Kathryn Foley:
Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today for our webinar. My name’s Kathryn Foley and my colleague is Russell Mireku and we’re part of the My Aged Care Capability team who manage the MAClearning system. Today we’re going to talk to you about the MAClearning system, give you a demonstration and provide you some more information about the appraisal process for RAS and ACAT assessors.
So I just want to give you a quick run through on how the presentation will work today. We’ll start off with Russell giving a presentation and screen share about how MAClearning works and we’ll do some Q&A after that. And if you can please provide your Q&A in the written Q&A box at the bottom right hand corner of your screen and we will moderate those questions and answer those at the end of the session. After Russell gives his demonstration, he’ll throw back over to me and I’ll provide some information about appraisal activities and then there will be another opportunity for questions and answers again through the Q&A box in Webex. If you could use that please.
And we’re expecting quite a few questions and so if we don’t get to them all we will answer them. We’re going to be recording them all and so we’ll try and get back answers to you offline by email. But we appreciate all your questions and this is how we learn to make the system better so please don’t hesitate to ask us questions.
So we’ve got Shannon online who’s going to be moderating the questions so you’ll hear her later in the presentation. She’ll be trying to group up some of the questions and feed them to us so we can answer them or give you a demonstration.
All right. So thank you again for joining us. We’re really excited about showing you a bit more detail on the MAClearning system and appraisals because we’ve been getting lots of feedback so hopefully this session is helpful for you. And I’ll now hand you over to Russell.
Russell Mireku:
Thank you Kathryn. I’m just going to go quickly share my screen and hopefully everyone can see my screen from here. So this is the MAClearning dashboard. So once learners have gone through their registration process and they’ve gone into MAClearning for the first time they should see something that looks a little bit like this. You’ll see here the navigation panel on the left where you’ve got the key items that you can go through MAClearning. The first thing that we’ll go through is the learner profile. So if they click on the little symbol here which should be the first letter of the learner’s name, then you’ll toggle onto a little dashboard for their profile. If they click on the ‘Go to profile’ area this will pull out their settings.
Now these settings are how we identify the learner. They’ll have their first name, last name, email address and a few items that help us identify who they are. Learners are actually able to edit this but we recommend they don’t only because this is how we actually link their learning. It actually affects reporting and a whole bunch of things here. So it’s editable but we advise them and we’d like you to tell your staff that this shouldn’t necessarily be touched. If they move across there’s a security panel in their profile. Here they’ll be able to reset their password to anything they like and they confirm their password. There’s also a minimum security setting here where there has to be 13 characters plus, some special characters as well.
There is also a two factor authentication which is disabled across all learners. Some learners have clicked this. Again we advise them to not click it because you’ll have to email us and we’ll have to manually disable it for you again. So the only thing necessarily that learners will probably access in their profile is just to reset their password if they want to change it after a few months or weeks or whatever from there.
So we’ll go back to the dashboard.
I will go through to see the learning that’s available for the learner. So here on the dashboard you’ll see one of the widgets here is the goal centre. This is all the learning that’s accessible for the learner that they’ve been automatically assigned to. Depending if they’re a new learner or an existing learner they’ll have some learning here that they’ll have to do. It should all come up on their goal centre widget which is on the dashboard here. Here they will be also able to toggle and change the view type. Now you can see here I’ve got goal number one which is ‘Work Effectively in My Aged Care’. I’ve already done 33%. I’m efficient, really quick at doing it. So I can toggle down and see here that I’ve got within that goal a few elements. And it also tells me the due dates here as well.
But this is just like the overall view you can see on your dashboard. If you actually go into the goal centre icon here on the navigation side you’ll be able to see all the goals here. And again you can toggle down and you can see all of them as well as the resources attached. So we’ll look in some of the goals that have already been completed. So if a learner’s already gone in – you can see here that I’ve gone in and I’ve completed on the 29th of June. I can still go back into the learning and actually go back and review what I’ve already done. So I can go back to any of the sections at any point and go back and review the learning. I can also start any of the learning from here as well. So I can go to ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ and launch it for the first time. And from there I can start that learning here if I go in and press it. So you’ll see here that I can go in there.
