Welcome to the Knowledge Tree Everyone! We've got here with us Alison Gotts who is the Principal Teacher at Tropical North Queensland TAFE... that's right isn't it Alison? So we brought Alison to speak with you because we want to hear about her adventures in e-Learning over the last, probably 10- years more? and specifically about the Diploma in e-Learning that she is running and which is completely online ....

Jo: Yes Is that completely online or?

Alison: Yeah....

Jo: but you didn't started doing completely online did you? You started doing flexible learning using CD rom.... was when you started? Tell us a little bit about your background.

Alison: Well in 1991 I came to TAFE to work on setting up a flexible course to train Aboriginal teachers so they could stay in their communities and not have to came down to TAFE. They'd been trying to train them and it hadn't worked and they'd go home not come back. So we decided we'd tried doing a community based program and we just have a few residentials and we used CD Rom with Authorware. Those were the days! (laughing)

Jo: They must have been because that's..... yeah...... that's a good 13 years ago!!!

Alison: We basically.... the teachers worked as the instructor designers and we have a group who were very good with the computers and they learned the Authorware program and we produced amazing staff for the time when you think about it.

Jo: And you did some CD Roms for Automotive at that time as well, didn't you?

Alison: Yes we transferred the learning to another areas but the money wasn't there, so we focused on looking at supporting teachers who were told to deliver flexibly and that's when I first met you and we did that CBT {Competency Based Training) in Action project.

Jo: Yep. OK. So you did professional development for a few years too, then?

Alison: Oh probably 6 or 7, just working with teachers trying to make their courses flexible and good and that was a real stumbling block to just overcome reams and reams of notes sent to somebody. And then I think in about 1997 we realized... the Internet was just starting.... and we were able to convince our Institute to actually put in a server and have our own 20 computers. We set up the flexible learning network and we had an Electronic Learning Centre and suddenly we had the technology and we realized we could..... it was before Hotmail and...... (laughing)

Jo: Right! OK, that's indicative ..we're all realising how old we are, I think!!

Alison: We were wrestling with how to give our students email addresses and then Hotmail came al and we started thinking we've got to provide some courses that we can use with these tools and we had a lot of flexible students in the IT area so we started with them and I wrote basically wrote the first online course for the Institute in 1998. Presenting Information it was called and it actually stood up really well to Tom Reeves' criteria for a constructivist course, but I didn't know that at the time...We had them design a web site and that was how ...they were IT students .....and they had to learn how to present information and that was what they did.... and that was a challenge for me because I didn't know how to design a website at that time and I think that was probably why my focus was on technical skills at that time because I needed them to created those html pages to get out to students. They were pretty boring pages at the time, too! But that worked and we brought students in once a month and had a workshop with them where they presented their work in progress, the web site they were designing....

Jo:So that was beautiful blended learning!!

Alison: It was.... before they used the word..... and I can remember having students in Atherton and we would link them up. They were on the internet and we had the teleconference phone so they could show their web site we were all looking at the screen of the computer and then talking about it over the speaker phone

Jo:Really good options!

Alison: It was really pressured.... I just remember feeling really stressed out. Technology does that to me at the best of times...

Jo:(laughing).... I don't think you're alone there!!!

Alison: Then we start training people using the web to write courses and we gave them technical skills and then we discovered that we need it to having think a bit more about how to use the discussion forms so we start to developing short professional development courses for facilitating and a lot of people did LearnScope projects which I was involved with and I think the big move from the Safety Pins era to the Systematic era.... was getting a Learning Management System. That was interesting because we had a LearnScope project ..I was actually in Samoa for this section of our development .... They explored 4 different Learning Management Systems to see which one would suit us and they came up with a particular one, which has now given us a framework and we have been available to drop the safety pins and become much more professional in how we deliver our courses and been able to track students and just have the 'big picture'. So then our training moved into teaching teachers how to used the learning management system and then from there I guess we moved on to thinking about giving teachers recognition for all the skills that they were building because we would run a professional development course and people would drop out because they hadn't paid for it, or there was no commitment and there was no recognition, they were doing it on top of everything else...Things were like that.... there was no time and no spare money ...and that's where I thought that we would try and look for accredited courses that we could do and there wasn't really that much around there was a few, you know, interstate ones.... but we wanted something at the TAFE level not the university level and we wanted something which wasn't just facilitation. We wanted something that was a multimedia base as well, but we didn't need gurus of multimedia, but we wanted a balance between that and...

Jo: So that related to the new Training Package?

Alison: Yes we found it in the Business Services Training Package and there were a lot of units of competency there, which we could select what we wanted and once I got my head around the fact that education is a business, and that they like you to contextualize and customize the unit of competency your own environment, I was able to then take it and so .....I really wanted to do (run) a holistic course where you could actually create experiences and projects based in the workplace, where the students could learn through discussion with other people and create stuff which would be meaningful to them

Jo:And in this case the students you're talking about are professional VET (vocational education and training) teachers………..

