Executive+Summary+080

TAFE NSW - Western Institute’s Intensive Agriculture (Animals) program area provides blended training, incorporating flexible delivery and face-to-face sessions, to learners enrolled in animal care and management courses across western NSW and beyond.
 * Background**

Experience in real workplaces, such as kennels/catteries, animal grooming parlours, pet shops and veterinary clinics is a key part of the learning and assessment process for all. This may be the learner’s usual workplace or, for those not already in the industry, work placement for at least one day per week. Like the learners these small business workplaces are spread across a very large area from Lithgow to Broken Hill, a distance equivalent to Sydney - Brisbane. Our teachers/assessors drive long distances to visit learners at regular intervals in their workplaces.

The challenge is to: • keep these learners engaged with their course and with their class group between workplace visits and workshops; • maximise learning from the workplace experiences; • provide timely feedback on workplace experiences; • assist learners in collection of acceptable workplace evidence for assessment; • form a virtual community of learners in their disparate workplaces for collaborative learning; • complement assessment evidence from workplace visits and workshops which can’t cover all workplace tasks with e-learning options; • assist those with extensive industry experience to collect evidence for recognition; and • address key requirements of Training Packages to develop learners’ employability skills, including demonstrated e-learning competence.

The proposed e-learning strategy (the Strategy) involves developing, trialling and evaluating Moblogging, MMS (Multimedia Messaging System) and Skillsbook as additional tools in the range of teaching, learning and assessment strategies available for the Animal Care and Management Industry. It will be used in workplaces such as kennels and catteries, animal grooming salons, pet shops and veterinary clinics across NSW and ACT for students in Certificate II Animal Studies, Certificate III Companion Animals and Certificate IV Veterinary Nursing – from the Animal Care and Management Training Package RUV04..
 * The Project**

Younger clients and flexible delivery students will benefit from the provision of more dynamic, interactive distance learning tools and gain vital experience with e-learning technologies. This Strategy will become the platform to support a large component of interactive communication, learning and assessment events between teachers and students. Students will upload pictures, video clips and other material that provides evidence of competence and will receive feedback and results of assessment quickly from teaching staff.

In addition, the use of technology has been identified as a component of employability skills to be assessed in Training Packages. This Strategy will contribute to meeting those goals.

The Strategy will benefit employers by maximising learners’ time at work, minimising interruptions of workplace assessment and, with constant teacher feedback, enable swifter skill development of the learner in the workplace.

It also delivers benefits for the Registered Training Organisation – cost savings due to reduced travel costs for workplace visits, more productive use of available teacher hours, and allows a potentially expanded market for training and Recognition services. Taking cars off the road benefits the environment by lowering the carbon footprint. The teacher who is more engaged with the learners in the virtual environment and less engaged with the rigours of long hours on the road will be more efficient and productive.