Lesson 8 - Risk Management and nominal hours

What is Risk?

A probability or threat of damage, injury, liability, loss, or any other negative occurrence that is caused by external or internal vulnerabilities, and that may be avoided through preemptive action.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/risk.html

How does risk relate to training?

The Risk Management process is the same regardless of the activity you are assessing.

1. Identify

The first step in any Risk Management is to identify the risks. A risk doesn't have to end in injury or death. As defined above, a risk is any negative occurrence that happens during the activity you are assessing.

Activity 1

What are the potential risks of running a training program? Think about the programs that you have selected for your assessments.

2. Analyse

Once you have identified your risks, the second stage is to analyse the risks. What is the negative outcome and what impact will it have? What are the chances of the risk occurring? The Analysis part is where you consider the likelihood of the risk occurring and the extent of the "damage" that might occur. I usually give them a ranking. You can use a number, such as a ranking from 1 to 5, or descriptive words such as unlikely, possible, probable, likely. The same for the "damage" or effect. You can use numbers from 1 to 5 or again, use descriptive words such as Minimal,medium, high and catastrophic.

Activity 2

What is the likelihood of each of your potential risks occurring? What damage will be done if the risk occurs?

3. Evaluate

This is where you look at the information from your Analyse stage. Compare the likelihood of a risk occurring and with the outcomes and decide whether any action needs to take place. If there is a very low chance of a risk occurring and very minimal damage if it does, is it worth doing something about?

Activity 3

Evaluate your risks (from activity 1) and determine whether there is a need to take action.

4. Action

This is where you decide what action will take place if the risk occurs. It should include who is responsible for the action as well as the details.

Activity 4

Create a plan of action for the risks evaluated in activity 3 as needing action

5. Monitor and review

Like any plan, a risk management plan is not a set and forget deal.You should always assess to see if there are other risks that could occur and decide if there are other strategies that would work better to manage those risks.

How many Hours?

The document that contains the number of hours is called a "purchasing guide".

There is a Victorian Purchasing Guide for each training package. The Guides list the qualifications that are part of the training package along with the minimum and maximum hours for each qualification. While you can go over the maximum qualification hours, in Victoria, you only get funding for the maximum hours.

As well as hours for the qualifications, the purchasing guides also list the number of hours for each unit in the training package. The guides use "nominal hours", which may or may not be the actual hours that are covered by classes, but are the hours used to determine course fees.

Nominal hours can give an indication on how detailed or complex a unit is and can be used as a guide to create a schedule for the unit.

You will find all of the purchasing guides here:
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/training/providers/rto/Pages/purchasingguides.aspx

The hours represent how much training and assessment is involved in a unit. The hours are set by a various curriculum maintenance groups located at RTOs. Just an FYI, Chisholm curriculum maintenance group actually did the purchasing guide for the Library courses!

Schedule

Now that you have your assessments worked out, you need to break the learning down into sessions or lessons.

What do the students/participants need to learn to be able to successfully complete the assessment tasks?

In your schedule, you need to cover the elements and performance criteria, skills and knowledge - all with the view to participants successfully completing the assessments. In the schedule section on the Learner Guide, you need to include the topics you will be covering, the performance requirements and whether there is an assessment during that session.

You are now ready to complete this section in your learner and assessment guides.

Learning Management Systems

You all know about Moodle - Moodle is the LMS that Chisholm uses for distributing course material and keeping track of assessments and student communication.

While you are only designing your courses, it is worthwhile to think about how you will distribute the course content. The advantage of using an LMS is that you can deliver "paperless" courses, saving on paper and printing costs and therefore being more environmentally friendly and sustainable.

Read the following articles on LMS options

Selecting a LMS
https://www.learnupon.com/blog/get-best-lms/

Free/Open Source LMS options
https://elearningindustry.com/open-source-learning-management-systems

Top 20 overall LMS options
https://financesonline.com/top-20-lms-software-solutions/

Activity 5

If you were to choose a LMS for your courses, which would you select and why?

Some fun stuff

I will include some FREE tools that you can use to deliver some of your training content under this heading. While it is not necessary for your design document, you should consider options to make your content more interactive and interesting. PowerPoint is awesome, but can be boring if it is the only tool that you are using. 

This week's "fun stuff" is H5P https://h5p.org/

Have a look at the examples, join up, and have a play.