Beyond the pandemic: the use of online delivery in VET
Authors:
Tabatha Griffin and Upekha Andrahannadi
NCVER
Theme: Practice
Presentation:
The vocational education and training (VET) sector’s ability to shift training online was pivotal in the quest to minimise disruption to students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation will provide an overview of how registered training organisations (RTOs) adapted to the rapid shift in training and will discuss how this experience has shaped the subsequent use of online delivery in VET beyond the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic created new and unprecedented challenges for the VET sector in Australia. The experiences of RTOs in responding to the pandemic, and how the pandemic may have influenced future training delivery to VET students, was explored in a survey of RTOs, jointly administered by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and NCVER. The large shift to online delivery created an opportunity for many training providers to consider increasing their use of this delivery mode, including through blended delivery. Indeed, subsequent data showed that the use of online delivery (including in a blended mode) remained higher than it was pre-pandemic.
Effective online delivery is different to face-to-face delivery and requires different strategies to engage and support students. While there may not have been much opportunity to focus on optimising these elements at the height of the pandemic, a more considered approach to online delivery has occurred since then.
This presentation will show how, for some RTOs, the pandemic accelerated pre-pandemic plans to begin (or increase) online training delivery and will cover how certain qualifications transitioned well to the online environment while others were more challenging. Further, an examination of the teaching practices in the online environment and how student support is being provided to online students will be explored.