On 16 October 2019 the VEDT team was awarded Platinum Winner in two award categories at the LearnX awards, including “Best Talent – Learning Design Team” and “Best Learning Model – Online”. Elissa Mackenzie, Jack Dunstan, Andrew Newhouse, Haley Gunn and Nicky Callinan attended the evening to accept the awards on behalf of the team. VEDT was also recognised as a finalist for “Best Learning & Development Project – Compliance”. LearnX celebrates learning design through industry recognition and conferences. The awards recognise the work of individuals, teams and organisations that delivers positive impacts in learning projects in various industry sectors. Other winners include such major corporations and universities as Victoria Univeristy, Bupa, CSIRO and QBE. The VEDT team had also been awarded Platinum winner for “Best Talent” last year. This year, they shared the award with the RMIT Creds team. It was exciting to see the work of the two teams recognised amongst other large and successful corporations. In particular, it was great to see senior multimedia designer, Nicky Callinan recognised for her original artwork on the ‘Make a Presentation’ unit. The VEDT team have worked hard to produce generic units of competency developed from specific courses to be […]
Interior Design Course Uplift
Several lifetimes ago, when working in a fine wine store surrounded by the great marques of beautiful vineyards, I found it difficult to avoid an attachment to the bottles on the shelves. Labels would take me to 17th century family run vineyards in tiny pockets of France and Italy. “They’re shoes, Jack,” my manager would reinforce to clarify my relationship to them. They were units with a sales margin, and we had to move them to keep the shop running. So, when the VEDT began work on six new units in interior design, I couldn’t help but think of the interiors I had visited – Robin Boyd houses, Marion Mahony Griffin interiors, and afternoons in antique furniture auction houses. Beautiful things, sumptuous and austere. But with the shoes analogy in my head, our team got to work unpicking the units of competency so they’d meet the required VE standards for a compliant delivery. American ‘Shaker’ style interior The VEDT normal approach is assessment-led design, which allows us to inform our content from the assessments, ensuring students don’t miss any content when they’re being assessed. The white-knuckle fear of getting to an assessment question that you have no recollection of covering […]
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 […]
Joining the VEDT as an RMIT student: Riley
Riley is in her first year of a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at RMIT in Melbourne. One of the first things I realised after joining the Vocational Education Design Team (VEDT) was that I didn’t have any corporate clothes. I had to raid my mother’s wardrobe for a nice blazer, and spent that weekend shopping for anything remotely presentable in a corporate environment. My mum keeps referring to this as ‘proper job’, and perhaps in comparison to my previous positions in customer service it is. I’m earning double what I used to – without suffering the torture of fast food customers – and getting discounts on coffee! Working at RMIT is like watching how a movie gets made. It’s insider access that feels weird and slightly out of place, and has completely turned my perspective of higher education upside down. Since starting my position as a student course builder, I’ve glimpsed into the admin-laden process of how each course is built. The constant emails back and forth, questions posed in forums and tid-bit advice on grammar that seems too complicated and therefore easier just to ignore. As an RMIT student I use Canvas a lot, and I’ve taken for granted the […]
Joining the VEDT as an RMIT student: Jaydene
Jaydene has recently graduated from a Bachelor of Media and Communications from Swinburne University and is in her first semester of an Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing with RMIT University. I worked in corporate roles before returning to study, so it has been a refreshing experience joining the VEDT team and RMIT more broadly. It has been a learning curve, but the team has been so welcoming and always manage to have a laugh and a bit of fun. I’ve had the opportunity to edit some units for the Plumbing project we are working on, getting the chance to flex my developing editing muscles – which is perfect for my study! Lifting the veil on Canvas has been eye opening. I have been using the system for the last couple of years but had never given much thought to how much work goes into creating content for the units. Not only to comply with all the necessary regulations, but also to look impressive and be user friendly for the diverse cohort of students who will be using them. It has been especially interesting learning about the online accessibility requirements that the VEDT team takes pride in, ensuring that […]
Think Tank Series – Practical and sustainable technology solutions
Technological advancements continue to change the way students think, feel and interact with their education. Learning institutions must adapt to continue to engage with their students. Finding the right solution, however, isn’t always easy. Implementation can be costly, and with educational and technological trends evolving at such a rapid rate, is it possible to ensure long-term sustainability? In our latest bi-monthly VE design Think Tank series on July 25, we asked our expert panellists to tackle this question and more. “How can we achieve practical and sustainable technology solutions in VET, industry and skills training?” Our first speaker, Lindsay Rattray is the Associate Director of Learning Systems, Technologies and Innovation at Navitas and part-time DJ. He likens the implementation of a new learning system to the art of spinning records. First, a record must be selected. This is the planning phase. Before choosing a technology solution, the education provider must ask themselves several key questions: Are the tools open source? Are plug-ins well maintained? Are the features commonly used? Does the feature engage learners? Once the record has been selected, it’s time to set the stage – also known as the ‘preparing to use’ phase. Here, several more questions […]
Walled gardens and open eco-systems: Mitch Benson from Canvas visits RMIT
When you are speaking to an audience at a University or TAFE and you bring up the “glacial pace of change in the academic sector”, you know you are in for a frank discussion. Overlay this with the speed that RMIT University adopted a new LMS – nine months and the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) for those playing at home – and it’s almost deliberately provocative. Hold onto your keyboards. With a focus on preparedness for study and work, Mitch presented some stats that I’d like to unpack and discuss; they had research that teachers felt 96% of students were not prepared for study, and 92% of employers felt the graduates entering the workforce were not prepared for work. This seemed quite skewed to the US and higher education, as I believe the vocational education sector has better work preparedness, but I also know that it can be better. As Mitch noted, the key is that their research encourages a discussion about why and how we do what we do, and prompts us to focus on how we can achieve better student and industry outcomes. Another key point I took away, and one that is often missing in the […]
Adobe XD Awards at the Capitol Theatre
On 17 June 2019, the Vocational Education Design Team’s (VEDT) Multimedia team (consisting of Jack Dunstan, Nicky Callinan, Claire Tao, Oliver Lorraine-Wedd) attended RMIT’s Adobe XD Awards at the newly re-furnished Capitol Theatre on Swanston street. The following is a podcast by the multimedia team reflecting on the event, the beautiful heritage building and the showcase of student work. Click here to download the podcast […]
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 […]
Articulate Rise vs Adobe Captivate
Branching scenario Scenario-based learning provides an engaging learning experience. Students get real content and position themselves into the storyline, becoming emotionally engaged with the content. Luckily both Articulate Rise and Adobe Captivate have branching scenario features that help designers and developers build branching scenarios a lot easier. Articulate Rise: Users can choose the character from the character library and scenario background images. Able to set up track completion without a quiz set up. The downside is that all characters are photography-based, and there isn’t an option to upload your own photos/illustrations to use as characters. The limitations of characters, facial expressions, and poses might become a disadvantage for designing branching scenario activities. Captivate: You can choose scenario characters from Captivate assets library, and the royalty-free assets store has over 100 characters to choose from. The character store also includes different visual style characters, e.g. photo-realistic drawings, cartoon illustration characters and cut out photos. Also, you can find the same character in a different pose, photo angle, facial expression, outfit and hairstyle. If you like, you can also upload a specific photo or illustration as the branching scenario character. However, to choose a character, you need to download the image first, […]
