Background
From its humble beginnings in 1974, Albury Wodonga Community College (AWCC) has grown into one of the key educational contributors within the Albury Wodonga region, with over 6000 learners. AWCC is a unique education provider as its close proximity to the New South Wales/Victorian border means it is registered in both states as an RTO and an ACE provider.
AWCC’s focus is on accessible education. They aim to provide the diverse members of their local community with an opportunity to further their skill set and knowledge. This goal is achieved through their numerous offerings such as ESL programs for refugees, unemployed/youth programs and programs designed for third age learners.
More recently, AWCC has initiated three new alternative programs to help make their course offerings as flexible and accessible to their local community as possible. These programs are ‘2COOL4SCHOOL’ , ‘A FAIR GO’, and ‘LIFEWORKS’.
Each program aims to re-engage and lead participants onto further education opportunities or employment, through focusing on improving their literacy, numeracy and writing skills. Each student also has access to a coach who mentors and assesses them throughout the program.
Solutions
All three programs offer the opportunity for learners to manage their theory and assessments within a classroom setting. This allows a high level of flexibility to participants when undertaking the program and the ability to cater the program to suit individual needs.
In order to offer this high level of flexibility, AWCC require a highly flexible student management system that can individualise each program enrolment for each participant. aXcelerate has the ability to do this and because it is a cloud based system, it can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. This was crucial for AWCC as the coaches for all three programs are only in the office for a limited time each week. Using aXcelerate allows them to communicate with students and access resources on-the-go from wherever they are training.
Another key requirement for AWCC was the need for an RTO compliance software that possessed an in-depth reporting framework, in order to easily communicate tasks, information and statistical reporting requirements between NSW and Victoria. Prior to aXcelerate, AWCC was using a system which was restrictive in extracting reports and made it difficult to keep up to date with reporting requirements between the two states.
aXcelerate’s ability to adhere to a range of reporting requirements, has allowed AWCC to ensure it is compliant with requirements from both states. For example, aXcelerate’s reporting functions allow AWCC to filter and extrapolate data to handle updates/changes to Skills Victoria Training System (SVTS) reporting, while also extrapolating data for the new NSW Smart and Skilled platform.
Furthermore, aXcelerate has saved AWCC significant time when conducting reports. In particular the ability to use a portal link that allows AWCC to report directly to the Victorian Student Registry has significantly minimised administrative tasks . Now updating, lodging and reporting VSN data can take five minutes, when previously these actions would have taken a day.
Time has also been saved when issuing qualifications. Previously AWCC’s issuing of qualifications was done manually and consequently was very time intensive. By using our automation features, AWCC can create a setting that allows the issuing of a qualification to flow automatically to a certificate register. This removes the need to manually maintain a register.
Looking to the future
This increased efficiency in both administration and reporting tasks has allowed AWCC to focus their attention on what’s important: providing learning support and establishing pathways to further education opportunities for the local community. One of these being to further develop their alternative learning programs like ‘2 COOL 4 SCHOOL’.
We are excited to help support AWCC in managing these programs. The next goal is for aXcelerate to do some custom development work for ‘A FAIR GO’, 2 COOL 4 SCHOOL’ and ‘LIFEWORKS’ in order to maximise the effectiveness surrounding their delivery and administration.
To find out more about AWCC and their training options, visit their website: https://www.awcc.edu.au/