Background
Indian Ocean Group Training Association (IOGTA) was first established in 1995 in order to provide a cost-effective vocational education and training option for the residents within the Indian Ocean Territory Communities.
Since this date, IOGTA has grown to become the primary training provider of registered training organisation services to this island community, including Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Furthermore, because of its status as a not-for-profit organisation, IGOTA focuses on being the cheaper option for course costs per student, to ensure it’s service offerings are as accessible to the island communities as possible.
One of the most popular courses offered by IOGTA is their first aid course, as IOGTA have local trainers on-site that can deliver the courses quickly and easily. Many residents also require first aid training as part of their employment, due to the high number of government workers based in the community.
However, because IOGTA is the only organisation of it’s kind within the Indian Ocean Territories, it has to be much more flexible in the training and services it offers. IOGTA often receive requests to deliver training which is not part of their original scope. This training includes Microsoft program courses and high-risk courses such as Work Safely at Heights, which they deliver regularly in order to best cater to the community.
IOGTA also offer a number of services additional to regular training. These include labour hire, where businesses can use IOGTA to screen and advertise for available workers, and community development programs for those on specific Centrelink allowances. These development programs go hand-in-hand with their labour hire services to ensure that the individuals who are most eligible, get placed in the right opportunities. IOGTA also work with a number of host employers on both Christmas Island and Cocos Islands to provide Apprenticeships and Traineeships to the community as well as offering up their training rooms and technical resources to the public for hire or for specific exam supervision. On top of this, community engagement programs including language and cooking classes and Centrelink information sessions are regularly held on site.
Because IOGTA run so many diverse training and service options under the one organisation, managing the administration and delivery of each program can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Initially, IOGTA were using a variety of spreadsheets, The Outlook Calendar and Microsoft Access databases to register and monitor all of their training workshops and enrolments. This resulted in information being in multiple locations, double ups occurring and it taking twice as long to refer or find specific student information.
Consequently, IOGTA needed a student management system that could provide all the tools necessary to manage enrolments, training workshops and their various community services within the one location, to ensure that their data can be easily stored and managed.
Solutions
aXcelerate initially appealed to IOGTA, as the flexibility of its management features allowed IOGTA to operate it’s multiple training and service options from one central location.
When initially implementing aXcelerate within IOGTA, the biggest hurdle was deciding on the best set up for IOGTA’s varied training options within aXcelerate, as aXcelerate has two key options: workshops and qualifications.
To ensure IOGTA were utilising these two features properly, the two parties explored the setup options within both workshops and qualifications that IOGTA could use and were able to tailor these options depending on the particular service or training IOGTA were delivering. For example, IOGTA could alter the workshop setting to be ‘public’ if they were delivering a specific short course or ‘in-house’ if they were conducting exam supervision or venue hire for particular organisations.
IOGTA also worked closely with the aXcelerate implementors to build and generate tailored reports for their different training offerings. These reports are able to extract and identify imperative information for each training option, including demographics and course popularity.
Since fully implementing aXcelerate’s student management system, IOGTA has experienced improved efficiency on many fronts; the central resource library and client database makes it that much easier to navigate and locate the information required for all different training and service offerings, while the calendar feature is used as a daily diary for the staff. The calendar also ensures everyone can keep track of trainer movements (when they’re flying back and forth from the Islands), room bookings, upcoming training and external visits from customers and lecturers.
The utilisation of these tools, ensure that IOGTA spends less time juggling multiple systems and more time on providing their community with the necessary training and career development they need.
Looking to the future
As IOGTA continue to grow their successful business, aXcelerate look forward to catering to their future operational needs. In particular, aXcelerate will work with IOGTA to develop tools to handle the increasing number of first aid and other short courses that IOGTA deliver. This includes the ability to register expiration dates and automated reminders to participants to renew their certification.
These additional features will help to cater for IOGTA’s growing demand and ensure that IOGTA can continue to serve the education and vocational training needs within the Christmas Island Territories.
To find out more about IOGTA and the services they provide, visit their website.
