Western Australia – News from the Western Branch!

Christine Bateman supplies a snapshot of just some of the many exciting developments in WA in the last year.

In all the education sectors and in the wider community, a range of information and communication technologies are being used creatively to do things better.

February 2003 saw the creation of the Office of E-Government. This Office, similar in many ways to the National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE), is to help transform the operations of Government, using technology as a tool, to improve efficiency and service to the people of Western Australia. http://www.egov.dpc.wa.gov.au/

Connectivity: A working party undertook a review of the state telecommunications infrastructure and work is now being done to improve the roll-out of top-quality broadband infrastructure across WA. Without good connections, the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a teaching tool will never be realised! For more information, check out Enabling a Connected Community: Developing Broadband Infrastructure and Services in Metropolitan Western Australia.

Connected Communities: It's a government priority to support all aspects of community development. In May 2003, the first participants signed up to the Connected Communities project that will explore ways that ICT can be used to help communities become stronger and more resilient. To support this, small towns and remote communities across WA are being offered publicly accessible Internet facilities known as Telecentre Access Points (TAPs). Rural and remote areas are encouraged to 'TAP' into the Internet.

Community Education: A special training program, First Click has been developed to assist community groups to develop their ICT skills. This program is available online to individuals. Community groups can also access funding from the Department of Education and Training to run training sessions, at times and places convenient to the group.

Creativity: The Metropolitan Cemeteries Board are realising the potential of ICT to provide a better service. On requested, the Board can webcast a funeral service held in Perth. to family and friends in any part of the world. All the details are available from this article on the Ecommerce Centre.

e-Court Communication: The largest trial ever to be heard in the Western Australian Supreme Court is providing a hint of the environment of the e-justice system of the future.

The court has been refurbished with the technology including desktops, servers, networks, firewalls and other audiovisual technology. An easy-to-use touch screen controls all aspects of audiovisual technology from the associate's desk in the courtroom. Master control can be easily passed to counsel or the judge, as the need arises.

Judge, counsel bench and associates all have PCs, which are on a Windows network, but the judge is on a separate network through which parties can access the courtbook via the "extranet" that operates beyond the courtroom. As he/she goes through the case, the judge can bookmark evidence or documentation that links into judicial processing systems for the typing of the final decision.

One of the legal parties estimated that producing the courtbook electronically saves more than $600,000 in reproduction costs. Videoconferencing will be used to bring witnesses into the courtroom from anywhere in the world, as though they are addressing the court. Witnesses needing an update on the trial's progress can access an electronic transcript of each day's proceedings, all digitally converted to data in the courtroom and loaded onto the databases. Read E-trial ushers in judgement day for IT for further information.

What's happening in the schools, vocational education and training (VET) and university sectors in WA.

Perhaps the most significant event for the VET sector here in Western Australia has been the amalgamation with the Education Department to form the WA Department of Education and Training.

As with all amalgamations, it takes some time for the finer details to be worked out. One of the priorities for the new Department, however is to improve articulation and partnerships between VET and the universities. This, together with the amalgamation of VET and education, will significantly strengthen the capacity of the public education system to meet the requirements of the knowledge economy.

While the Australian Flexible Learning Framework has guided much of the activity within the VET sector, schools and universities have been responding to the challenges of preparing their graduates for the knowledge economy in their own ways.

The Schools Sector

The School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE ), established in 1918, is the centre for distance learning for Kindergarten (K) to Year 12 within the Department of Education and Training. While the courses were initially provided by correspondence lessons, students were later able to tune into school radio broadcasts and by 1959, teachers were able to use the Royal Flying Doctors Service's two-way radio network to interact with their classes. The school now uses a wide range of communication systems to increase the interaction between student and teacher. You can find out more at: www.side.wa.edu.au

Sevenoaks Senior College provides another view of flexible learning opportunities for senior school students in WA. It is a senior college for Year 11 and 12 students and uses all the advantages of technology to give students a range of choices when learning at the school or in the workplace. At Sevenoaks, all Year 11 courses and most of Year 12 courses are online.

The College has embedded ICT into the curriculum, so students are able to work on their learning programs either at school, while working on community-based activities or during work placement. The college is open from 8.00am – 5.00pm and students have individual learning programs mapped out in collaboration with teaching staff and their parents. The curriculum is underpinned by a constructivist learning model in which students and teachers take part in electronic discussion groups and forums to share information and ideas and help each other with problem-solving.

For more information about Sevenoaks see: www.sevenoaks.wa.edu.au

Around the WA Universities

To provide more flexible, learning-centred education, Curtin University of Technology www.curtin.edu.au, through its Online Learning Development Project, has been developing a university-wide strategy to accelerate the growth of online learning. To support this move, Curtin invited Dr Tony Bates, Director, Distance Education and Technology, University of British Columbia to help the university clarify is intentions and needs with regard to flexible learning in general and online learning in particular.

