Context

Charles Darwin University is a dual-sector institution offering study programs in both vocational education and higher education. There is a desire to grow our offerings online in vocational education and we are exploring systems and opportunities to help achieve this.

Barry is a TAFE Lecturer, working with students enrolled in a blended study program he has Internal and External Students enrolled simultaneously into an online course. Barry and his students are new to working in the LMS and both have low digital literacy and while Barry is keen to try this out, he is still a bit nervous.

The course is highly skills-based and requires options for direct observation of the students performing the job tasks in real time combined with a check list of observable behaviours that an assessor in Barry’s team can mark off, add comments, and record answers to any oral questions.

For each of these three activities; 1. Direct observation check list; 2. Assessor commentary and 3. Oral questions, there needs to be a text-based grade result recorded against each student. For example – Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, or Successful, Unsuccessful.

Additionally, the course requires a workplace supervisor to be able to provide a report on the student’s behaviour in their workplace and the ability to add this to the LMS. All this evidence needs to be collated and available to Barry in the one place so that he can assess the students satisfactory progress through the course.

In this scenario students are typically apprentices on a three-year study plan where they alternate between focussed training in a block release from the workplace combined with (on-site) workplace related training.

Currently collaboration options with the student’s workplace is limited and a shared learning space that multiple agents can access would benefit the overall experience.