eduOne

Education — Our New England Pilot (eduONE)

Project Leader: Dr Ros James

The Education — Our New England (eduONE) project is a partnership between TAFE NSW New England Institute (TAFE NEI) in the lead, the University of New England (UNE) and the Community Technology Centres Association (CTCA). This pilot project is trialling a new Interactive Multi-media Learning Space (IMLS) that was conceived as a community education portal to promote lifelong learning and to provide new pathways to knowledge, learning, training and education.

The trial is designed to link three elements that together leverage the potential of the National Broadband Network (NBN) to support and build our region, specifically:

  1. Integrative technology at TAFE New England Institute to enable quick adoption of NBN capabilities and greatly enhance learning, including basic Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and NBN skills.
  2. A new, innovative, open learning space that pivots on the NBN, with tailored courseware (supplied by UNE) that utilises rich media and the capacity of the NBN to widen access to general and tertiary education for regional populations and improve the quality of learning.
  3. Computing upgrades for Community Technology Centres to facilitate support to new learners and access to technology and online modules by rural and remote communities.

UNE will develop 'tasters' that open up new pathways to education: free, open access, short online learning modules. We use an e-portfolio operating in the background that collects all learning activity so that these outputs can be combined and submitted for assessment of advanced standing to UNE or recognised prior learning at TAFE. We provide lots of scaffolding to ease novice learners into independent study and support their progress to completion. Our tasters can be studied anywhere, anytime (there are no course start or finish dates) at the learner's own convenience.

The following topics are available as short learning modules: Ageing and Ageism; Communication and Signing; Mela-What?; and Knights, Crusades, Castles. Further modules are being developed for release, such as: The Carbon Economy; and Sexually-based Persecution and Discrimination.

Inquiries: Dr Ros James