Great collaboration on the Sunshine Coast

The network creation workshop was launched on the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday 10 August 2005. There were 13 participants on the day (two others will join later).

The network members introduced themselves and their focus in the area of flexible learning/online learning. The group discussed briefly what flexible learning could embrace and explored the project purpose and goals.

Mixed sector groups then discussed flexible learning from the learner's perspective. This generated considerable energy and exchange of issues, approaches, strategies and techniques.

I introduced the project planning workbook and identified ways that it could be used for the collaborative project.

Participants then formed new groups and developed a vision for their collaboration.

This session led to identification of collaborative endeavours that could be pursued over a five year timeframe.

The following were areas identified for collaborative activity:

• engagement of disengaged 14-17 year olds
• alignment of school and TAFE timetables to enable release of school students for attendance at TAFE on a half -day or full day basis.
• creation of short "sampling courses" for school students at the TAFE Institute
• collaborative development of generic skills courses
• engagement of retired people and employers in knowledge and skill development for both school and TAFE students (reference the VISE scheme)
• collaborative development of the online teaching/learning skills of the network group through exposure to blogging, moodle, teleconference via telebridges, on-line chat rooms/forums, etc. (this could involve IT Diploma students running training activities that could form part of their assessment)
• lobbying for removal of barriers to the development of seamless pathways

Project teams were formed to identify the scope and boundary of their collaborative activity and these teams will report separately. One of the teams will create a team blog within this site for ongoing communication and collaboration.

Structural barriers identified during the workshop included:

• "double dipping" provisions that effectively prevented schools from using
  under-utilised TAFE facilities
• Bandwidth costs that prevented schools from using already developed online learning activities and courses (impacting on users of computer labs and hundreds of school based computers)

Network members reported considerable personal and business benefits from the workshop and will report on this separately.