How FAS works with companies to help identification of training needs
FAS has in place a structured quality assurance procedure for changing existing courses and developing new ones. Many sources of market intelligence are used to keep abreast of changes required eg The Fourth Report of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs2. Normally, the starting point is existing training programmes delivered nationwide. Periodic reviews of training programmes for each occupational area take place with instructors coming together to discuss any changes needed. The staff from Employment Services Units share their experiences of placing people in employment. Feedback from employers comes through the Services to Business Division. Where new training needs are identified, course review groups are set up with subject matter experts from industry, instructors and members of the Curriculum and Quality Assurance (CQA) Division coming together to prepare recommendations for change. There are also periodic trades' review processes, where subject matter experts from industry sit in formal committee with instructors and CQA staff to forecast changes. This can lead to some quite dramatic changes in the delivery of training for the trades. Output from these committees is a Training Programme Specification, a Training Plan and Modular Assessment Programme for a particular occupation or trade. These are put through an evaluation process and then validated. Current policy is to harmonise any changes or new developments nationally across training centres. When a course receives CQA approval, it is stored in the National Course Database and can be accessed by Curriculum Officers in all training centres. This is a standard, flat file database that enables access to complete documents. It does not take account of emerging (SCORM, IMS) standards for the storage and retrieval of learning objects. This has important implications for the use and re-use of e-learning resources into the future as will be discussed later in this case study.
...continue to e-learning provision
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