Each RTO is able to charge student fees for the courses their students enrol in. This is true for apprenticeship courses as well.

eLearning Australia charges their student fees at a rate of $1.40 per nominal hour. Fees are payable at the beginning of each unit of competency. The reason we’ve decided to charge student fees this way is for the following reasons:

1. You don’t get given a large bill at the end of, or the start of a block

2. You only pay for exactly what you’re doing training on, so there are no complications if you change RTO or employers.

3. Fees are always up to date, so there aren’t any problems with outstanding fees etc.

One of the main things people want to know though is, “What exactly am I paying student fees for?!”

Well, here are the services you receive because of your student fees.

* Support services (phone, email, chat, txt etc)
* Access to the online whiteboards for more detailed, one on one tutorial time
* Exam Supervision Services
* An online training plan which is updated daily
* Online training that uses the most effective, and up to date software and resources.
* Technical Advice
* Qualified, Industry Current Trainers
* Weekly progress reports which cover theory, practical and on the job training
* Profiling via the online eLogbook
* Employer resource packs and training cards

Today I stumbled across this great prezi on Maths by Alison Blank. In it Alison talks about how Maths isn’t linear, so why do we teach it this way? Some of the course that we create are maths-based, so this is an important question for our teaching and developers to ask themselves when we create these courses.

I’m excited to see how we can use Prezi further- even for things like showing students the big picture and ‘purpose’ of a unit, before we teach it!

Today I stumbled across this fantastic resource from over at the Wodonga TAFE blog. If you haven’t checked out what they do before, I highly recommend their blog- it’s always full of fantastic information!

Extract from their blog:

Joyce Seitzinger, an eLearning advisor at the Eastern Institute of Technology in New Zealand has developed the fantastic “Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers” which helps teachers choose which Moodle tool will give you the best learning outcome taking into consideration what it is you want to achieve in the classroom or online; it even gives your choice a score based on categories in the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Many thanks to Joyce for her generous provision of use through her Creative Commons licence.

Sometimes, depending on the electives that you’ve studied in your apprenticeship, you may be eligable to register for a cablers licence.

All customer cabling work in the telecommunications, fire, security and data industries must be performed by a registered cabler. All cablers are required to register with an ACMA-accredited registrar.

Each registrar will be able to advise you how to register and associated charges.

You will be required to demonstrate competency requirements (see ‘Downloads’) and sign a declaration that you are competent before being able to register. You must provide evidence to the registrar that you meet the competency requirements. This evidence can be in the form of:

* certificate(s) from a Registered Training Organisation showing that you have attained the relevant competency, or
* a certificate of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) issued by an accredited assessor.
This option is suitable for experienced cablers who have either worked in a related cabling industry (eg electrical) or have previously performed telecommunications cabling, but do not hold a current Australian cabling registration.

Source

ACMA accredited registrars are listed below (alphabetically):

Australian Cabler Registration Service (ACRS)
Phone: 1300 66 77 71
Fax: (02) 9744 1830
Email: enquiries@acrs.com.au
Website www.acrs.com.au
Shopfronts: For your nearest shopfront phone (03) 9645 5566
Postal: PO Box 1106, Burwood North NSW 2134

Australian Security Industry Association Limited (ASIAL)
Phone: (02) 8425 4320
Fax: (02)8425 4343
Email: cabling@asial.com.au
Website: www.asial.com.au
Address: Security Industry House, 41 Hume St, Crows Nest NSW 2065
Postal: PO Box 1338, Crows Nest NSW 1585

BICSI Registered Cablers Australia Pty Ltd (BRCA)
Phone: (03) 9646 4873
Freecall: 1800 306 444
Fax: (03) 9846 8645
Email: info@brca.com.au
Website: www.brca.com.au
Address: Level 1, 182 Normanby Road, South Melbourne VIC 3205
Postal: PO Box 1018, South Melbourne VIC 3205

Fire Protection Association Australia (FPA Australia)
Phone: (03) 9890 1544
Fax: (03) 9890 1577
Email: cpr@fpaa.com.au
Website: www.fpaa.com.au
Address: 13 Ellingworth Parade, Box Hill VIC 3128
Postal: PO Box 1049, Box Hill VIC 3128

TITAB Australia Cabler Registry Services (TITAB ACRS)
Phone: (03) 9349 4955
Fax: (03) 9349 4844
Email: info@titab.com.au
Website: www.titab.com.au
Address: Suite 3, 139 Queensberry Street, Carlton South VIC 3053
Postal: PO Box 348, Carlton South VIC 3053

Source

If you’re looking at being RPLd for a unit of competency or your entire qualification, you will ned to supply a range of evidences to prove competency.

Listed below are some possible options (please note: this is not a definitive list, these are just suggestions).

• Copies of any previous qualifications
• Copies of certificates/results of assessment
• Letters of reference from pervious employers
• Any licences, e.g. unrestricted/ restricted licence
• Brief CV/resume of work history
• Indentures/trade papers
• Results/statement of attendance/certificates – vendor training courses, in-house courses, workshops, seminars, symposiums
• Results/statements of attendance/certificates – club courses e.g. first aid, surf life saving, etc
• Tickets held e.g. forklift, crane, EWP, etc
• Site competencies held record – Blue/White card, site safety induction
• Industry awards
• Photographs of your own industry work
• Diaries/task sheets/job sheets/log books
• Site training records
• Membership of relevant professional associations
• Hobbies/interests/special skills outside work
• Any other documentation that may demonstrate industry experience

Just a quick slidescast to show what we’ve been thinking about scenario driven eLearning…

View this presentation in a new window.