So to return to the LMS there should always be a ‘Return to the LMS’ button on the top right hand so that way it goes straight back into it. In the goal centre you’ll have two categories. You’ve got your in progress things which is learning that you’ve been registered into and the platform has identified it as being in progress. And then you’ve got your completed items. The completed items are the things that we’ve gone through. So these are things that are complete goals, the full complete goals that have already been done. You can see here that I’ve actually completed delegate training as well and the completion date here. This little icon here is the certificate. So if you press here you’ll be able to see the certificate of the learner. You can download it, you can print it from here as well. So that is where you can go here and review it as well.
For the goal centre that’s pretty much it for in progress and completed areas as well. We’ll go back to the dashboard.
The third thing we can see here for the learner is their transcript. So each learner has a transcript and this can be printed off by themselves. It’s live so it’s in a point of time. They can get it at any single point. So what you’d do here when you get into the transcript is you would initially go for your completion date. So you would go anything from let’s say from the beginning of this year ‘til date and we can search for anything that’s been completed within that period of time. You can also look at different statuses, if you want to look at goals or specific elements, but generally if you apply the fields they will show you everything that’s just been completed within the date frame. And then you can do the same thing. You can export it to PDF.
And then you should see your transcript. And it will show here the status, completion date and the goal type and the type of training it was, if it was a Scorm or a goal.
Great. All right. Now the fourth thing you’ll see on the navigation panel on the left is the goals catalogue. So the goals catalogue is non-mandatory training apart from the goal centre. This is training that you’re not yet enrolled or registered into. So this is usually non-mandatory training, additional training that you can do. So if you press into one of the trainings in here you’ll see here that you can register and you’ll see the elements, you’ll see a description. And if I register into this goal now I’ll be able to register into each individual element here and then I can launch and start one of the learnings when I’m ready.
If I go back into the dashboard I’ll see in here in my goal centre respectively – I’ll see in here that same one has come up now as one of my active learnings. So it’s now in my goal centre and it’s popped out of my goals catalogue. So I can say that everything that I need to be doing as well as mandatory and non-mandatory training is now in my goal centre for me to complete which is good.
So overall that’s what things look like in regards to training. One of the other things that you can look on the dashboard is your calendar. So within your calendar this looks at items that you have coming up due. So if we go up here to the goal centre you’ll see little dates which are up here and they’re due dates for your particular goals. If you’re a new assessor you would have due dates on when you have to complete particular goals or elements. So you can look in your calendar here and you can see in August I’ve got a fair few things that I need to complete. These are all the elements that I need to get done. So I can click on one of them, say ‘Diversity in Aged Care’. Some information will pop up on the right and I’ll be able to see there’s Diversity in Aged Care’ and the goal it’s associated to and the due date. That’s information that’s provided from there.
One of the other things that we can have a look at is appraisal activities. So it’s a common question we get in regards to appraisals and how to upload. So if we go into appraisal activities we can see here we can look at some of the descriptions and the information in here as well about the appraisal. We’ll see here in the resources these are the downloadable documents that’s been provided for this particular element. So I am let’s say an ACAT. I’ll be clicking on the two ACAT documents and seeing what’s relevant to me and the information that’s associated there as well. So once I’ve downloaded it and I’ve filled in the information that I need to, I will be ready to upload my document. And this is the screen where it goes to upload. This information down here, communications, I’ve already been communicating with the person that’s assessing my work so I’m ready now to let’s say upload some of the documents that I have. So I’ve filled out let’s say my appraisal activity two document. I’m all ready to go. Everything’s ready. And what I can do now is if I call it up on another screen I can just drag my document, pop it on here and I can say appraisal activity – my spelling could be better – appraisal activity two document. I’ll just say doc.
And I can save that.
And that will save and it will have a timestamp, my information in there and you can see here that it was submitted here at 11 o’clock. Sorry. On the 11th, today.
So what we can do here is we can exit from here. One of the things that you can see from the status is that – I should have showed you earlier but it’s just pending reviewer now. Prior to me submitting the document it would have said pending learner. So that will alert the reviewer now that they need to go in and have a look at my document and provide me feedback.
Same thing you would be doing on appraisal activity three or four. Again this is what appraisal activity three or four looks like. There’s four of these elements that we can go through. So if I am an ACAT and I’m doing the first one same look but I can actually say I’ve got my documents all ready, I’ll click through, so I’ll have my first appraisal activity three and I can upload that. And I can upload several things at once or several things at the same instance. So after I’ve done the form I can then get my support plan, do that as well and say support plan attached.
