Margot McNeill E-Learning Senior Project Officer Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) 02 9715 8633 margot.mcneill@tafensw.edu.au Nominating Organisation:Open Training & Education Network (OTEN)
	Current Perspective I'm fascinated by the opportunities offered to us and our students by flexibility - the tools to assess their needs, encourage high expectations and engage them (and us) as lifelong learners....

Reports, Papers and Publications

~ Presentation and audio (MP3, 4.22MB), Personalised Learning: Improving Student Outcomes, December 2004.
~ Final Report December 2003 (PDF, 171KB)
~ NSW Showcase Presentation 28 November 2003 (PDF, 830KB)
~ Progress Report September 2003 (PDF, 372KB)
~ Postcard: On the road with Margot McNeill, 7 July 2003

Implications

Funding research into online assessment has enabled OTEN to offer faster, more comprehensive feedback to students, and streamline processes around assessment.

Updates

My FLL enabled me to establish networks which have been invaluable in my current role. Investigating national models of personalised learning has been much easier with a base of practitioners on which to call!

Professional Development Goal

My goal is to investigate online assessment for sustainable use in flexible delivery.  Specifically I will examine the design, classification, validation and reuse of assessment items and the systems and processes required to maintain and deliver them. As a leading provider of distance education with responsibilities for both delivery and resource development, OTEN is well positioned to explore these issues for the benefit of many others in the wider VET sector.

Summary of Learning

Summary of Progress Report

My project involves investigating how assessment technologies might be combined to produce an integrated model for sustainable use in a distance education context. So far, I have spent most of my time conducting an extensive review of what other institutes and practitioners are doing, and analysing the current literature.

On reflection, as I began my research, I suspected there were many ideas about what online assessment meant, and many different approaches to its implementation. This has been confirmed by my findings so far. Many institutions are trialing different solutions, and useful tools have been developed. One example is WestOne’s Assessment Generator, which provides a template for constructing assessment tools linked to elements and performance criteria from current Training Packages. Nola Campbell at Waikato University and Jan Herrington of Edith Cowan have each developed comprehensive teaching and learning programs, where authentic assessment is ongoing throughout the online learning environment.

The Flexible Learning leader program has been a great opportunity to investigate these innovations, and to establish an invaluable network. My next step is to analyse these findings to come up with some recommendations for OTEN, in our specific DE context.

The Future

Key priorities for flexible learning over the next 2 – 5 years include:

• Initiatives that are scalable and sustainable, and strategically focussed
• Diagnosis of what learners and other stakeholders want from flexible learning. The current Future Directions project and Applied Research are examples.
• Increased collaboration between institutes and individuals, to share resources and expertise
• An increased focus on professional development to increase the capacity of teachers and other VET professional to deliver flexible learning, for example LearnScope
  

Updated: 31 March, 2005