The TAEDES412 Design and develop plans for vocational training unit of competency will require the TAE Student to:
- design and develop plans for group learning that covers at least 2 entire units of competency
- design and develop the detail for 3 consecutive training sessions for each different unit of competency.
Designing a group-based training program
The following information focuses on designing a training program that covers one unit of competency. If you are a TAE Student, you will need to do the following twice because you will required to design a training program that covers two units of competency. Avoid integrating the delivery of the two units because this will make it more complicated than it needs to be. Keep you approach as simple as possible.
The TAEDES412 unit does not specify the duration a training session. It does not specify that the training plan covering a unit of competency must consist of 30-minute training sessions. The duration of 30 minutes is not a realistic timeframe for a training session to train a group of learners. When designing a training program, I start by creating a training agenda consisting of one-hour blocks of time.
The following shows the outline for a 3-day training program with 6 one-hour blocks of time for each day.
Most units of competency in the Australian VET system will require more than one training day. The total training duration will usually be between 2 and 5 days.
The one-hour block of time structure is simple and makes it easier to figure out the chunking and sequencing of content to be delivered. And remember to factor in time for learning activities, including the practice of skills and tasks. I like to allocate at least 50% of the available time for conducting learning activities.
I design the training using one hour as the duration for a ‘standard training session’. Sometimes a period of time greater than one hour is required. This usually is required to cater for learning activities that need more time, such as, case studies or role playing.
The following shows two examples of training sessions with a duration greater than one hour:
- Day 1 has used two one-hour blocks of time for a two-hour training session
- Day 3 has used three one-hour blocks of time for a three-hour training session.
Design three 30-minute training sessions
The TAEDES412 Design and develop plans for vocational training unit of competency requires the TAE Student to design and develop the detail for 3 consecutive training sessions for each different unit of competency. And the TAEDEL411 Facilitate vocational training unit of competency requires the TAE Student to deliver a series of 3 sequential training sessions of at least 30 minutes duration each to a group of at least 4 learners.
The following table compares the requirements specified by the TAEDES412 unit and the TAEDEL411 unit.
Many RTO delivering the TAE40122 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment qualification will ask their TAE Student to design, develop and deliver a series of 3 sequential training sessions. Unfortunately, there can be a disconnect between designing a realistic training program consisting of training sessions with a duration that are greater than 30 minutes and the requirement of delivering 30-minute training sessions.
The duration of 30 minutes for training sessions is unrealistic. The timeframe of 30 minutes was influenced by RTOs delivering the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment qualification. These RTOs wanted to make it easier for themselves to organise the observation of training sessions being delivered by their TAE Students, and minimise the time consumed by their assessors. The timeframe was not based on the ‘real’ requirements and duration of delivering this type of training session.
If you are a TAE Student, it is best to think that the 30-minute training sessions are an exercise to prove you can deliver training. These training sessions do not represent what happens in the real world. This raises a question: how do you deign a realistic training program and then extract a series of 3 sequential 30-minute training sessions for delivery?
After you have designed the training program covering the unit of competency, split the one-hour blocks of time in half and select a series of three 30-minutes to be your training session to deliver.
The following shows an example of picking three 30-minute blocks of time that can form the basis for a series of 3 sequential 30-minute training sessions.
In conclusion
The total duration of training will need to be estimated before staring to design the competency-based training program. This is required to know how many columns your training agenda will need.
Design the training program using one-hour blocks of time. Blocks of time can be merge to create training sessions with a duration that is greater than one hour.
Recognise the disconnect between the requirements specified by the TAEDES412 Design and develop plans for vocational training unit of competency and the TAEDEL411 Facilitate vocational training unit of competency. Identify 90 minutes from your competency-based training program that can be transformed into series of 3 sequential training sessions for delivery.
Do you need help with your TAE studies?
Are you a doing the TAE40122 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and are you struggling with your studies? Do you want help with your TAE studies?
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