How the pilot program will work

  1. Workshops: Western Institute will deliver intensive, interactive face to face workshops that will give students opportunity to understand underpinning knowledge and develop key skills. Teachers will work within teams of practitioners to enhance the teaching, learning and assessment experiences.
  2. Workplace learning: The majority of the learning and skills development will occur in the workplace. Learning and assessment activities will be negotiated with each workplace to ensure that the participants experience the full range of skills development required to complete the Diploma.
  3. Workplace mentor: Each workplace will need to nominate a workplace mentor to ensure that participants are given opportunities in their daily activities to develop their skills and demonstrate their competence in each of the units of competency. The role of the workplace mentor is to ensure that the students' workplace experience is designed to give them a depth of experience in specific civil engineering projects to develop and demonstrate their competence.
  4. Mentor support: Workplace mentors in each of the workplaces will be supported by Western Institute. Western Institute will promote innovative approaches to workplace skills development through a series of sessions for workplace mentors. These sessions will provide workplace mentors, who have the technical skills in the workplace, with the mentoring skills to support the learning experiences of the program participants. Workplace mentors will complete an orientation session that will ensure each mentor fully understands their role and the support they will need to provide to students and the support available form Western Institute to them. It is critical for the success of this delivery model that workplace mentors provide appropriate activities for the project participant as the majority of the skills development will occur in the workplace. Western Institute will provide email and phone support to the workplace mentors.
  5. Online learning: Learning will be supported by the online learning content and assessment evidence uploaded onto the online platform so students will need access to the internet to complete the requirements of the Diploma. "Moodle" is the e-learning platform used by the Western Institute for all of its online training delivery. Moodle can be installed on nearly any Windows, Linux or Apple Mac computer and provides an interactive learning environment which stores and records the students' participation and assessment evidence and allows them to participate in training forums and learners' blogs.
    Participants will undertake assessment events in their workplaces, update their individual training blogs and upload workplace assessment evidence using video and audio evidence to demonstrate to trainers their competence in the workplace. Participants will use the online learning material to give them the theoretical understanding to achieve the practical skills they will need to demonstrate in their workplace.
  6. Work-based projects: The work-based projects will be developed in consultation with the participant and the workplace so that the activities are relevant to each workplace, achievable within the roles of the participants and meet the assessment evidence criteria of the units of competency. The workplace projects will allow students to implement the learning received via online or face-to-face training and will provide evidence of competency for assessment purposes.