Alison: Not just VET teachers. What we've found in Queensland, anyway, is that a large number of secondary teachers are moving along the same pathway... they have now got their learning management system in place. They're doing professional development of teachers.

Jo:So you've got a nice mixed within your student cohort of secondary and VET?

Alison: In our ...we've just had our first cohort..... we've got public servants who are trainers in the Department of Families and various places... and we've got TAFE librarians..

Jo:Fantastic.... very important

Alison: And secondary teachers and is interesting how there's a couple of librarians who've become the IT specialist in their school as well, so yes .. secondary....there are teachers, but there are also people with a training background. So we're not teaching them to be teachers, we're not teaching them to be trainers.. we're really encouraging them to reflect on how to transfer their teaching skills to the online environment and ...

Jo: Tell us a little bit about the how you're going to, how you're structuring the course because that is what intrigued me.... the idea of the holistic approach and you know tell us a little bit about....how it would work say if I wanted to enrol.

Alison: Well we would generally, we offer one cluster each semester and we would generally advise you as a beginner to do the multimedia cluster first because the second cluster ...the education cluster involves you having to create your own learning environment. So it's better for you to have the skills to create that environment first. So the projects that you do in multimedia cluster start off as being fairly short and sharp to get the basic skills and then it takes you into exploring how you would design an educational learning site and doing a range of those... but there's no War and Peace production. It's basically a very simple project, taken over the period of the few weeks, to get you comfortable with using the environment.

Jo:Are they working with others to do that?

Alison: And initially it's basically..it's based on the Toolbox forWeb Site Design. We've just taken out the relevant parts and customized that and there is a lot of collaborative activities in that Toolbox and we've found we're using them where we can. and we found that we have reoriented some of them but with sort of ...like there's a chat session each Wednesday night at the moment where they're actually exploring some of those activities together and contributing. Seems as though most of this is the individual starts, reports back comments on other people's stuff so there is not a huge amount of team stuff in there at that point. I see that coming in the second cluster. In the second cluster I've really taken probably a focus on about 5 different areas: with sort of The Learner, Your Organization, The Facilitation Process, The Community and e-Learning itself and the different modes of e-learning and the different types of blend that you can mix and create. Now I see it as having the learner, over a peiod of time, actually taking charge of the environment, because at the end of this they should be confident to be available to go in. So I am sort of hoping they will be threads of collaborative activity on each of those areas through the time, but that gradually, I may start of having the control and set up the activities but then they start to take the design, and management and run the forms and so create the simulations or the role plays, whatever we are going to use... so that's my dream....

Jo: Sounds like ...

Alison: So I do myself out of that job by the end of that semester

Jo: .....that's the old action learning way though isn't it?

Alison: Yes it is!

Jo: When youcome to think of it...

Alison: It is interesting when you are working with people who don't know each other, who are all the way around Australia, and they are all in professional jobs, and they're all pressured, and you want to bring a cohort together and you want them to actually complete something together.... and you've got all these outside pressures so learning..it's going to be a learning experience for both of us... so we start our first education intake next February (2004)

Jo: OK

Alison: And people who didn't want to do the whole Diploma could just do the education clusters if they wanted. We've had negotiations with Central Queensland University and will be possible for people who complete the Diploma to get two units, out of the 6, for a credit transfer into the Masters in Learning Management.

Jo: Gee, that's quite significant! It would have taken a little bit of work wouldn't it?

Alison: No, I have to say the University has been wonderful!

Jo Fantastic! That is great to hear!

Alison: They had a commitment to work in with TAFE also they have a you know Central Queensland comes from Rockhampton initially, so they've got a commitment to remote delivery and students and is an interesting Masters degree because is almost like a Masters by project work so if you are looking doing a Masters in Online I would say: "Come and do the Diploma with us first, get the underpinning skills with TAFE and then your last 4 units can be devised around your own work based project, within your organization where you do make a difference in online or whatever you wanted to do."

Jo: Sounds unbelievable to me!

Alison: And I actually think that is alot cheaper if you do it that way as well because we (VET Providers) charge less than universities. So yes, that's where we are!

Jo: So to contact you about information on that course we need to go to the TAFE website the Tropical North Queensland website or?

Alison: Yes if they go to...

Jo:We can put the link on anyway... .

Alison: Alright! Do you want me to tell you the link?

Jo: Yes! Why not?

Alison: Well it is www.tnqit.tafe.net/elearning (one word)and from that page you click through and it's about ten pages of information and you can even enrol online!!

Jo: OK!

Alison: which blew me away when that actually happened! the great excitement of receiving our first online enrolment in the organization ...it was a landmark!!

Jo: Sounds great!

Alison: Yes online!

Jo: Is there anything else you want to tell us Alison?

Alison: Well no... that is probably all about e-Learning at the moment!

Jo: OK well it's good to have you in the Knowledge Tree and we may follow up maybe in the middle of next year and see how it went. OK? Thank you!

Alison: ..thanks Jo!