And I can save it.
And I’ve got both of my appraisal activity three checklists and also now my support plan attached in there as well.
Perfect. All right. So from a learner’s perspective they’ll be doing this for each one depending on the information, if they’re RAS or ACAT. So they’ll be doing that for each element within there. So overall those are the basic functions that a learner would be using within the system. The manager view is a little bit different. And what I’ll do is I’ll pull up a profile of what a manager looks like. The manager profile dashboard is exactly the same. There’s a bit more information we’ll go through. But if we go through their profile like we went through the learner it’s exactly the same, their security as well. We advise again not to touch this. Don’t touch that one but you can reset your password whenever you’d like as well.
Now you can see here the dashboard is a bit different and the goal centre. The learning that the new assessor had that we just went through there, learner profile, they had a whole bunch of learning in here because it was linked. They have to do that particular learning within a period of time and it’s linked to all the information that was provided on their profile. This is an operational manager or an outlet manager that doesn’t have to do the training. So all that stuff won’t pop up in here. That will just pop up with some of the information guides and the welcome to MAClearning.
In the goal centre again all those training elements aren’t there because they don’t have to do it. It’s optional at this point in time and they’ve got their completed items in here if they’ve completed anything so far. They also have the transcripts of their own learning if they’ve completed anything. Same process. They’ve got their completion date and they can apply a filter and export the PDF. Now what is different is they’ve got a whole bunch in goals catalogue now, optional learning, different from the other learner which had to do the learning. It showed up directly in their goal centre. This is all optional for the manager. They don’t necessarily have to do this so they can click in and they can do this at their own leisure and register for that training.
Now we’ll go through. There’s a few little things that they have which is different. They have reporting but we’ll go through that a little bit after. What we can see here is the main difference on the dashboard is their team view. Now this learner can see all their learners here in the team view. So they’ve got this amount of staff. They can see their first name, last name, their job positions, their compliance and their status. They can also click here and this is just a quick access for them to be able to email that particular person.
So if I want to find out about MAClearning and see how he’s going I can press and the profile will come up and that’s just quick information if we need to see a job position or what branch they’re a part of or anything. We can go to their profile and this is a lot more information about your learner, so someone in your team. So again this is their general settings within there. We can go up here and we can see their job position here as well and we can see their compliance. There’s 100% compliance there. In their HR settings which is a bit different we can see who else is managing this person. They might have several managers and they have their status here which we advise not to touch this stuff as well as the settings here as well. I can also look into this learner’s calendar and see what learning they have due on which dates. So in August, in November. So I can have a look at that as well.
Another really good thing I suspect most people will be looking into is once you go into a learner you can look at their goals profile, so the learning that they have on their profile. So I can see that this learner has all these goals there and I can look in and see the elements that’s associated to those goals and I’ll see this person, which we just went to their profile previously, has completed ‘Aged Care in Australia’ on the 29th and ‘Aged Care Funded Programs’ yesterday.
You’ll see here a little icon here. Now this is called force renewal. What you can do for this particular learner is if they’ve gone through some training and you think they need to go through this training again after so many months you can go onto their profile here and you can just press force renew. And it gives you an alert here that it will invalidate their compliance. So it will change their compliance. So what we can do here is just force renewal if we want that particular learner to do that training again.
Within their goals profile this stuff is all the stuff which is in progress. You can also see what they’ve completed. Again we saw before that I completed delegate training so I can see what date I completed the elements on there as well. I can see how long my delegate training is valid for and I can also see my certificate. I can see the certificate of this particular learner and download that for my own reference.
Which should pop up now. So I can get that information of that particular learner as their manager.
The other thing is we can register them into a goal. So if we go into goal registrations in their goal profile we can search a goal.
So we can register them here in goals registration and search here. I’ve got an element and we can register them into that goal. We can also look into their transcript and we can get a transcript of this learner [0:21:42] as well. Same process. Completion dates here, for instance [0:21:47] and we can export that to PDF as well in here. So if we go back to the dashboard.
We’ll go back to my dashboard and we’ll see all the functions and functionality of going in a learner’s profile for your staff, you can do that for any of your learners and you can find out any of that information.
