The document summarizes discussions from the 2007 VET Pedagogy leadership team about expanding e-learning opportunities in vocational education. The team explored topics like emerging e-learning practices, assessing skills through e-portfolios, generational differences, and supporting remote communities through technology. Members found that the discussions challenged their ideas, contributed new understandings, and strengthened their philosophies around lifelong learning and the links between recognition of prior learning and teaching.

1. The VETPEDAGOGY Team Effect on me! Kathie Warren 2007 Alicia Lud Robyn Alex and many contacts with others Terrie Joy

3. My ideas and understandings were: challenged contributed changed contradicted considered And all this as a result of COMMUNICATION

5. Pedagogy – in the VET sector VET's real (ie. potentially most useful) role in a community based e-learning model. Our jobs (and certainly NOT our lives!!) do not usually fit neatly into a VET qualification. Employers seek capabilities that are far more difficult to capture/assess than the VET sector would like. Many teachers are questioning the (e-learning) guidelines laid down by the institutions they (we) work in. We need more “radical” educators – developing/ demonstrating benefits of e-learning.

6. Assessment / RPL / E-portfolios As difficult as it is, I'm a big believer in students having to prove who did the work. I think we will see more and more scandals involving false identities in the gaining of qualifications from HSC upward. It seems to me that we have too many issues within our teaching and learning frameworks that are not necessarily supportive of each other. For example am I in the position I am in to: - Help people learn - Help people gain a qualification - Make enough money to provide for my family etc. … one thing it DOES do is affirm skills and knowledge. … I think we are very bad at recognising and acknowledging our own strengths. … we are trialling the "competency navigator" which is really a database of competencies … my gut reaction is that through a interview with the client, an assessor who is familiar with competency standards can probably just as quickly build a profile of a client's skills . The pendulum seems to have swung towards the pedantic gathering of detailed evidence and miles of signed pieces of paper .. perhaps its time for the pendulum to swing back to more holistic and common sense approaches.

7. Generational tags and pedagogy I totally and emphatically disagree with the need to factor difference as a starting point to build curriculum and I liken the use of such tactics to be nothing less than an extension of the oppression that is inculcated with teacher training and continued indifference of educators who coin it to describe difference. I am just SO OVER this Gen X/ Gen Y thing. So what do you think about the notion of Gen C? Instead of focusing on age it focuses on mindset… Gen C make their own content. Gen C form strong communities, and care about communication. They want to be connected. Gen C take on broadcast media on their own terms: They get involved, and are happy to make their own celebrities. Gen C control their own lives; they’re happy with complexity and continuous partial attention. Gen C work and live creativity: they work in creative industries, don’t look down on making and crafting, and want to adapt mass market products in acts of co-creation.[ Creative Generalist ]

8. Remote areas - e-learning Broadband internet access, satellite access, phone access ..... Now...we've just got to find enough jobs in remote communities so that people can stay there and make use of all these services....and, we've got to upskill staff to be able to use it to create effective learning spaces....hmmm, where do we start...? E-portfolios Yet again we seem to be scrambling to fit our practice around what we are told is coming. Yet again a lot of what is happening is being driven by policy w/o due consideration for individuals or good practice .

9. QUESTIONS Who were your radicals (teachers)? Do you get the same feedback as an Educator and why not? Should we be directing our attention far more to capturing, mapping and recognising the capabilities that individuals possess via a brokerage recognition model? How do we get around the requirements to demonstrate completion of full qualifications in a world where people require a packaged suite of Units? How do we support community members to capture that evidence? via some form of e-portfolio? RPL, on the whole, seems to have failed badly as a core component of VET practice. Why? What makes it work? What models have you seen to support its effective implementation and how could technology support that?

10. One of the things that I enjoy from the pedagogical discussions we have is that the links that exist between RPL, teaching and learning , lifelong learning, etc. become longer and more embedded in our philosophies of life. (It’s) not just about our jobs and the educational theories that support them. Lud This is from one of our team members - Lud Allen. I think his summary expresses my experience of this VET Pedagogy team journey.

11. Team websites wiki http://nswlearnscope.com/wiki/index.php/VET_Pedagogy blog http://vetpedagogy.blogspot.com (audio) e-portfolios These are only a few of the topics we’ve researched and discussed. (for the full discussions see the links above) I have learned more technical skills; focused on a number of e-learning issues important to my work; made new contacts (friends) in the e-learning world; “discovered” e-learning in areas not familiar to me; and have generally “upgraded” my ability to work as an ICT support teacher/mentor. Thank you VET Pedagogy Team! THE END