Delivering training online is not a new thing for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. For more than a decade, training providers have delivered both accredited and non-accredited training online, with the quality of online delivery varying from excellent to really poor.
The question of quality in the delivery of training online has recently been put into the spotlight with the release of ASQA’s 2020-2022 Regulatory Strategy, which outlines the key risk areas and high-risk qualifications that ASQA will focus on for the following three years. This strategy is updated annually, with changes made where required, to ensure that new issues or concerns in the sector can be addressed as they emerge.
The team at Audit Express have reviewed the ASQA 2020-22 Regulatory Strategy and have prepared an infographic to help you understand the key points and how this will impact your organisation. Click here to download a copy of this infographic.
There are a number of key themes in this year’s release of the strategy that you should be focussing on in your organisation:
Online Delivery
VET in Schools Delivery
Priority Qualifications
If your organisation is delivering training online, you should be aware that this is considered to be ‘high-risk’ and that delivery of training online is now in the regulator’s radar.
Now is the time for you to be looking at the quality of the training programs that your organisation is offering online.
In partnership with educonomy, the team at Audit Express have researched best-practice approaches for online delivery from across the globe. We have looked closely at the way regulators of education in other countries around the world are regulating the quality of online delivery. This has helped us to build a suite of tools to be able to review and audit the quality of courses being delivered online here in Australia.
Click on the link below if you would like to have a chat with the team from Audit Express about how to improve the quality of training that your organisation is delivering online.
As the coronavirus pandemic is continuing to make its impact on our way of life, training providers are increasingly looking at ways they can continue to provide training and assessment services to their learners, but still being mindful that they must maintain the minimum standards.
As we’re all dealing with the disruption to our regular way of life, people are increasingly working from home and self-isolating. As such, training and learning is taking place away from traditional campuses and workplaces and now being delivered into people’s homes.
Registered Training Organisations, Higher Education Providers and schools now need to adapt their training and assessment strategies to continue providing learning opportunities for their students.
As businesses pivot their existing strategies and practices to adapt to these changes it is vitally important to continue to maintain the minimum standards with respect to the competency standards and curriculum. We must ensure that the adjustments made to the way we teach and assess does not compromise the integrity of the units of competency or curriculum.
In order to make these immediate changes, education providers need to ensure they are quick to apply these changes and maintain the minimum standards.
Audit Express provides the following tips for pivoting your business to adapt to the current crisis:
Plan, not only for the worst-case but also for the unthinkable.
What existing systems do you have that can be used for the current situation.
Use the free tools available on the market.
Don’t waste money on things you don’t need.
Innovate for what you don’t have
Maintain compliance – rapid changes shouldn’t mean you lower your standards.
Be agile – use your time wisely
Make fast and decisive decisions – but always be considered.
Learn and teach how to work from home effectively
Be safe and sanitise
As we make our agile, fast and decisive changes, we also need to ensure we keep records of what we do and why we did it. At this time, you should ensure you keep good records of what you’ve done to adjust your training and assessment strategies and practices and how you’ve ensured you support your learners during this time.
To make fast and decisive decisions, re-writing your training and assessment strategies seems like an unnecessary burden to quickly pivot your business to support your learners. Likewise, you’ll need to ensure you effectively communicate these changes to our trainers, assessors and education managers.
Audit Express has designed an example form and repository for you to use and amend and implement in your organisation to maintain records of the changes you’ve made to your training and assessment strategies and practices.
The vocational education and training regulators have also indicated that they are willing to work with registered training organisations to get through this difficult time. I encourage you to visit your respective regulator’s website for more information on how they can assist and to communicate your changes with them:
This is an example of an online form you could use and adapt in your organisation to record the changes to your delivery and assessment strategies and practices. We highly recommend you amend and contextualise this document to meet the requirements of your organisation.
If you would like to get a copy of this online form, please email: info@auditexpress.com.au
We are all in this together, and only together can we get through this incredibly difficult time. If you need any assistance, the team at Audit Express are available.
“Can our RTO deliver a qualification in a shorter time frame than what is listed in the AQF Volume of Learning?”
ASQA has clearly answered this question in their latest FAQs update:
“Each learner must gain and be assessed against all the knowledge and skills described in the training package or accredited course. Depending on the circumstances and the characteristics of your learners, it may be possible to achieve this in a shorter period than that described in the AQF….. [emaillocker id=6291]
Your RTO may structure a course to be completed in a shorter time period than that described in the AQF. In this case, you will need to clearly describe, using a rationale based on the previous skills and knowledge and the needs of learners, how a specific learner cohort: • has the characteristics to achieve the required rigour and depth of training, and • can meet all of the competency requirements in a shorter time frame.
Your description must take into account the need to allow learners to reflect on and absorb the knowledge, to practice the skills in different contexts and to learn to apply the skills and knowledge in the varied environments that the ‘real world’ offers before being assessed”.
The AQF Volume of Learning Explanation states that:
“Provider decisions about the duration of the delivery of a qualification must take into account the students’ likelihood of successfully achieving the learning outcomes and ensure that the integrity of the qualification outcomes is maintained. If the duration of delivery is substantially different from the volume of learning specified by the qualification type specification, providers should be able to provide pedagogical rationale to support the variation.”
What does this mean for your RTO?
Well firstly, as an organisation if you have determined the need or demand to deliver your training programs over a duration that is shorter than the AQF Volume of Learning, be sure to undertake some industry consultation that demonstrates support for the proposed duration of the training program. You should also make sure that your training and assessment strategy clearly explains how and why you have determined the need to deliver the training program in this way. In addition you should also document how your learners have the capacity and capability to achieve the requirements of the training program; and exactly how the learners will meet all of the competency requirements in a shorter time frame.
You really need to outline this in a way that makes the regulator confident that the training package requirements and the level of quality outlined in the Standards for RTOs will not be compromised by the shortened duration of your training program.
The team at AuditExpress often come across brilliant training programs that are delivered in durations that are shorter than those outlined in the AQF Volume of Learning. The key to both success and compliance is making sure that you have undertaken quality industry consultation for all of your training programs and that you maintain detailed and accurate training and assessment strategies.
AuditExpress are proud sponsors of the ACPET #VICVETFORUM being held in Melbourne next Tuesday 9th June 2015. [emaillocker id=6291]
In preparation for the event be sure to get your Twitter & Instagram accounts ready. This is set to be a very interactive #VET forum that will involve a live stream for attending guests to interact and have their say throughout the day via their Twitter and Instagram accounts.
The following link is for the ACPET tweetbeam wall that will be used throughout the day for the events hashtag #VICVETFORUM.
All tweets and retweets will be populated here leading up to and on the day of the forum. This wall will be displayed live, allowing full interaction throughout the forum.
Be sure to include the #VICVETFORUM hashtag in your tweets and instagram posts about the forum and also tag: Senator Simon Birmingham – @birmo
ACPET – @ACPET_national
This is set to be an outstanding forum with the most impressive list of keynote speakers this year! We look forward to seeing you all there.
