Executive+Summary+045

The Painting and Decorating section at Wollongong TAFE have been approached by a number of employers from the Industrial Protective Painting and Blasting industry and asked to provide training in this field. Through our initial consultation with these employers, it has been highlighted to us that there are many current mature age employees within the industry who have not been able to receive any formal training within this field of expertise. Employers are also experiencing problems with the skills shortage and recruitment is continuing to be a problem for them.

The focus of this project is to develop a workplace e-learning model to address these issues by:

• Developing processes to enable existing employees to gain recognition using online and e-learning capabilities and tools. This will be supplemented by skilling for any gap training that may be identified and required. • Implementing flexible workplace training and assessment using e-learning for gap training needs. We will develop and use online and e-learning capabilities and a mentoring process to support trainees and new employees on-site and at the workplace, including workplace mentors.

Our concept and strategies for this course fit in exactly with the principles set out in the recently published ‘[|TAFE in the 21st Century]’ discussion paper. We believe that by developing and using these strategies to improve access for students to course content, we will accelerate progress for clients and meet their skills needs.