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 […]
What’s in store for 2020?
I love the beginning of a new year. Everything seems fresh. A feeling of relaxation and fun hangs in the air as everyone settles back into work after their summer break. Walking around campus, there is calm and quiet, mixed with signs of preparation for the year ahead. While our team was getting ready to face a new year, I asked for their predictions on the trends we are likely to see in 2020. Here is what they came up with. Personalised learning Personalisation of the learning journey is still on the agenda. At VEDT, we are looking at different streams of interactions and assessments. In 2020, we envisage that students will have more opportunity to choose their own learning pathways through content, and hopefully also through the assessment experience. 3P Learning predict that customised, student-centred and adaptive learning experiences will take centre stage. This involves students being able to select the mediums and lessons based on their interests and needs. The Digital Marketing Institute points out that new tools are deepening the capacity for personalised learning, with artificial intelligence and machine learning offering the ability for content to be responsive and to evolve with the learner. Learning analytics Of […]
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 […]
EduTECH 2019
Early in June I attended the annual EduTECH conference in Sydney where I presented with my brilliant colleague Renee Costa. We showcased our award-winning project that focused on re-thinking the way we educate the next generation of workers within aged care. The project looked at putting students in the workplace and learning within the flow of normal work activities as they completed a Certificate III in Individual Support. This included: personalised, flexible, student-led learning experiences students placed in a work environment for all their studies intensive face-to-face training by an RMIT teacher delivered in the workplace an RMIT teacher on-site in the workplace guidance and support for workplace supervisors who were assisting students micro-credentials to recognise enterprise skills identified by industry digital content to guide and support students in their learning. You can see the slides from this presentation below. Future proofing the next generation of workers PP_EMcKenzie Only two presentations after us, we heard from Charles Jennings who was a co-founder of the 70:20:10 model. This model underpinned much of our thinking in designing our individual support project. Charles’ presentation highlighted the importance of integrating learning into the work flow. The model is underpinned by the premise that: 70 […]
Rapid building a course
Earlier in the year the Vocational Education Design Team (VEDT) were given the challenge to create two courses with an extraordinarily short timeframe of just eight weeks. To meet the challenge, VEDT pulled out a few tricks to get both courses finished on time. To kick things off, VEDT held a short design sprint session which helped to stimulate everyone’s creative ideas. From here, the best ideas were sorted to find ones that could be achieved within the timeframe, and the course content was planned out between VEDT and the Media and Communications School. The Media and Communications School created the assessments while VEDT designed and built the course content. One of the main challenges was to make the courses engaging and interesting for students and not just a content dump into Canvas. To get around this, a simple narrative about a fictional workplace was created to give the student the experience of how the course content might be relevant in a real workplace. The student participates as a character that has started their first day at a small design studio. Wulan the studio manager guides the student through the day and points the student to the policies and procedures […]