The last thing you can do which is really anything is reporting. Sorry. Before I go to reporting I’ll show you this last thing here which is this is an overall calendar of myself as a manager. I can see my completion dates of what needs to be completed when but I can also - - -
Kathryn Foley:
We’re just having a bit of sound quality issue on your side. I’m not sure if you want to maybe mute and just do it again and we’ll see if we can reset it. While we’re waiting for that to perhaps settle I might just answer one of the questions that we’ve got in the Q&A. So we had a question about with Appraisal Activity three can the workplace trainer just complete one appraisal activity for all three support plans or one for each support plan? We do need a checklist for each support plan. So when you submit each activity 3.1 or 3.2 or 3.3, you should be submitting two documents for each of those. So a checklist and support plan. So just to clarify that. All right Russell we might try your audio again and see if it’s improved. I’ll hand back over to you now.
Russell Mireku:
Hopefully that’s better. Is that a bit better?
Kathryn Foley:
Yep. That’s perfect. Thank you. I’ll let you restart.
Russell Mireku:
Sorry. I’ve just turned off my video so hopefully that improves the quality. So the last thing you can do on your dashboard here is if you scroll all the way down you’ll see a calendar and this is an overall calendar which shows the completion dates, event dates, renewal dates for myself but I can also go here and press ‘Show team’. I can look at a particular learner or I can look at two or I can select all of them. And what that will do is pull up the information, the completion dates for all my learners within the calendar. You can see here it has the elements, it has the dates, when things are due, and it has which learner it is. And it has all of that information on this particular calendar.
Now as manager I have access to reporting. So I’ll show you one of the most easiest ways and beneficial ways of your team reporting is in your standard reports. So within your standard reports you will have access to run different types of reports but the general report which is pretty good is a goal completion overview report. And this gives you an overall completion status of all the goals for a learner or your team. So if I go in here and go ‘Goal completion overview’ I’ll be able to look at which goals am I looking at. I want to see how they went at Welcome to MAClearning, goal one, two, three, four, five and six. And maybe delegate training, and I want to see also how they’ve gone with their appraisal activities two, three and four. So the whole suite of learning. Within the grouping there’s a lot of different groupings in here which are not relevant to you. One thing that is relevant to you here is if you scroll down you’ll see ‘My team’. And if you press ‘My team’ this will then group all the learners that you are currently managing within the system.
Now when we go into filter I can just go and say all the active learners within the system which are on my team, I want to see the goal completion for these. And I’ll run a report.
It will take a little bit for it to get all the information but once it does it will have all that information in there. Now I’ve got three people in my team but if I had 20 people and if I wanted to see who of them are an ACAT assessor with a job position or who’s a new assessor – I want to see all the people that are new assessors and I can see that by their commencement date, they commenced from the 1st of March 2023, and that’s around when MAClearning was launched. So we can see anyone past that date was necessarily a new assessor. So I can run that report.
And it will come up with all those people. So I can see my team’s not performing very well. It seems only one person’s done delegate training. The rest are still stuck here in the Welcome to MAClearning. I can actually also press on my team here and it will toggle down to the people that are within my team and I can see where they are within that particular goal across the board. The other really handy thing about this is I like this particular report. I don’t want to have to go press all these buttons every time I come in. I can actually save this report. I can just save called [0:28:05] Overall goal.
And I’ll save that and that means when I come into the standard reports at any time I’ll be able to go into a goal completion overview report and I can just go here into the templates that I’ve already saved – and that’s my saved template right there – and it populates everything the way I had it just before. And I can just run that report.
So overall those are the basic functions that you will use as a manager. They’re really, really good functions to see how your learners are tracking, getting their information registered into goals or particular elements and seeing where the completion dates are and when they need to finish their learning by.
Perfect. So we’ll just pop off into our Q&A section if there’s any question from there.
Shannon:
So there’s currently no questions. So if anyone wants to ask anything just feel free to pop it in the Q&A chat and anything system related Russell can give you an answer.
Russell Mireku:
Perfect. All right. I’ll hand it over to Kathryn now.
Kathryn Foley:
Thanks Russell. And apologies all for the sound quality there. We are having a few system issues here in the office but hopefully we can improve that. Thank you Tony. Yes we’ll turn off some cameras and see if we can help the bandwidth. It’s Tuesday in the office so there’s always lots of people that have come in and draining the system.
