The VE design team were given an important task recently; to create 3 stand-alone skill sets to train industry workers. People working in retail, food handling and transport & logistics, can be trained on compliance policies and procedures to help stop the spread of COVID-19. An existing Basecomp unit (HLTINF001 – Comply with infection control policies and procedures) was used as a foundation. Basecomps were created by the VE design team as courses that can be contextualised and edited to be used across multiple programs. I’m going to recap how the team used this foundation and turned it into 3 stand-alone online and contextualised skill sets. Scope for the project: Skill sets must be contextualised to the industry Skill sets must be assessed online and in the workplace Skills sets contain the unit of competency HLTINFCOV001 and must include relevant information on COVID-19 and how to play an active-roll in decreasing the spread of the coronavirus Must be completed within 3 weeks. Assessment lead design As always, we started with assessment lead design. The assessments within the existing Basecomp unit called for ‘in-class activities’ with infection control procedures that would not be required for these industry workers. The practical assessments […]
Semester 2 course uplift: Getting support for the transformation of VE courses to flexible delivery
With the closure of RMIT campuses due to Covid-19 restrictions in March, there was a massive push to quickly move courses online for remote delivery to students situated overseas, interstate, and locally. This was a huge undertaking for teachers and program managers to merge synchronous (e.g., real-time online lectures) and asynchronous (e.g., activities students could complete on their own time) learning and teaching methods in a very short amount of time. As part of this rapid transition, the VE design team worked in coordination with Studios and other departments to support teachers by providing them with the information they needed to get their content and assessments up on Canvas. This included helping teachers to set–up and host online lectures/tutorials, uploading a variety of learning materials, and devise work-around solutions for previously taught face-to-face learning activities, demos, and labs. The VE Essentials and Flexible Delivery websites were created as starting reference points for teachers looking for teaching, tech, and tool resources. Additionally, training and PD sessions were offered, and teachers were encouraged to ask questions and share their experiences through Yammer, online chats, emails, one-on-one phone/video calls, and online drop-in sessions. With the closure of campuses extending from weeks to months to possibly the rest of 2020, a QC Framework review of all VE Semester 1 courses was conducted at the end of April. Courses were evaluated across seven dimensions: clarity of instructions given to students in Canvas presentation and accessibility to the course content (e.g., online lectures, recordings, and PowerPoint slides) type of learning materials available (e.g., embedded or link-outs to library or external resources) use of learning activities for students to practice developing skills and knowledge teacher contact and availability details student engagement and collaboration through regular […]
We built a hospital!
We built a hospital! Well sort of. We built a simulation of a fictional hospital called Bagwan Health. Bagwan is a Woiwurrung/Boonwurrung word which means ‘life’. The virtual hospital consists of a realistic staff intranet and a virtual tour of the hospital. How did it get started? Simulation of a workplace environment is often required for workplace training and assessment. Many courses create scenarios to simulate workplace environments, but they often lack the realistic connections with a workplace to meet auditing and assessment. The Vocational Education Design Team (VEDT) had investigated some examples of virtual workplaces to meet the requirements for course content, however they were not scalable and shareable across units, schools and courses. That is when the idea of creating a fictional health care facility came about by Elissa McKenzie and Jack Dunstan as a way to provide a broad range of services delivered by qualified staff whose competencies match with RMIT’s educational delivery model. In April 2019 Elissa and Jack successfully pitched the project entitled The Virtual Workplace at the RMIT Education Innovation Pitch Tank. The successful pitch gained access to $50,000 to fund the project. How was the virtual hospital created? A co-design approach was taken […]
How might learning design promote innovation?
On the 23rd January, Janet McHardy, Sinead Murphy and I headed to Academy Xi to listen, learn and discuss, prompted by the question ‘how might learning design promote innovation?’ The session was facilitated by Zoe Fitzgerald and included presentations from Frank Guzman, General Manager of Academy Xi and Simon Kavanagh, International Manager of Kaos. After an entertaining warm-up activity, Guzman pointed to the learning design approach used at Academy Xi and his thoughts on learning design that promotes innovation. Guzman reminded us that tools and theory were only a small part of the equation. These are constantly changing. Rather, the focus should be on the mindset to understand why we use tools or processes. Understanding the ‘why’ behind the ‘doing’. Understanding why enables problem solving. We don’t always know what the solution will be but working through the problem is an important step. A key part of this is looking at how people navigate ambiguity. Some may be a little resistant and want to focus on technology and processes, however it is up to our educators to provide evidence to convince them that just learning the technological skills is not the driver. Kavanagh opened his presentation with the quote: “Life […]
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 […]
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 […]
