For too long, vocational training has been “functional,” something you sign up for, tick off the required units, grab your qualification and go. Whether the experience was “good” was hardly of concern. Yet times are changing, and it’s great to see that those organisations at the forefront of such a transition are making a difference worth noting.
Learner experience, for example, is now a bona fide competitive consideration for RTOs. Students have choice (and are more likely to walk away) more than ever, and it shows when providers aren’t meeting their expectations. This means that those organisations willing to change the narrative are looking beyond what they’re teaching to how everything feels for students in the process of being trained with said organisations, too.
Why learner experience is more important than ever
The demographic of vocational learners has changed. Many students are adults juggling work, familial responsibilities and other obligations, not necessarily time-restricted but aware of their limitations and unlikely to put up with misshapen systems, mixed messages and programs that fail to deliver on the learning for which they enrolled in the first place. If the student experience is poor, they know it. And more often than not, they speak out about it.
While word of mouth has always reigned supreme in this arena, online reviews and social media presence have taken it to an entirely new level. Should an RTO continually fail at providing learner experience, it’s not just that student lost but potentially a future referral. This is compounded by the disgruntled student’s negative reviews and other market presence where once positive association may have been.
How technology impacts experience
Much of the learner experience is cultivated well before someone shows up for orientation or their first class. How easy is it to enroll? How well does a course outline describe what students should expect? How accessible is course content? These elements shouldn’t be accessible for hoops to be jumped through; they should be par for the course.
This is where an effective platform makes all the difference. Options exist among learning management systems for rtos to demonstrate how far it’s come, technologically speaking, when it comes to delivery. Students can now access their content on their schedule, track their progress independently, submit assessments digitally and communicate with trainers without every communication going through email. Such freedom means a lot to those students fitting their higher education around their adult lives.
Flexibility without structure
Yet with freedom comes the potential fear that lessons may not be as structured or rigorous as they need to be. This isn’t true when implemented effectively. Those RTOs championing learner experience know how to implement flexibility authentically without sacrificing schedule strength and integrative support for measures like assessments and check-ins.
Self-paced modules with developed milestones include checkpoints that serve as guideposts without acting as overhanded restrictions. When someone can take their time moving through learning content but still be held accountable by certain expectations tangential to assessment (ideally during the submission process), engagement truly improves, and so does efficacy.
Communication matters
One of the most noted grievances from vocational learners is feeling like they don’t know what’s going on. Assessments take too long to mark. Questions go unanswered. Class change notifications come late and without welcome. While no single frustration is fatal, combined, they make students feel like an afterthought rather than a priority.
RTOs serious about learner experience include communication as part of the services they offer. This means timely access, stepped up updates without questions asked and true ease when it comes to being able to get assistance when needed if assistance is provided at all. Moreover, organisations privy to other uses of their systems can hone in on disengagement points before students have to self-disclose they’re falling behind. The earlier RTOs reach out to connect about student struggles, the better completion rates and positive attitudes about overall experiences across the board will be.
Assessment for assessment’s sake
Assessment is where learner experience makes or breaks a stellar opportunity. If assessment feels like bureaucratic runaround instead of assessment worthy of one’s professional capabilities, students disengage. If assessment is well-developed, smartly presented and tied tangentially to the work at hand they aim to provide vocationally, assessment becomes part of what makes the training worthwhile in the first place.
The best RTOs are those considering how to best implement assessments as well—in clear presentation with realistic expectations, useful feedback versus harsh judgement and easy submission processes. With all angles covered and assessment fair and approachable, even demanding work becomes welcomed by students eager for a positive impression through the process because it means good training overall even when the work gets tough.
Raising the bar requires constant effort
Improving learner experience isn’t a one-and-done effort. It’s an always-on commitment spanning across systems, communication efforts, course outlines/revision and organisational culture. The organisations championing this methodology do so not with a silver bullet but with a clear willingness to utilize student feedback as more than background noise. When evidence shows something isn’t working effectively, they adapt accordingly.
That mindset, when combined with effective technology-based tools operationally within the organisation, allows organisations to continuously reinvent the wheel as needed for effective operations to trump all subsequent experiences from start to finish. Learner expectations will always rise; those who stay ahead of the curve are able to implement learner experience as an integral part of what they do beyond training—and not as something separate from delivering training in the first place.
