Lounge

Dear Jelo - I would like to pass on some of your sentiments to my students. However, being online students studying remotely throughout a land that is one-quarter the size of the USA, I would need to modify your thoughts somewhat to address their circumstances.

For a start, vocational education and training in Australia doesn't hand out grades: students are assessed as competent or not yet competent in each Unit of Study. When they have achieved a dozen or so competent results, they have earned their qualification. Our Educators implement a series of formative assessments to help students make progress; and then there are sumative assessments where students demonstrate their application of knowledge and skills to relevant projects.

eLearning for remote students requires a disposition for self-directed learning and disciplined study skills from the word "Go!". They don't have the scaffolding of a learning institution and collegiate support. Thanks to Moodle we can simulate many of the good features of a classroom community.

Issues for our online students (doing higher education but not university) are largely generic: reading, writing, listening and talking - and I must not forget about their thinking and researching skills. We deliver endorsed content; but I think that our main challenge is to devise transformative processes so that our students gain strength and resilience in lifelong learning.