On Wednesday 30th October, the Vocational Education Design Team’s VE Assessment Lead Haley Gunn and Assessment Writer Janet McHardy attended a half-day professional development course on quality, compliance and auditing for assessment. Andrea Bateman facilitated the session at the VET Development centre. The purpose of this workshop was to discuss essential content for assessment tools, identify what ASQA auditors are looking for and evaluate the quality of assessment tools for learners. Participants were asked to bring finalised assessment documents to the workshop to undergo a shared validation process. Validation – a process all assessments go through – evaluates the validity of an assessment tool and identifies if it meets the rules and requirements of a good assessment. The creation of assessment documents is guided by the principles of assessment and the rules of evidence. The principles of assessment guide the development of any assessment task and maintain best practice. The four principles of assessment are fairness, flexibility, validity, reliability. The rules of evidence are used to ensure the evidence provided can be used by an assessor to make a decision on a student’s competency. The rules of evidence are validity, sufficiency, authenticity and currency. Examples of these in practice would be ensuring there […]
Think Tank Series – Mobile-first design
By the end of 2019, approximately 80% of our internet usage will be through mobile phones. So why not use them to our advantage? Why not design our learning experiences to suit mobile first and foremost? In this month’s Think Tank expert panel session on September 16, the VEDT proposed the following question: What is best practice in, and potential impacts of, mobile-first design for VET, industry and skills training? Our experts for this panel discussion were: Colin Hickie, Head of Learning Design and Production – NESLI (National Excellence in School Leadership Institute) Stacey Murray, VET Author and Content Writer Damala Scales Ghosh, Lead Learning Designer – The Learning Hook First up was Colin Hickie, who emphasised a pedagogy-first approach, asking the question that many teachers echo: How can mobile learning engage with your audience in a way that face-to-face/online cannot? Colin also discussed NESLI’s focus when designing for mobile, ensuring that content is quick and accessible, easy to navigate and activity heavy to support engagement. Colin finished with an intriguing point that made all learning designers quake in their boots. Imagine the data collected from mobile learning could be used to evolve the content and learning style automatically. For […]
What we do in the Vocational Education Design Team
Entering the Vocational Education Design Team (VEDT) as a student was a bit of a shock for me. I’ve worked in a variety of vocations, but I’ve never experienced a workplace so welcoming, group-oriented and well-managed. The VEDT focuses on quality delivery, not only for our clients but also for the students who will engage with the courses we create. We endeavour to seek out new, innovative technologies and champion the evaluation of education’s evolution. And everyone in the team loves what they do. The Learning Design team meets fortnightly to discuss best practice for assessment creation, question structure, student-led activities, innovative use of Canvas and module pacing. The Multimedia Design team meets weekly to discuss advancing educational technologies, digital uplift, RMIT branding, Emble (a template creation tool for use in Canvas without the need for coding skills), H5P, and events and exhibitions that inspire their work. The Project Management team is always on the move, communicating best practice and solutions, coordinating activities and staff, and liaising with clientele internal and external to RMIT. Canvas is, quite literally, our canvas. We craft short, fast up-lift projects; full, end-to-end course development; industry-led projects and everything in between. From fully online, to […]
Joining the VEDT as an RMIT student: Caitlin
Caitlin is heading into her second year of the Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University in Melbourne. She has a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education from Curtin University in Western Australia and a Bachelor of Arts from Edith Cowan University. We all remember teachers who assured us in class that we would be “using this in the real world!” but this rarely happens. So, imagine my surprise when, on day one of work with the Vocational Education (VE) Design Team, my colleague handed over the Australian Style Manual and echoed the advice of my copy-editing and proofreading teacher– “this will be your Bible”. So much of what I have learnt at RMIT has been put into practise since joining this fast-paced project team, but I’ve also acquired many new skills including the use of Canvas and SCORM, working to deadlines, and navigating hand-overs between Instructional Designers and Multimedia Designers. Participating in the online review stage of projects put my editing and feedback skills to the test and taught me how essential effective communication is to the outcome of a review. This editing role has given me the confidence to pursue greater assignments and responsibilities. It has […]