All right.
So Russell we might stop sharing screen with you and I might jump into the second half of the presentation. And I’ve got a slide deck to walk you through so hopefully the sound will cooperate with us but please let us know if you’re struggling with the sound on my side as well.
All right. So I’ll kick this off and share these slides. So in this half of the session we’re talking about appraisal activities and just want to start off by saying how hard we know that you are all working out there on your appraisal activities, learners, trainers and everybody that’s supporting them. So we appreciate all the work that goes into these. And what we want to try and do with this session is give you some practical advice on how to do those appraisal activities and some tips and tricks along the way.
Just for a bit of information just thought I’d give you the stats on who’s in the system now. So we’ve now got 816 people that are registered in the My Aged Care assessment community and we’ve got 251 new learners in that. And out of that I’m pleased to say that we’ve now got 11 people that have finished appraisal activity four. We’ve got 108 that have completed appraisal activity two. And we’ve got around 20 people each that have completed appraisal activity 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3. So 26 on 3.1, 22 on 3.2 and 19 on 3.3. So thank you again. We know that’s hard work so it’s much appreciated.
All right. So I just wanted to give a quick refresher on the overview of the My Aged Care workforce learning system just so that we can remind people about the blended learning model that we’re working in. So we’ve got two governance documents that oversee the learning systems. We’ve got the My Aged Care Workforce Learning Strategy which outlines the main requirements that we’re working towards. And then we’ve got the Quality Learning Framework which provides the quality settings for that framework. And then we’ve got the blended learning model which is basically the three different systems on how the training occurs. So we’ve got online learning through MAClearning, on the job training that all the trainers out there are supporting their learners to do, and then finally completion of the appraisal activities which is how we can assess that you’ve gained all the capabilities you need to do the job.
All right. So as I said this session we’re going to be working our way through the appraisal activities to give you some more information about each of them. We’ve got the Q&A there so if you’ve got any questions please send them through. And we’re also happy to receive questions by email to either our My Aged Care Capability email address or to MAClearning Help and we’ll circulate those after the session.
All right. So moving on then. This slide just gives you an overview of the whole learning journey for RAS and ACATs and hopefully this is something that’s familiar to you because it’s in our learner guide as well. We break up the training into two phases. So we’ve got the foundation phase which is the first four weeks and then the consolidation phase which is the remaining five to 20 weeks in the whole training cycle. You can complete the training quicker than the timeframe that we set out but your organisation needs to sign off the learner that they’re confident in their skills. So that’s where you’ve got to be confident that your learner has progressed well and has picked up all the capabilities and you’re happy for them to be signed off.
So in the first four weeks we are wanting the learners to work through three goals of online learning and complete the quizzes associated with those goals and then do appraisal activity two which is their observed assessment. And we’ve been saying this quite a lot but we expect that no learner will undertake assessments unsupervised until they’ve been signed off on appraisal activity two. And that includes being endorsed through us through the compliance check and having it returned as compliant on the system.
So that’s the foundation phase. And then the second part is the consolidation phase. There’s another three goals of online learning to do plus the three support plans that people need to complete and submit to us and then the final sign off by a manager. So that is the whole process.
All right. Moving on then. This just shows the different online learning goals that are in each phase. So in the first phase we’ve got working effectively in aged care, promoting positive ageing, wellbeing and reablement and provision of quality screening and assessments. So they’re really the fundamentals that you need to learn about aged care and how to do assessments. In the second half then we’re giving you more information about all the different programs and about older people and how to relate to them. So we’ve got goal 4, aged care programs, goal 5, understanding diversity, and goal 6, responding to individual needs. And all learners need to pass their online quizzes with 100% success. They can do the quizzes as many times as they want. There’s no cap on repeating them but they do need to get that 100% pass mark to get through. And as Russell said you can see all the outcomes of your online learning in your transcript.
Okay. So now moving to appraisal activities. And I wanted to give just some general comments before we get into the detail of each appraisal activity. So it’s a new system and we understand that it takes time for everybody to learn how to use the system. So these are some pretty fundamental things that we wanted to highlight at the start. So first off is all sections in the appraisal activity forms must be completed and submitted in MAClearning. And this reflects that some people are leaving some of the boxes empty and to be compliant we really need you to fill out all the boxes in the form. So currently appraisal activity three is the one where we’re seeing the most compliance issues and that’s up around the 50% mark. So what we’re hoping to do through this webinar is to assist you to improve that so we can make the process quicker for everybody.
