This post was originally published on this site
The digital transformation expert panel set up by the Australian Industry and Skills Committee has developed a skills strategy to help “to build a smart, sustainable and highly productive economy that’s powered by innovation and entrepreneurship.”
With all the airtime digital skills and their importance in vocational learning is having at present, maybe we need to take a look at how they think we will become a ‘learning country’?
The vision
The strategy document has a very vocational education focus and its associated website envisages a VET sector that becomes:
“a dynamic and innovative learning ecosystem where businesses and existing workers readily turn to upskill and reskill as augmentation and automation continues to evolve each industry. We need to offset the barriers to learning faced by existing workers through world-class learner support services. We need to position the VET sector as a partner in Australia’s innovation agenda, both as an enabler to other industries and in its own right as a world leader in using technology to enhance teaching, learning and assessment.”
And, as always, they see that “while jobs of tomorrow will be technology enabled, they will also be extremely human and human-centred.” So, it’s not just about training in digital skills, it is also about giving far more attention to those generic, foundational and human interaction skills: the 21st Century skills. This is a message our VDC News articles have been hammering for a while too.
The strategy
The expert panel has identified five focus areas: (1) system settings, (2) industry leadership, (3) learner support services: “setting up learners for success through support pre,during and post training” (4) teaching and learning: by “supporting VET practitioners and RTOs to be leaders in innovation and application of digital technologies” and (5) training products, by “building future-focussed, agile training products that enable existing workers to upskill and reskill.” It’s probably the last three that will interest VDC News readers most.
Learner support they see as being addressed by establishing “a nationally agreed approach to learner support for existing workers that is available before, during and after training and directly tackles the barriers to successful lifelong learning.” They see it as involving support of individualised skills assessment and tailored career development. It also needs “career information and learning pathway information which is authoritative and contemporary as well as appropriate learner support “which equips all individuals with the requisite language, literacy, numeracy, digital literacy (LLND) and ‘learning to learn’ skills.” The need for financial support is in the mix too.
In terms of enhancing teaching and learning they propose strengthening the presence of digital skills in the TAE package and establishing “a national, long-term professional development program & communities-of-practice to build practitioner capability in the use of digital technologies to enhance teaching, learning and assessment.”
Finally, the panel proposes “strategically reviewing training packages through the lens of digital transformation, assuring the currency of skills and knowledge in nationally endorsed training products by fast-tracking straightforward, industry agreed changes directly driven by new technologies.” In addition they see the need to “build VET practitioners’ knowledge of digital technologies by evolving the training package Companion Volume (non-endorsed) into an online ‘live’ resource that captures technologies in detail and domain.”
For some of this: been there before, done that, got the tee shirt
People who have been around the system for some time will remember that flexible delivery had quite a focus in the early 2000s (2000-2004 to be precise) on teaching and learning and training products through the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. Three of its five goals were developing: creative capable people, supportive technological infrastructure and world-class online content development, applications and services. Three of its five program streams were concerned with promoting new practices in flexible learning, professional development and developing resources for teaching, learning and assessment! Sound familiar? Lots of money was invested over a number of years and a sizable number of products were developed. Where are they now? You can find a lot of the resources developed and published through the Flexible Learning Advisory Group (FLAG) in the organisation-based collections of the VOCED Plus research database. You can access that collection here if you’re interested in discovering what’s been done in the past or remembering it! The archive contains two other elements: publications and resources produced through the Australian Flexible Learning Framework or AFLF and the later (2012-2015) national VET e-learning strategy.