Vocational Placement for the QLD Water Industry

WIOA 2013 presentation

Do you know what vocational placement study is?  A lot of industries do this so that TAFE students can gain access to real work situations, and build a work ethic you can’t teach.  Nursing is a prime example and you can read a paper on the Impact of clinical placement location on nursing students competence and preparedness for practice at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/1376/1/1376.pdf  .

The water industry appears to be very reticent to consider this study pathway for non-industry-working students. The NWP07 Water Operations qualifications have been developed to support experienced industry practitioners and new entrants seeking to commence or develop a career within the water industry. The majority of learners participating in water operator and wastewater operator studies currently come from existing workforces of the water service providers in QLD and across Australia. There would be little recognition within the Australian water industry for a graduate who has been issued a water treatment qualification and never worked onsite in an operational water treatment facility. This is partly a risk management strategy to ensure the general community are provided with safe drinking water from adequately trained operators. Vocational placements for students may enhance workforce development strategies and succession planning in regional areas of QLD.

Neither short vocational placement students nor work experience students are paid employees of a water service provider. But the employment relationship may be very different. A short vocational placement arrangement is generally an appropriate option for students who would not otherwise have sufficient access to the facilities, equipment and range of work necessary to develop and consolidate their skills to the assessable level required of the course/qualification, for example, students undertaking their course/qualification through TAFE. All hours completed at work must relate back to the direct achievement of competency as a course requirement.  How many hours and where the student works is negotiated as part of a placement agreement.  A work experience student is not expected to contribute to the organisation’s productivity, and may be attending the workplace to observe and confirm their learning.

My research paper on promoting a discussion with industry on vocational placement was accepted to be presented at the QLD Water Industry Operators Association (WIOA) Annual Conference in early June 2013.  You can read this paper here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c6lj8259kbye3k4/WIOA%20QLD%20Paper%20Tracie%20Regan%20WBIT.pdf

I’d like to convince them that vocational placement studies needs to be seriously considered and accepted to build a pool of suitably skilled people in remote and regional areas.

I have developed a Prezi for my presentation at the conference; you can watch and listen to it here: http://prezi.com/8_i3c2gtkfaw/vocational-placement/

Vocational placement arrangements vary from State to State and information for QLD training organisations on vocational placement can be found at http://training.qld.gov.au/training-organisations/vocational-placement/index.html

CamScanner app – use in education

CamScanner

Ever wished you had a document scanner in your pocket?  Or wanted to convert your images from your camera roll into PDF?

You can with a smart device app called CamScanner which is available in both Google Play and iTunes stores as a free download. I’ve used this app for a while now and paid the extra to access the CamScanner++ version which removed the pesky advertising and watermark.

How to use it with a class? I’ve used it to

• Take a snapshot of the black/whiteboard where you did that excellent brainstorming activity and PDF and share it with others in the class – seamless 🙂
• Scan RPL evidence as the student shares it with you (with the student’s permission of course)
• PDF any paper based document (according to copyright permissions), add notation or comment and email or share via the Cloud (Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, Box.com)
• Save your photo of an onsite practical activity as a PDF for competency assessment evidence (with permission)
• Convert a photo from your camera roll to a PDF and email this to students to use as a class reflection or image interpretation activity
• Scan a written assessment submission so you can reference it again or provide your feedback electronically
• Scan assessment submissions that have been posted to you so you can save them into your Learning Management System for later audit
• Tag, name, group and organise your documents so you have all resources for today’s class ready 🙂
• Copy your receipts that usually fade on thermal paper for your tax return evidence
• or save a document as an image file (JPG) so you can add it to your PowerPoint – great for capturing marketing flyers as examples in class

 

6 tips when designing online content

There are lots of ways to design online content for an e-learning course, and some good texts to help in this process if this is new to your organisation or role. Some books I’ve read include e-Learning by Design – second edition  by William Horton, 2011, publisher Pfeiffer; Project Managing E-Learning (ASTD E-Learning Series), by Bill Shackleford, 2002; Designing Successful e-Learning, Michael Allen’s Online Learning Library: Forget What You Know About Instructional Design and Do Something Interesting, 2007 and Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age, edited by Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe, 2013 (version 2), Routledge group publishers. 

Is it just me or is it funny how many designing e-learning books only come in a paperback format 😀

Here are my 6 top tips when designing online content. 