Next one. Learners need to submit all forms in their MAClearning account. So we’ve seen a few instances where trainers are submitting forms for learners but learners really need to submit their own forms. The trainers can assist them to do it but it needs to come through their own account. Next one is we expect learners to practice each activity before submitting. So this is a big one again especially with appraisal activity three in that we’re seeing people really enthusiastic and submitting all their activities very quickly. What we ask people to do is submit them one at a time, take a little bit more time to work through them and practice before you submit them so that we can see the best of your results. We want to see you developing over time. We want to see the learners developing over time and improving their skills so the key is there to do practice and then pick which appraisal you think would be a good one to be marked as well. Because we know that you’re out there doing a lot of appraisals especially after you pass appraisal activity two. We know that you’re out there working hard.
And then finally if your appraisal is not compliant or needs to be resubmitted we’ll provide you feedback through your MAClearning account. So we’ll send it back to you with some comments and they’re usually on a checklist that we provide back to you. So please read the comments. We do try to be as helpful as we can with the comments to give you as much instruction as we can on how you can fix up any non-compliance problems and get it back to us.
All right. So moving on to appraisal activity two. So that’s just a quick snapshot of what appraisal activity two looks like. And then in this slide what I wanted to do is just step through the roles for each part of appraisal activity two.
All right. So on the left hand side in the red we’ve got the learner and workplace trainer are required to complete the AA2 checklist and determine if the learner’s performed and demonstrated the capabilities or if they’re still developing. And that’s a key part in this. You can submit your appraisal activity two form with some sections being marked as still developing. We know that learners are still learning how to do assessments and so this is perfectly acceptable for them to be developing in some parts of it. What we want to see in the submissions for this form is that all capabilities have been graded. So please put a mark either yes or developing. Just don’t leave it blank because that will be non-compliant.
So the trainer requirements. The trainer’s required to complete and sign off the checklist and add any notes or comments. We don’t mind how you sign it. If you sign it in pen, if you sign it electronically, we’re fine with that. But if you do have to resubmit forms we really ask for consistency on signatures if they’re with the same trainer. So we’ve been seeing a few inconsistent signatures with the same trainer so just if you’re resubmitting with the same trainer that would be great if you could keep those formats as consistent as possible just so that we don’t have any inconsistencies there.
Then the learner requirements. Learner is required to discuss the AA2 checklist and areas for further development and upload it onto MAClearning. We are checking these AA2 assessments. We’re doing spot checks against the Siebel activity on the NSAF. And so we’re wanting learners to upload their assessments using their own My Aged Care assessment portal account. So we want to see them using their own account rather than using the trainer’s account. And we did emphasise that in our July newsletter as well about learners needing to use their own account. So that’s a big one for us when we’re doing spot checks on these to just emphasise that learners should be using their own account.
Okay. And then finally the other thing there is that trainers signing off on AA2 should be registered on MAClearning because we do check against that that the trainer is actually on MAClearning. The trainer can be different for AA2 and AA3. They could be four different trainers but we just ask that they be registered on MAClearning so we can check them.
All right. So I think that’s the main points for appraisal activity two. And here’s just some of the other compliance issues that we’re seeing for appraisal activity two. Incomplete forms as I’ve said, incorrect spelling of names. We do a queue up on the system so if there’s just an inconsistency there it’s harder for us to find you. Knowing your workplace. And that’s whether it’s a RAS organisation or a RAS or ACAT outlet. That’s good to know, if you can put that in the form. And a tip there that it is in your profile on your MAClearning profile when you were registered so you can go back and find it in there. Not having signatures. As I said we do need a signature on this form. And then as I mentioned too the workplace trainers not registered or active on MAClearning. So if they could be registered that would be great.
All right. So then we’re moving onto appraisal activity three. And as you can see here here’s the form, just as a snapshot of the form. And as I mentioned before for appraisal activity three learners need to submit one checklist and one deidentified support plan for each of the three activities. So it’s two documents for 3.1, for 3.2 and 3.3. So six documents in total.
