E-learning in Community Services

New funding will help community services make a strategic shift to embed e-learning as part of an industry-wide workforce development strategy.The sector is currently struggling to recruit and retain appropriately skilled staff, with increased complexity and new policy incentives meaning that organisations need staff with increased expertise, faster.

Issues such as time, funding (particularly when travel is involved), distance and the dispersed nature of community service organisations provide significant barriers to training.

Community housing through the NSW Federation of Housing Associations; and child, youth and family services through the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare are two industry sectors looking to use the national training system's e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s (Framework) Industry Integration of E-learning funding to solve these problems.Partnering with registered training organisations, these peak bodies will look to develop multiple year plans to integrate e-learning into overall workforce development. A specific focus for both industry sectors is to develop the skills of middle managers, who require urgent assistance transitioning from direct service delivery roles to management roles.

The industry sectors will use activities such as:

developing capacity by training e-learning champions, preparing e-learning good practice guides and checklists, and providing ongoing e-learning support
producing and trialling e-learning resources which can be rolled out on a wide scale
trialling e-learning workforce programs with pilot organisations, with the aim of increasing participation over a three year period
disseminating the results of the trials to encourage broader uptake of e-learning.

According to Angela Pickering from the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, and Laurel Draffen from the NSW Federation of Housing Associations, this approach is aimed at generating a cultural shift which allows the community services sector to embrace new forms of training. The programs will ultimately increase the sector’s long-term capacity to deliver and support e-learning and workplace training.

The 2009 Industry e-learning forum will showcase how these and eight other industry sectors are choosing to tackle their challenges through e-learning, recognising that staff benefit from consistent, quality training which can be accessed at any time or place.Each industry sector is unique in scope and operation, and the forum will showcase how their e-learning strategies will provide a framework in which diverse companies and industry organisations can cooperate on training and workforce development.

Don’t forget to mark Tuesday 24 November in your diary for the forum which will be held in Melbourne this year.

For forum updates, email: industry@flexiblelearning.net.au For information about E-learning for Industry visit the website: http://industry.flexiblelearning.net.au. This website provides rich resources, such as the online Practical guide to e-learning for industry where employers can discover how to make e-learning work in their business.

You can also access the 2009 Guidelines for supporting learners using e-learning in workplaces report which investigates a range of e-learning strategies used by businesses that have received Framework funding over the past few years.