Workplace Learning: lessons learned from four sessions
The great variety of workplace learning undertaken by TAFE NSW ranges from relatively small-scale shifts – where classroom delivery for apprentices gives way to workplace assessment – to large scale partnership arrangements with an employer wanting workplace training for up to 3,000 staff. Nonetheless, certain messages emerged as constants.
In her keynote address, Marie Persson, Deputy Director-General TAFE and Community Education, indicated the challenging requirements for TAFE’s role in workplace learning when she said:
“TAFE’s response will need to incorporate a wide repertoire of alternatives, not just RPL and new technologies, but the modularisation of services. And I’m not just talking about units of competencies and skill sets. I’m talking about high-end and
low-end service options that can be customised and packaged to suit client types, client sites, timing and modes – both inside and outside of Training Packages. One size, one service type and one type of training will not fit all”.
This “wide repertoire of alternatives” was demonstrated in presentations over the five sessions of the conference I attended. These ranged from initiatives at Nepean College to deliver on-the-job training and assessment to meat retailing and baking apprentices, to a state-wide project, in partnership with Country Energy, involving the skill enhancement of over 2000 staff. The diversity of these initiatives was striking, but even so there were messages they held in common.
While the scale of operation may have changed the methods used, the importance of building relationships with employers and industry was a constant theme. This may mean building a one-to-one relationship of trust between the teacher and the workplace mentor, as was the case with teachers working with apprentices, or creating linkages at all levels of a partnership, from the CEOs to teachers and workplace mentors, as in the Country Energy partnership. Marilyn Enders’ presentation, Communicating the ‘E’ in TAFE industry training, drew on both her extensive experience and research to reinforce the conclusion that:
“A training program in itself is not enough for a successful outcome. A dynamic communications strategy is needed to bring the program together and address the issues arising from the stresses of that process.”
Presenters also reminded us that the basic psychological truths about learning do not change simply because the context or mode of delivery changes. Interaction amongst students and teachers remains a key to student engagement in learning. Representatives from Nepean’s IT section described the range of strategies which they have been trialing to engage online students in dialogue with other students, including students doing the same course in the classroom. Also from Nepean college, the Meat Retail and Baking teachers appreciate the opportunity to build rapport with apprentices when they visit them in the workplace, and feel that this has resulted in better results and increased student retention.
Another positive picture emerged in the recognition of the strengths which TAFE teachers have to offer industry in the development of learning programs. Whether it be introducing local employers to new techniques in baking, or mapping the skill sets of whole enterprises to national competency standards, TAFE teachers bring a depth of understanding, of both competency based training and pedagogy that can make an important contribution to skill development in industry.
Nonetheless, there was also common agreement that workplace learning demands a new set of skills in teachers, requiring continuous learning and innovation. There is no doubt that moving to workplace learning is not easy, but teachers reflecting on the experience responded from the strongly positive, “It has revitalised the section”, to a more tempered recognition that, while challenging, new ways of working are needed to meet the steadily changing demands of students and industry. It was also recognised that in large projects, no individual can be expected to combine all the skills required. Both Marilyn Enders’ presentation, and the presentation on corporate relationship building, recognised the need for support by a team that can bring together the diverse skills needed to manage a large-scale partnership.
Questions of the strategies needed to build “our professional connectivity, currency and credibility in the changing VET climate” were the subject of a workshop with Kevin Heys from the TAFE NSW Managers Association. This is an issue that will continue to occupy TAFE teachers and managers facing the continuing need to “reinvent themselves” for changing times.