So with this one this just breaks it down again into the appraisal activity, the trainer requirements, the learner requirements and the Department’s tasks. And I won’t go through what’s on the screen. I’ll just go through some of the points that we’re seeing and some of the tips that we wanted to share. Firstly the support plans can be submitted in any order. We don’t really care if you submit 3.3 first and then do 3.1 or 3.2. We’re happy to take them in any order. But as I was saying it would be good if you could submit one, wait for the comments to come back and then submit the second one. That helps us help you improve how the support plans are written and it gives you a bit of time to consolidate and reflect.
In the same way we are wanting learners to work with their trainers to pick assessments and support plans that are appropriate for assessment. So we know that you’re doing a lot of assessments out there so if you can pick one that reflects the learner’s growing skills and how they’re dealing with more complex issues that works in their favour in that we can see that there’s a lot more that they’ve worked through and they’re clearly setting out their ISOBARs, their recommendations and their referrals. In that way for the support plan 3.2 and 3.3 we are wanting specific assessments in there for 3.2. It’s someone who’ll identify as in the diversity framework. For 3.3 it’s one where you’ve used a supplementary assessment tool. Again we know that’s not always the easiest thing to find and 3.2 with the diversity framework you want to make sure that’s with the permission of the client and they are perfectly happy with you talking about their membership of a diverse group. What we would say is if they’re happy to be identified for example as culturally and linguistically diverse or from an LGBTI background and they don’t want any special supports for that, include that in the support plan. That way it shows that you’ve acknowledged it, that you’ve had that conversation and there’s nothing further to add. And that will be compliant through the support plan.
In the same way for 3.3 with the supplementary assessment tools what we would like to see is a specification on the tool that you’ve used and an understanding of the outcome of it. So if you include the score and then potentially what you’ve done for that score we know that you’ve gone through that thought process. And it may be that you’ve included the score and they don’t need anymore additional supports. If you include that in the support plan then it’s compliant.
So they’re the main issues that we’re seeing in 3.3. So I’ll just move on to the next slide. And this is really just to step you through some of the steps about completing a support plan just so you can see some of the triggers that we’re looking at when we look at your support plan and your assessment. So we’re looking that you’ve done all the work on the NSAF in Seibel, that you’ve generated the support plan through the NSAF so it’s actually on the Seibel format that you can see that you’re giving to the client. Deidentification. This has really improved. We’re seeing very few that aren’t deidentified but it is really important to remove all that personal information except for the My Aged Care ID. If we do get one that hasn’t been fully deidentified we have to send it back to you and we also delete it from our records because we can’t hold that personal information. So that’s the only time that we would delete that information.
The checklist. So the workplace trainer needs to complete the appraisal criteria checklist for each support plan and then finally uploading the support plan and the checklist into MAClearning. And as Russell showed you upload through that process but it’s two separate uploads. So one for the support plan and one for the checklist. So don’t put them in the same one. The system doesn’t like that.
All right. So I think we’re getting close to time so I’ll try and push through this next section pretty quickly. This compliance form here is the compliance form that our learning partners fill out for appraisal activity three. So they’re independently assessed by our learning partners. On this they will give you feedback for any compliance issues that they find and the criteria are a little bit different but they will send this back to you with any problems on it. They’ll upload it and return it on your record if there’s any problems. And we’re hoping in future to be able to publish this as one of the resources attached to appraisal activity three. So that goes on for a second page.
And just so that you’re aware we do hold moderation sessions in the Department. So for any support plans that we want to talk through a bit further we’ve got experienced assessors and we do talk through how people have set out their support plans and any recommendations and any issues in them before we provide comments back. So we’ve got experienced ACAT staff available to us to give us advice on the grading that we’re doing on these assessments.
All right. Finally appraisal activity four. It’s a long one. There’s a lot of pages there. So that’s just a snapshot of it. Again this is just working through all the different roles for appraisal activity four. The key messages here is that it needs to be signed off by a manager who’s different to the workplace trainer. And I’m very happy to report that all the ones that we’ve had so far have been fully compliant in that respect so that’s something that people have picked up. And it can’t be submitted until you’re fully signed off by the Department on appraisal activity two and appraisal activity three. And again we only saw that very early in the piece and we’re seeing everybody is pretty much across that now. So that’s just a very minor thing but definitely we can’t sign off on appraisal activity four until you’ve fully completed two and three.
