[vet-it] exam

[Riehm, Tracey L]

Hi Andrew (Townsley/Barry?),
 
Stress less, don't panic - you WILL manage. I've taught groups of Cert II (which included Year 9's), Cert III and Year 12 students at the same time in the past and whilst it's hard to keep track of everyone, you just need to take a step back every now & then and take a breath.
 
Do you have a good spreadsheet/database/assessment book in which you can note down what stage each student is up to? I found this the most difficult - when a student says 'what am I up to', I reply 'which course are you doing?/how should I know?' but at the very least, I keep a record of which learning activities/assessment tasks they are working on.
 
As much as possible, have the students work at their own pace through things like the Barnes workbook and other projects (you can get some out of any 'how to use Office' text/dummies/tutorial book etc you can probably find an online tutorial for office on the Microsoft website. The 'tech' type module projects are a bit harder to source.
Give the students a due date for the 'learning activities' which is the date that your assessment task starts. This way, you can wander the room and help students through the learning stages as required and do some 'observational assessment' and authentication. Some assessment can be done by observation throughout the year and doesn't require an 'assessment task' or due date - you can just sign off the skill as they do it. you can also stagger the tasks so that you can spend some focussed time on particular groups of kids (Cert II/III) as needed... As long as everything is fair, equal, same conditions etc for each student in the class, it's all good :-)
 
Don't worry about the hours attached to each module. Somewhere there's a module which includes keyboarding and file management which was meant to take 10 hours I think. we did it in about half an hour at the most (including assessment). The beauty of VET courses is that they are skill based. Most of your students will be pretty well skilled. You do NOT have to complete ANY learning activities at all if you think the students are ready/capable of the assessment (I personally like to check first). You can bring the assessment task forward and do it in the second session of a module if you like. That gives you the freedom of extending a module later on when the students need to go over things they are unfamiliar with. the nominal hours are just a guideline. This is where Peter Nash's advice on getting to know your students comes in - find out their strengths & weaknesses so you can:

1.	
	alternate 'easy' and 'hard' modules so they don't get complacent or turned off
2.	
	use 'flexi time' with your module hours to make sure they all fit into the assessment year (our RTO is a TAFE, so we have to have all our results in by end of October, not November/December like VCAA...)
	Do try to stick to completing half the modules in each semester so there's no mad panic in Term 4 to get 3 or 4 modules done!

You CAN have a Cert II exam and there are some good ones out there. They are used for internal assessment and preparation for Year 12. It is up to you.
There are commercial assessment tasks from Waringal publications (QATs) that are quite good. they are only for the Year 12 scored assessment I think, but they are reasonably priced and come emailed in pdf form.
 
If you would like learning activities or assessment tasks for a specific module, let me know & I'll dig some out for you. Like most people, I use a mix of Barnes workbooks, Essentials of IT and my own stuff...
 
Tracey
Tracey Riehm
eLearning Manager
Timboon P-12 School
Bailey Street
Timboon Vic 3268

________________________________

From: vet-it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of andrew barry
Sent: Thu 22-January-2009 1:40 PM
To: vet-it at edulists.com.au
Subject: [vet-it] exam



I am just clarifying the VET IT course cert III and II
) VET IT cert II has no exam I believe. The cert III only has an exam
for these units.

The exam for vet IT cert III  only  covers these units
* ICAD3218A Create user documentation
* ICAI3020A Install and optimise operating system software
* ICAT3025A Run standard diagnostic tests
* ICAU3004A Apply occupational health and safety procedures
* ICAS3031A Provide advice to clients
Units from the specialist core streams (Applications, Network
Administration and Support) in the scored Unit 3-4
sequence will not be examined.

That leaves units from outside these core to be covered in a lot
looser context.  The teacher has more say in what to do  since the
Evidence Guide and the Range Statements can be a bit vague about
subject material taught. I dont mean they can teach anything !

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