating equal opportunity. Through this platform, young people can access training and live broadcast programs prepared and supported by expert institutions that contribute to their careers, support their skill development, and promote various career opportunities. The innovative aspect of the platform is that it includes content that will directly impact young people's careers, supports skills development in preparation for future jobs, and offers a wide range of training types such as asynchronous, synchronous, or interactive.
What is the current status of your innovation?
The training contents on the platform are being expanded day by day. Various training programs are added to the platform in cooperation with expert institutions. For example, Occupational Health and Safety and Information Technologies categories are training programs that have been added recently and benefit students during the internship period. The platform has continued to grow and expand, with content that will support students in adapting to future jobs and be inclusive of diverse beneficiaries.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
YTNK TV is a platform that develops and enriches in line with users' feedback.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
The users are students, alumni, and academics. The stakeholders are universities, public and private institutions, NGOs, and IOs. Beneficiaries are all users and stakeholders. Stakeholders promote their institutions and employment opportunities through collaborations and sharing training, increase their brand value, and improve the qualifications of their potential future employees. Users contribute to their careers and take steps towards their skill development.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
As of September 2022, YTNK TV has been used by hundreds of thousands of students and viewed more than 17 million times. As a result of the efforts and collaborations, more than 90 educational content and more than 20 live broadcasts and program recordings were added to the system. Considering that it has been in use for nearly two years, it can be stated that YTNK TV contributed to the career development of young people, has a broad target audience, and attracts great interest.
Challenges and Failures
Creating a new digital platform has particular challenges. It is more challenging to design a platform that appeals to a diverse and broad audience, such as students, academics, and employers. In the YTNK.TV project, the design of the platform has been the biggest challenge. Initially built on only video watching and monitoring data, the platform was revised in line with feedback to ensure academic-student interaction. Besides the design, another challenge related to the content was the presentation of the training programs under the correct headings. With the feedback received from experts on the subject, inclusive topics such as career planning courses, personal development training, and information technologies training were created. The most crucial factor facilitating overcoming these difficulties is getting feedback from relevant people.
Conditions for Success
- Linking students, universities, and organizations/employers: This trilateral interaction expands the content in the system and encourages students to use the platform
- Preparation of training programs by specialized institutions: This ensures the quality and reliability of the training content. For example, the Career Planning Course on the platform was prepared by the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Human Resources Office. Similarly, the authorized institution, the Labor and Social Security Education and Research Center, prepared the Occupational Health and Safety Training
- Well-designed and constructed platform: User-friendly and well-designed platforms are expected to attract more users who visit the platform regularly. In this regard, YTNK TV's well-designed and constructed structure effectively reached a broad audience.
Replication
At the present time, online training platforms are frequently used and various platforms continue to emerge. However, YTNK TV makes a difference as it is open to free use by everyone and is completely prepared using national resources. Besides these features of the platform, due to the quality and originality of its content, it is a tool that can be used continuously by students who want to facilitate their career development. Universities or institutions that want to support young people include relevant course content on their platforms. However, in the national setting there is no need to replicate a platform already made publicly available by the government.
Lessons Learned
- Communicate with collaborating organizations: This proved to be very important during the dissemination process of the platform. For example, universities and employers reached more users and contributed to the content and development of the platform. In addition, as the platform developed, there were requests from organizations to contribute to the content. Thus, both the number of training contents and the number of users receiving training continue to increase.
- Design and develop the platform according to users' needs: The system's content, organization, and design continue to be developed through interactions with users. As such, the platform meets users' demands, which supports user growth.
Supporting Videos
Status:
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
- Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
- Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways
Innovation provided by:
Media:
Date Published:
21 November 2023