A global pandemic shakes up teaching

If you asked any training provider in 2019 what their plans and goals were for 2020, it’s unlikely any of them factored in grappling with a global pandemic and a near complete pause on life as we knew it!

But grapple Australian RTOs did. With very little time to adapt to the closure of face-to-face training facilities in March, providers across the country were forced to rapidly pivot to nearly a 100% digital delivery of teaching. With a lot of blood, sweat and tears, the industry pulled up and got through the transition with resilience and an open mind. (As well as many a “You’re on mute” on Zoom!)

As hard as the transition was, we think there are a lot of beneficial new habits that RTOs have formed that will help the industry grow in the long-term. (But more on that in a future blog post...)

Covid-19 did present the opportunity for Learning Vault to develop new materials that enabled organisations to deliver specific courses around infection control and mitigating risk in various environments. These included:

• A course we developed with the Restaurant & Catering Association that aimed to help hospitality businesses to safely reopen with Covid-Safe protocols. 
• An official training unit developed for the Hospitality and Transport & Logistics packages, “HLTINFCOV001 - Comply with infection prevention and control policies and procedures”

We were really humbled to be able to develop materials that help our wider society get back on its feet in a safe and sustainable way.

There’s a badge for that.

In 2020 we proudly unveiled the first Australian owned digital badging platform. Digital badges are a virtual acknowledgement of an earned credential or new skill and have been growing in use globally by training organisations and corporates to recognise micro-credentials and other short training courses.

We spotted a need for a digital badging platform geared to the needs of Australian RTOs, providing localised support for badge issuing that overseas providers couldn’t. We’ve rolled out a digital badging solution that allows full flexibility for organisations to build more or less any data point into their badges. 

We’re really excited about the potential of digital badging as a means to allow learners to ‘tell a story’ about their educational and skill-building paths supporting them throughout their careers with ‘life long learning’, and for training organisations to increase exposure to their brand through badge distribution.

Transitioning to the New BSB Training Package

RTOs offering courses in Business Services knew a while back that a massive overhaul to their BSB materials was on the horizon. Before we knew it, in late 2020, the ‘big change’ came! 

The updates to the BSB Training Package were substantial, with a degree of complexity to navigating what’s new and how that matches up to the old units. 

We spent much of 2020 preparing for the pending changes  to create an engaging new BSB training suite with tightly mapped assessment tools that RTOs can plug in to their LMSs for a smooth package transition, our new suite of units will be released throughout 2021.

If you’re just rolling into 2021 and are looking for digital badging solutions or want to chat about updating your BSB training package, get in touch!