A new project is giving remote and disadvantaged learners the opportunity to develop the skills to learn online and work in the digital age.

By giving them the skills for learning in the digital age, participants will be able to access future training more readily through digital media, allowing them to overcome the disadvantages of geographical isolation and its limitations on availability of face-to-face training.

“The four-week course will take place online using a virtual classroom as the main platform for introducing tools and skills,” says project manager Jo Hart from C.Y. O’Connor Institute.

“Small guided tasks and activities, with facilitator support, will enable students to build independent skills,” says Hart.

Completion of the learning units will evidence literacy, enabling participants to progress into vocational courses.

The project is targeted at geographically isolated learners in Western Australia, particularly Indigenous Australians, women, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and those who are socio-economically disadvantaged.

These target groups often lack the digital literacy and foundation skills for the workplace of the future and to study successfully online to gain the qualifications needed to enter the workforce.

Online learning also has the potential to re-engage learners who may have had negative experiences of face-to-face learning delivery, as is often the case with disadvantaged learners.

“Importantly, the structured, intensive nature of the course is designed to support learners to develop a study habit that will continue into further self-paced online learning,” says Hart.

It has been made possible through funding from the National VET E-learning Strategy, whose Partnerships for Participation program offers opportunities, through targeted funding, to develop e-learning approaches to improve the e-literacy, foundation skills and pre-vocational skills of individuals experiencing disadvantage.

With four campuses across the central Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, C.Y. O’Connor Institute specialises in a range of training delivery methods, including face-to-face, flexible and online delivery. These innovative delivery methods have removed many of the barriers the community has traditionally experienced when accessing education and training.

The National VET E-learning Strategy is the responsibility of the Flexible Learning Advisory Group (FLAG), a key policy advisory group on national directions and priorities for information and communication technologies in the VET sector.

“The new technological environment is providing unprecedented access to more accessible training and learning opportunities,” says FLAG Chair Raymond Garrand, Chief Executive of the South Australian Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology.

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