River Murray Training & Riverland Trade School 

The SA E-Learning Innovations ASBA-AG project team welcomes you to follow our progress as we begin our pilot with a small but enthusiastic group of school based apprentices. We are working on developing a program which will keep our students and trainers engaged and expand their learning environment. RMT has a strong investment in e-learning as an integral part of our blended learning culture. We have been successfully running courses on Moodle and Construct LMS (supported by on line tutorials using Gotomeeting and Discover-e) for over five years for self paced and group learning. We had great outcomes from a Mature Age Workers e-learning pilot for eWorks in 2007 and hope to emulate this success by focusing our efforts on the other end of the spectrum with our school based apprentices. Because our students are largely rural we have faced the challenge of providing supportive flexible learning solutions to meet learning needs prescribed by a remote environment. We use blended learning methodologies which provide students with on-line learning modules and virtual classrooms supported by a dedicated facilitator.  Increasingly students are taking up Certificate III Apprenticeships through Trade Schools. We developed the Certificate III in Agriculture school-based traineeship to address a need articulated by the Riverland Trade School in October 2008, and devised a plan to provide students a broad range of agricultural experiences that could be built on in later career pathways. The Riverland Trade School was only established at the beginning of 2008, and our relationship will only continue to grow in response to the growing need.  Our project will investigate the complexities students undertaking an Australian School-Based Apprenticeships in Agriculture (ASBA_AG) experience in juggling secondary schooling and vocational training and in being both an employee and a school student. These students have specific needs which require adjustments to our current training resources and learning approaches. Work-based learning is a new learning style for most students, who have had a lifetime of schooling framed in pedagogy. Our project will assist students to become independent learners able to work within an andragogical framework.

Our team will continue to make regular comments on our progress and challenges:

Gill Ireland

Barb McPherson

Dearne Marafioti

Ian White

Brenton Roy