Mixing it Up

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• Mixing it Up
• A journey into the electronic frontier
• of workplace and online learning

Bob Thurlow Senior Education Officer Learning
Technologies Unit Western Sydney Institute of TAFE
Tim Smith Head Teacher Information
Technology Western Sydney Institute of TAFE
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Richmond College of TAFE

• Richmond College is one of seven colleges in
  Western Sydney Institute of TAFE that deliver
  mostly face-to-face, on-campus.

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• How Richmond College moved to online learning

In 2006 Richmond College won a contract to
deliver a Help Desk course to employees in their
workplaces. But we didnt have many learning
resources that were suitable for taking to
students in the workplace. So we had to find
ways for face-to-face teachers to take the
learning to the workplace students.
Help Desk courses
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• Our teachers had face-to-face skills, not online
  or multimedia skills.

It was not practical for our teachers to go to
the workplace to teach, and they still had to
teach face-to-face. So we had to find ways to
take the teacher to the student
electronically. We had a few basic video
resources, but our focus was on delivering
learning, not on delivering broadcast-quality
productions.
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• We recorded some simple video clips especially
  for the online students

One part of the course was Operating Systems
Concepts. We had no resources for that part,
but one of our teachers, Michael Reifenstein, was
an expert on the subject. So we made amateur
video clips of interviews with the teacher and
uploaded them to a website for the students.
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Duplicating our teaching was not practical
We didnt have the time or staff to create
regular video clips for online students while
also creating different resources for
face-to-face students. So we used Microsoft
SharePoint as a way of making the same resources
to available to both groups. http//wsitals.tafen
sw.edu.au/sites/RM_INFOTECH/default.aspx
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We used wikis to bring students together
Web-based wikis provided a way for students to
collaborate in developing their own resources
together. But just as importantly for us, wikis
enabled face-to-face and online students to work
together. We had found a practical way to combine
the two groups of students. http//bobthurlow.com.
au/wiki/index.php/Certificate_III_Core_Modules
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Teachers continue to deliver face-to-face and
online concurrently
Nathan, one of our teachers is teaching a class
at Richmond College right now. Were going to
attempt to join the class as in the same way
online students would join in. http//webconf.det.
nsw.edu.au/nathanweb/ And just in case we cant
connect with Nathan, here are some examples that
were recorded by some other teachers http//breez
e.webqem.com/detconnectexamples/
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Teachers used blogs towrite their reflections
We asked the teachers to share their reflections
and feelings about teaching face-to-face and
online students at the same time. http//richmondi
t.com.au/blog
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We surveyed the teachers to find out what they
really thought
We conducted a short survey of our small group of
teachers to see how they felt about teaching both
face-to-face and online at the same time. The
teachers were given this survey to complete only
last Friday, so this data is very
fresh. http//surveymonkey.com
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Conclusions The boundaries will
becomeincreasingly blurred
Face to face students will rely increasingly upon
online resources. An increasing number of
external students will want to study our courses
online. Bringing the two categories of students
together will not be easy, but we have new
technology, new strategies, and our teachers will
need to learn new skills.