First Impressions Resources - First Press Jul 2010

July 2010

In this issue

Building Retail Capability

Funding Updates from Queensland

Attracting and Retaining Quality Staff

E-Learning Capability Requirement

Wild About Learning

STOP PRESS - Get WELL!

Congratulations to Nicola Rynbeck

Links

Building Retail Capability
Succession Planning

by: Mike Wallace

In this installment from our series of articles based on the retail training package, we will consider the issue of succession planning.

Retail is an industry that is notorious for its high levels of staff turnover, which is attributed to a range of factors, including its profile, working conditions and the perception of retail as a job and not a career.

Succession planning is therefore important for retailers in order to create career pathways as well as a critical element of workforce planning.

By aligning qualifications from the retail training package to positions within the business, the retailer can create a framework that not only achieves these objectives, but also articulates the skills and knowledge that is required to competently fulfill these positions and what is required to achieve these.

Read more

Funding Updates from Queensland

By: Sue Freeman

We have been advised by the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET) of two policy changes that will apply to User Choice funded students from July 1 2010.

These changes will have significant impact on the training costs to employers as follows-

Read more...

Attracting and Retaining Quality Staff

A leading Queensland retail group utilises training as a successful workforce development and retention strategy.

Read the article, published by the The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET).

E-Learning Capability Requirement

By: Dr John Mitchell, published by Campus Review

Do VET practitioners need professional development in e-learning, asks John Mitchell.

E-learning is a contentious arena. One reason is that technology is central to e-learning and technology keeps changing, challenging decision-makers to decide which technologies are the most appropriate. Another reason is the temptation to hope that smart technology will replace teaching skills and no professional development will be required.

All this came to a head several years ago with the axing of the national professional development program for e-learning, LearnScope. Why was it axed? That’s a critical issue. Research I conducted recently showed that VET practitioners across Australia rate e-learning as the area in which they require most professional development, both now and in the future.

Practitioner capability is the critical issue, not technology functionality. And that capability is at risk.

The following case study of the effective use of e-learning demonstrates that educators need to exercise considerable professional judgment in deciding on which technology, or combinations of technology, to use. It also demonstrates that staff capability in the use of technology is pivotal for effective learning.

Over the last few years, success with e-learning has become increasingly commonplace for First Impressions Resources (fir), a private provider in the retail training field, with headquarters in Brisbane and staff spread around every state of Australia.

General manager Michael Wallace explains that one success, funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, was a project with the national retailer Tradelink, involving the development through the Tradelink intranet system of a set of e-learning activities in workplace health and safety, aligned with a certificate IV.

In 2010, another national retailer, Best and Less, approached fir because it wanted to implement the diploma of retail management program for its management team across its large network of stores.

Normally the delivery of this diploma involves managers attending face-to-face sessions in state capitals, said Wallace.

“However this was a problem for regionally based managers, so we suggested running live, facilitated classes online, using the Elluminate platform.

“Best and Less did not have the e-learning technologies in their stores to provide for this, so we agreed that fir would run the two-hour sessions first thing in the morning, from 8 to 10am, to allow managers to participate u sing their home computers, before going to work.”

The fir trainer for this program is based in Sydney and course participants are spread from Townsville and Cairns in Queensland to Warrnambool and Shepparton in Victoria to Broome and Geraldton in Western Australia.

“The program is now over halfway. There has been virtually no drop-out – it looks set to have a very high completion rate.”

To enhance the learning experience, fir uses the Moodle course management system to “provide online support such as discussion groups and a richer learning environment for all”.

Staff with specialist skills.

This success influenced the educational design of a new program for KFC in Queensland, with regional managers participating through Elluminate and supported through Moodle.

fir is using Moodle to facilitate some of the assessment activities, providing online documentation and the facility for participants to upload completed assessment materials and workplace documents.

“We can also include additional resources, such as a podcast from the CEO explaining the company’s strategic plan.

“This delivery method has other advantages, such as the ability to record the online sessions so that absentees can catch up or participants can go through parts again that perhaps they did not quite get the first time.”

As a result of these successes, fir appointed a new instructional designer who is able to design online resources and equipped its trainers with the technologies required for remote delivery. fir is now looking differently at its staff and programs.

“If we have a trainer in one area who might be a little light on for work, we can utilise them in other states if we’re able to use that technology platform, provided they have the skills we need."

“In terms of our capability development, as well as the other sorts of skill sets that our trainers need to have for workplace delivery, we need to have a group of staff who have the specialist skills required to handle the online environment.”

Technology is best used as the servant, not master, of the skilled educator. LearnScope, or another similar national professional development program in e-learning, deserves urgent reconsideration.

Wild About Learning

By: Maxine Cheilyk

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) not only displays and preserves Australia's wildlife and natural heritage, but also provides a structured workplace learning and development program to up-skill their valued staff.