Context

Before I delve into my personal reflection on supervising an exam via skype, I thought I would put it all into context for you.

Who are the students? We train electrical apprentices online. They do their regular work, and instead of going to TAFE they complete their theory training online. Our students age from 16 to 50+. Their time for training is sometimes at their workplace, in an office, one day a week, and sometimes it’s at home after work, and sometimes it’s even on their holidays. It doesn’t really matter when they do their training, but their exam has to be supervised, which menas it has to be done Monday – Friday, between 8 and 4.

How are they assessed? Because of the way this training is done, students take differing amounts of time to finish competencies, and we rarely have more then one student doing an exam at a time. Students have to book in the time that they want to sit their exam as well, so staff can manage when students sit exams. Online exams are just one of the methods of assessment for each competency (we’ll talk more about that another time). We use moodle, and so our online exams are moodle quizes. For those interested, we put a time limit on the exam, and the review options are all unticked, except for feedback and scores in the final collum.

Why are they supervised via webcam? They’re supervised by webcam so that we know that it is indeed the right student taking the exam, and so that we can be sure that they don’t have textbooks, or other things on their desk, or computer to help them (assuming the exam they’re doing isn’t open book).

Personal Reflections

Today was my first time supervising one of these exams online (though not the first time they’ve been done in our organisation). He’s a quick run-down of how it happened.

• Student calls because they’re booked in for an exam.
• We both have skype open and add each other. Start video call (student only- I’m not on video, and I’m on mute for voice too while they’re doing the exam)
• Survey room/screen/desk with webcam. Webcam is positioned so that both student, and their desk and computer screen can be seen by the webcam.
• Give student exam password and move skype to extra screen or corner of current screen.
• Periodically check on student, record exam if necessary.
• Student calls/talks via skype when they’re finsihed. Call is ended.
• Exam is marked, student and employer are emailed the results, is a resit is necessary, then student books in to do that.

Positives? When I said on twitter that I was supervising an exam via skype I got a few responses from people thinking that this was going to be really hard. These people probably thought that there would be multiple students; but with only one student, it’s a very easy, stress-free way to supervise exams. I personally found it easy to manage, and while it was another thing I was multi-tasking, I was able to give it the attention it needed, and also cary on with some other tasks. I did some work on my computer like emails, and created some slides- things I would have been doing had I supervised him in ‘real life’.

Negatives? There weren’t really any negatives that I can think of. Perhaps, if I had to give an answer, I would say having to listen to them was annoying- not that he was speaking, but there were keys typing and things like that. Simple solution is to turn down the volume, or put on some quiet music- that way I could still hear him if they need to talk to me (which they would only be doing if they had finished).

Technicalities

Why Skype? Well, most people have heard of skype, so it’s not a ‘new’ thing to a lot of people. This is a big deal, because there are already some ‘new technologies’ students have to ‘learn’, and we don’t want to make this too big of jump for them. It’s also free, easy to download, and easy to make an account, plus people will actually use it for other things- not just their training. It’s true that skype has limitations- like only being able to video call with one person at a time, BUT as I mentioned earlier, with students booking in times to do exams, this isn’t really an issue. Plus, we have 8 computers in the office. If was vital that more then one person was doing their exam at the same time then they could just connect to another skype account, and another staff member, or that same staff member could monitor them on the extra computer.

We’ve recently started a new process for making our eLearning courses, adding in more focus on the planning and editing stages, instead of just development of content. This comes after buying some new software- Articulate, to increase our level of professionalism and give us some new options for interactivity within our courses.

It’s been a learning curve to get the software, and us, working how we need it to; and we won’t stay the same but at the moment it’s a flow (not only are we life long learners, always changing; but we’ll most likely have to expland soon).

There are three of us in Development, and each of us take on one of these roles (this is after the material for the course has been written by the trainer). I do the planning, Cody the development, and Luke the editing. Of course, before that is some group brainstorming with the three of us, and our new office structure means that we can easily collaborate the entire time we’re working on a project.

It’s working pretty well, and the fact that everything is seen three times (sometimes more if the boss reviews the ‘final product’ as well), by different eyes, means that there are less of the bugs and mistakes that inevitable sneak through due to human error.

I’m loving storyboards as a tool for planning at the moment. They’re pretty simple to whip up (you can download a template here), give a good whole picture of what’s happening, and can be used to write notes in later stages of development so that as the plans gets passed through the development chain, everyone knows what’s happening. The thing I REALLY like about storyboarding by hand is that I can do it on the go. The other week I had to go see my Nanna during the week, when she got home from hospital, and as I was waiting for her I could storyboard. I didn’t need my laptop, or any fancy equipment. All I needed was some paper, a pen and my mind.

Once I’ve drawn the storyboards up we blow them up to A3 size so that they can be easily seen by everyone in our department, and any details/notes can be written clearly- not on extra paper, or in text too small to read!

I’m interested to know what editing processes other people have within their organisations- not just with eLearning, but with other delivery too. Do others use storyboards, edit the material once it’s been developed. Do you do more editing then this, or field test it before the product is released to students?