Tracie’s Designing E-learning 6 Tips

Let’s talk about each in a bit more detail.

1. Don’t forget the pedagogy in this digital age.  Pedagogy is defined as the science and art of teaching; education; and instructional methods.  I’ve been asked if my e-learning assessments can be valid and authentic, and I tell them I use the same strategy in our face-to-face class, so my pedagogy hasn’t changed, just the tool used to deliver and assess the learning outcome.  When you are finished designing your online course, come back to this point and make sure you haven’t lost your pedagogy in the process.

2. Identify the learning outcomes before you start.  Some online courses have learning stops along the way, and others may just be a point-in-time learning object.  Clearly define what it is you want your participants to learn, make it clear when the learner can check they have achieved this, and know how long they will be given to participate.  Check your e-learning project parameters with your stakeholders before you commit so the learning outcomes are agreed from the start.

3. Understand your learner audience and their intended access devices.  There’s no point in developing a u-beaut flash media object if your Gen-Y participant is using an iPad to watch it on, or if they have a visual disability and need a text alternative.  Web design protocols have changed over the past years to accommodate mobile devices, and apps and you have to take this into consideration when designing your course.  Development for an app is very different from a course accessed by an internet connected desktop.  You also have to consider learning styles and computer literacy levels. While some e-learning courses appear to be pretty intuitive to a computer-literate student, the same course can be extremely daunting to navigate for the older learner.

4. Always do a storyboard.  You might know your topic like the back of your hand, but until you write it down and check the instructional design, you leave yourself open to a lot of re-work.  Although tempted to skip this step, my advice is always to storyboard.  I use a variety of tools for this – Freemind, which is a mind-mapping or brainstorming tool; Prezi, which is a presentation tool but great for easy online collaboration; and of course the trusty whiteboard in the corner of my room. 🙂

5. Don’t drown the learning in technology.  Let’s say you have a great looking  course where participants click through their pages, follow the hyperlinks to other websites, leave comments in a forum,  email their progress to a teacher, post an audio comment and use a cloud based file sharing site.  I might also ask them to use different apps, like view an Aurasma aura video as a piece of augmented reality, or complete a checklist in iAuditor. I have to really consider this point, and I try to keep technologies to a maximum of three or four or I find that students become overwhelmed by the technology and miss the intended learning outcome. 

6.  Have a defined ending.  There’s nothing worse than getting to the last page of the learning resource and thinking ‘what’s next?’, it’s like a book with the last chapter torn out.  Make sure you are clear to the student that they have achieved what was intended in your course.  Consider how you will measure this success so you and your learner can boast about it. If you can, add a ‘would you like fries with that?’ teaser so they consider enrolling in your next one, too. 🙂

There are heaps of other things we will consider after this initial planning, and I’ll cover some in future posts.

Prezi and sound (go perfect together)

Are you a Prezi fan?  I am 🙂 Prezi http://prezi.com/index/ has grown in 3 years to now boast over 18 million registered users.  Many of whom are educators, who see this dynamic method of presenting much more engaging than the usual PowerPoint slideshow (don’t get me wrong, as these can be great too, but often have unused features that take time to learn).

I love that Prezi now has sound, navigates easier, and builds quickly.  I use it to

• storyboard new learning content, http://prezi.com/wtgs_vvcsshm/efs-and-mindmap-for-bsbsus301a/
• present in class, http://prezi.com/raybkozpceix/efs-converging-timelines-environment-internet-and-population/ 
• send as a learning object to distance students http://prezi.com/jpopkjmbocqb/fluoride-overdosing-action-events/ and
• marketing for new courses http://prezi.com/z0em3fwqe_gr/nwp50107-diploma-water-operations/

I also transcribe some conference presentations to a prezi so I can share my talk with delegates after the event.  I have been waiting to do this for my TEDxGympie talk as I wanted to explain more than what the imagery could display.  Then Prezi added sound.  What a perfect marriage of technology 🙂

Here’s my Prezi on my TEDxGympie talk – make sure you turn on your speakers so you can listen to my full presentation.  Next time I might add background music too.

http://prezi.com/i2agvvo4laep/distance-learning-is-closer-than-ever-tedx-gympie/

Prezi TEDxGympie

Now to wait for WordPress to have a Prezi widget so it will play from my blog.