In a rush to get your credentials before it becomes compulsory?
From next year it’s likely that all tutors delivering at levels 1 and 2 and in particular Youth Guarantee (YG) and Student Achievement Component (SCA) will need to have the NCALNE (Voc) as a minimum compulsory teaching qualification.
In terms of fast tracking this process yourself or with your team there are a couple of things to consider, which I’m happy to discuss by phone or email.
- Online modules: You can access the online versions of the content modules via www.pathwaysawarua.com – these modules are as interactive as we can currently make them and contain all of the course content but none of the assessment material. The assessment material is in the Assessment Guide and there are templates we can email or that you can download from our website. I’d strongly recommend that the team signs up here (if they haven’t already) and gets underway with the online content: https://live.pathwaysawarua.com/RegisterEducator.aspx – it’s a two step process and they email you back a “join code” that grants you access. From there you start on NCALNE Lite which is the current version of the online NCALNE hosted by Pathways.
- NCALNE Youtube channel: We have other video content on our Youtube Channel which you can access here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFV5XT4v2VdjubGaKs7w2sg – there is video content for each module and assessment task which the team should access as they need to. There are snippets of this in the Pathways modules, but mostly I recorded this to capture the kind of conversation I have when we deliver the face-to-face workshops. Again, I’d strongly recommend that the team watch these as they track through the modules and tasks. You can treat it as “just in time” video training as you need it.
- Internal expertise: Many organisations already have staff who have completed the NCALNE (Voc). Make use of this expertise . Particularly, if you are working on the NCALNE on your own. Also, the structure of the NCALNE tends to lend itself to certain ways of doing things which may or may not be exactly how you do things internally. If you come across something that you already do internally that you think meets the brief, let me know. I’m happy to be creative about how I interpret the qualification outcomes in the light of actual practices within your organisation.
- Assessments 1 and 2: The first two assessments are different to assessments 3 – 7. These first two are basically “demonstrate knowledge of” type assessments that you can complete by doing some reading and then writing up the assessment task. The first one is a 1500 word report, and the second is a kind of summary of key concepts. You should be able to self pace on this material provided you’ve done the reading. It’s definitely worth spending time discussing the issues and concepts covered in the first two modules, but it’s also easy to let them absorb most of the time. So just a caution there.
- Assessments 3 – 7: The best way to think about this is that it’s one project. As a project it follows the ALEC embedding approach and you track a minimum of two learners through this process E.g.
- (Task 3) You analyse and map the literacy and numeracy demands of a chunk of some training and write it up using our template.
- (Task 4) Then you use literacy and numeracy diagnostic assessments to figure out what your two (or more) learners already know. You may already have these in place for some of your training. I need two kinds of evidence. One includes TEC assessment tool data for two learners. The other includes some kind of contextualised literacy and numeracy diagnostic evidence for the same two learners.You need to create learning plans for your two learners based on what you’ve found, and write up the process in our template.
- (Task 5) Next you need to provide evidence that you are doing the embedded LN teaching. This means creating, adapting etc 8 embedded literacy and numeracy activities that go together with relevant learning outcomes and strategies. The best way to approach this is to create at least two learning outcomes – one for the literacy side, and the other for the numeracy side of things. And then have your activities sit under these learning outcomes. Because of the way the unit standard is written here we always get tied in knots about what we want, but it’s actually simple – just some evidence of actual delivery of embedded literacy and numeracy with the two or more learners that you assessed in task 4.
- (Task 6) This part is just the flipside to Task 4. Just reuse your contextualised LN diagnostic assessment as a post test. We don’t require evidence of reusing the TEC assessment as the timeframe is usually too short. However, if you’ve already got this in your system it’s certainly interesting to see and adds to the analysis and commentary.
- (Task 7) This is just a straightforward analysis of your effectiveness (what worked, what would you change etc). It’s not exactly identical to the kind of report that you’d submit to a Workplace Literacy (WPL) client at the end of a programme, but it’s pretty similar.
- Reverse engineering or going through the process: Mostly, we get fairly new tutors who need to go through this whole process described above. They need time to think through, map, diagnose, design resources, teach, and reassess. That’s why the process is spread out over 4 months (or often longer with our distance learners). If your team are new to embedding this is what they need to do. If your team actually have many of these processes in place, understand how to use the learning progressions, and have evidence of teaching and assessing already then we can speed things up by kind of reverse engineering the assessment tasks and creating a portfolio of existing evidence for assessment. If you’re going to do this with the others it would be good to have a conversation about it. If not, no problem… I don’t tend to have this conversation usually as it just confuses people, but if it sounds like you then give me a call.
- Conference calls: I’m happy to make a time to talk to you by phone or Skype. You can also ring me on 0800-ALEC-1-2
Very cool. I’ll be interested to see what the uptake is like. Rachel
Hi Rachel: Probably, slow at the moment… mainly this kind of fast tracking works only for people with an existing portfolio of evidence and looking for the credentials. However, as we move forward and push more of the content online for free it’s possible that we’ll get more uptake. For example, some tutors may want to spend a long time working on the online content modules via PathwaysAwarua.com and take time to compile the assessment evidence. Eventually, they’ll want to have this assessed… so it’s fast tracking the assessment process rather than anything else…