Executive+Summary+036

Our students want to accelerate their progress into appropriate work. This project will offer them a wider range of choices to achieve this.

In 2007 NSW AMES commenced delivering courses with a vocational focus that allowed participants to complete dual qualifications in English and in vocational areas. The vocational areas currently are in Business Administration, Aged Care, Children’s Services and Hospitality, each of which fall within skill shortage areas. These courses are provided in Sydney locations in partnership with ACE Colleges, and Industry who provide the workplace support. All the courses run to date have proved very popular and successful.

NSW AMES includes in its provision for these courses access to our quality online courses that are used nationally and internationally. While the content is excellent, NSW AMES would use this project to map the online courses to a wide range of VET courses and build online community systems that include access to industry experts, reusable online resources and online student portfolio systems, to address some of the following issues. • need to extend course model to rural and remote locations • isolation of teachers and students participating in these courses • need to be able to retain, reuse and access centrally, support resources for teachers, students, industry mentors and industry experts • need for more effective engagement of industry mentors and experts • need to upgrade resources to support a number of reaccredited certificates provided by AMES and our partners • need to provide more delivery options for students, teachers and industry mentors including technologies supporting online communication, online communities and mobile use • need to improve RPL processes to be suitable for ESL and Indigenous clients • need to map NSW AMES online courses to VET units, courses and qualifications

Target audience • Adult ESL and Indigenous students across NSW and NT looking to enter the workforce. While this project will specifically look at the areas of office skills, aged care, nursing and children’s services the project will develop models of practice that can be applied to other VET courses and skills shortage areas. • AMES teaching staff who provide the CSWE and e-learning components of the course • Education partners who provide the VET course component and • Industry partners who provide work experience placements and relevant industry input into teaching resources and practices.

Proposed e-learning solution A blended delivery course model that can be used to respond rapidly to student needs. The model will be based on the successful NSW AMES and Partners dual qualifications courses in English and vocational skills, and will embed new online support strategies to provide an accessible blended approach: • supported online community spaces that have repositories of reusable resources, appropriately adapted reusable toolbox learning objects and activities, and online access to industry experts • NSW AMES online course modules mapped to VET courses • new online RPL processes

This project supports NSW AMES Business Plan 2006-2008 strategies which aim to: • build on our expertise and experience to expand business opportunities • meet the diverse learning needs of our clients through innovative teaching strategies including technology based learning • further develop effective and stable Information Technology system

This project supports the corporate goals and ICT strategies of the NSW Department of Education and Training ICT Strategy 2006 – 2008.