The university is also working on a project, Standards for Online Teaching (SOLT) to identify the generic criteria for Curtin online teaching sites and to provide guidance for staff intending to develop material.

An example of how Curtin uses interactive online technologies can be found in its Department of Spatial Science at http://www.cage.curtin.edu.au/leap/virtualOnlineLearning.html

At the University of Western Australia (UWA), flexible learning is based on the constructivist approach to encourage greater student responsibility for learning. While flexible teaching and learning is often linked with the sheer pace of technological change and is often linked with technologies and computers, at UWA the emphasis is on using technology to do what it does best, to free people to do what they do best.

For more information on flexible learning at UWA see the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning www.calt.uaw.edu.au/ for more details.

Murdoch University formerly delivered learning materials in three different modes: internal, external and online. The university has recently adopted a new approach to flexible learning and teaching that is based on access rather than on delivery. This is achieved by embedding flexibility within a new unit model which allows all students in a unit, whether they are enrolled internally or externally, or located on or off campus, to access a single coherent unit package that includes print, online, and face-to-face elements, in the manner that best suits their needs.

Commencing January 2004, all units will have an online component and increasingly, streaming audio recordings of face-to-face teaching will become available online.

For further details refer to:

http://www.murdoch.edu.au/admin/cttees/flic/

Edith Cowan University, like the previous ones, has a commitment to pursuing flexible, student-centred approaches to learning. According to the university's Teaching and Learning Management Plan, Edith Cowan University, like Murdoch, is planning to move away from distinguishing between internal and external students by ensuring every unit and course in the future will have components that can be accessed away from campus. In addition, a Student Portal is available 24/7 which will allow students to:

•  apply for admission

•  enrol

•  pay fees

•  access records

•  schedule appointments with advisors, counsellors or tutors

More information is available at: www.ecu.edu.au

The Vocational Education and Training (VET) Sector

If you haven't yet got a copy of the Flexible Learning Strategy, it can be downloaded from www.training.wa.gov.au/flexible. The WA Flexible Learning Strategy encourages all training providers, including private, community and public organizations, to consider carefully the needs of their learners and to develop innovative ways of using ICT in their programs. This year's Flexible Learning Leaders, will present the outcomes of their scholarship in December, including one from a private registered training organization (RTO).

The following few stories describe what is happening in WA TAFE.

VET students build a community website

Students in a multimedia course at West Coast College of TAFE are developing a community website, wanneroo.com, as part of their course. The site was established a few months ago after the domain name was purchased from a 20 year old student living in China.

Wanneroo.com is part of a strategy to help generate paying work for course graduates by building bridges to the local community. Essentially, the site has been developed into an online community news site after research into online community news sites in the USA was found to be a growth area. The development of the wanneroo.com web site is continuing, and the students are exploring ways to expand their site.

Students in the course are connecting with other community organizations. Community events are promoted free.

The regional web directory, which is integrated into the Wanneroo.com web site, is also accessible via www.perthfavourites.com .

Communication and strategic planning using ICT

"If the leaders don't play there is no game.” That was the comment that triggered a LearnScope project at Central TAFE that engaged the entire management team in the Health, Community and Academic Division in a series of email games. While this project was initially designed to introduce the management team to the potential of e-games as learning tools, the team saw the value of the e-games for corporate communication and planning activities.

Using the Reusable Asynchronous Multiplayer Experiential Strategies (RAMES) model developed by Marie Jasinski, the project involved a series of moderated e-games focussed around strategic and operational issues. It gave the management team the opportunity to generate issues and develop solutions using the e-learning environment.

The RAMES way is being adopted throughout the college as it allows management, students and all staff to have their say about important issues in a concise way, and to develop and own solutions that are implemented.

This type of information sharing and problem solving tool is also being used within the classroom as a learning strategy to come up with issues and solutions at a range of management meetings, give students the opportunity to have an input to issues that concern them. (It doesn't have to be online to be flexible!)

For more information contact Debi Spencer-Smith spendc@mtlwly.training.wa.gov.au

The Gascoyne approach to flexible learning

It is always a challenge for remote and rural RTOs to run courses with small numbers of students yet still be within budget. Using her time creatively, Yvonne Ellis of the Carnarvon Campus, Central West College of TAFE is able to facilitate the learning of 70 isolated students studying 9 different courses across a catchment area that extends across the sparsely populated Murchison and Gascoyne regions of WA.

Yvonne has met with her students in the bar of the Pot Shot Inn in Exmouth, on the beach at Coral Bay and on board the Whale Watching boats operating from Carnarvon. By being flexible herself and understanding the different needs of her students, Yvonne has tailored her schedule to provide the same level of support for remote learners as for those in Carnarvon. Students can enrol in Yvonne's courses at any time. Once enrolled, Yvonne visits each student and provides a package of learning material. The face-to-face meeting is in fact a private, customised tutorial. Further follow-up activities take place online.

If you want more information, contact Yvonne directly on ellisy@training.carnarvon.wa.gov.au