Last Thursday and Friday (the 28th & 29th of April) aXcelerate attended the 2016 VET Assessment Practices Summit, which was held at the Novotel in Sydney. This Summit is held annually by Insources; a leading Australian organisation specialising in talent development, competency-based education and training, and performance improvement accountability. This year the Summit’s emphasis was on sourcing new and innovative solutions to improve the quality of assessment practices and ensure compliance. As both innovation and compliance are the key motivators of our own student management system, aXcelerate were more than happy to attend this event.
Our Business Development Manager Chris Verner (who also oversees our Sydney Office) arrived at the Novotel on the Thursday and had his schedule jam packed with activities until the close of the Summit at 5:00pm on the Friday. Apart from touching base with many of our current clients, Chris also got the chance to meet many new key stakeholders within the VET industry, whether they be RTO managers, trainers, assessors and education experts.
Furthermore, the Summit became a key opportunity for learning. In regards to aXcelerate, it was a great source of inspiration, as it demonstrated what we can do to develop our assessment tools even further and ensure compliance is as simple and stress free for our clients as we can make it.
The Summit included presentations by a number of experts within the VET sector including Carmel Thompson, the president of IVETA (International Vocational Education and Training Association), Dr Phillip Rutherford who is one of the world’s leading experts on Vocational Education and Training Systems and Yasmin King, the CEO of SkillsIQ. There were also numerous panel discussions and workshops scheduled over the two days that covered Recognition of Prior Learning, the importance of Assessment Validations, Assessment Methods and Using the Principles of Assessments.
All of these sessions were a great stimulus for aXcelerate to look into ways to develop our own assessment tools and more importantly, gave us the chance to hear from key stakeholders, on what they’re looking for in regards to assessment and what will make it easier for them to remain compliant. Our team are excited to take this new found knowledge and stimulus and utilise it in our next development meeting.
On behalf of the aXcelerate team, we would like to say a big thank you to Insources for organising such a well-coordinated and thought provoking conference. We would also like to say a big thank you to all those who stopped by our booth to say hi; we always appreciate seeing (old and new) friendly faces. aXcelerate will be attending many more conferences throughout the remainder of 2016, so stay tuned to both our monthly emails and social media to receive an update on future conferences we’re attending.