There are quite a few sections in appraisal activity four. We are looking at already trying to streamline the forms so hopefully that will happen in our update to the system which we’re hoping to do soon. And the key part here is that the manager doesn’t need to observe the learner in doing an assessment. The manager should talk to the trainer about the learner’s performance and that should be already assessed through appraisal activity two and three. So the manager just needs to basically look at all the training components from the transcript on MAClearning through to the sign off on appraisal activity two and then all threes and satisfy themselves that they’re happy that the learner has completed all the capabilities and is fully competent.
And I guess the last point to make on there is completing part four in it is optional. We’ve just put that in to flag if there’s any additional training required that the organisation might want to suggest but it is optional.
So yeah I think that is the main parts there. So I might stop sharing the screen and we might go to any questions because I know that we’re getting close to time. I might just start off with the questions that were submitted in the registration before we started the session today. So one of those questions was:
Q: As a trainer I’d like to do the training so I can support my new learners fully. Can the trainers do the training without doing the appraisal activities?
And that is a yes. Trainer can go in and select all the goals, assign them to themselves and work through all the training as well as familiarise themselves with the appraisal activity documents so they can sign off on that. In terms of being retrained in MAClearning we’re still working through how that would work for trainers and so we’ll get back to you on that advice. But you can definitely work through all the online training and familiarise yourself with the appraisal documents.
Second question was:
Q: How can we make it easier for trainers to review the material without having to go through the knowledge checks each time they get to the relevant sections?
We’re aware of this, that this is a concern for trainers and learners. We know that learners are going back to look at the information in the training and get more understanding of it. So we’re hoping to change that in our update that we’re going to do. We’re planning to take off the locks on the knowledge checks so that learners can go back and review all the content without having to do the knowledge checks again. So definitely a known problem. Thank you for asking the question.
And then the final question that we had was:
Q: How long does it usually take to complete the course for RAS new starters?
And the questioner’s said they were looking for advice on the time between completing appraisal activity two and then progressing through to appraisal activity four and signing off there. Really it’s up to each organisation and the learner how quickly they want to progress that learner. We give the indication of up to 20 weeks. As I said we want people to build their skills and get a lot of experience and then pick which assessments they’re submitting to us. But if they’re picking it up and they’re running with it then the organisation can progress them through quicker. It is the organisation that is signing off that that learner is competent and has got all the capabilities so the organisation has to be confident in that learner’s skills. So I’d say that’s one each organisation needs to consider.
All right. So they’re all the pre-submitted questions. Shannon what are the questions that we’re seeing coming through?
Shannon:
Yep. So we’ve got a question from Kathy.
Q: Can a learner have recognition of prior learning applied for some of these courses if they have comparable university subjects?
Kathryn Foley:
Great question. So recognition of prior learning is an ongoing issue that we’re considering. At this stage we’re wanting to have everybody go through the new system. That’s because we’ve put a lot of effort and time into updating all the training, making it relevant and including all the recent reforms. So that’s why we want to put everybody through the system and have them trained at that baseline again. So at this stage we’re not offering any recognition of prior learning but it is something that we are actively considering and we’ll keep discussing.
Shannon:
Okay. And a question from Kate.
Q: Can trainers and managers see the comments if an activity is not correct?
Kathryn Foley:
In some cases we are advising the trainer in a separate email to alert them to problems that the learner has had and usually that is in cases where we’re getting multiple resubmissions. So if we’re having to ask to resubmit three or four times we’ll email the trainer and say ‘Your learner’s having some problems with this one. Can you work with them on it?’ Otherwise the information on the compliance check does go back to the learner. So yeah it is on the learner’s record. And I might take on notice as to whether the trainer can actually look at that. I’ll have to take that on notice and get back to you by email. Thanks Shannon.
Shannon:
Okay. And the next question is from Andrew.
Q: If someone is still developing and an activity is submitted is the learner able to complete assessment independently?
Kathryn Foley:
Great question Andrew. So I think this is in relation to appraisal activity two and that is really on the organisation’s decision, on their assessment of that learner’s capability. We know that you can start some learners off on the sort of fundamental assessments and have them build up their skills over time and we know there’s a lot of pressures on organisations out there to get more assessors out in the field. So that is one that has got to be done by the organisation on a case by case basis on their feeling about that learner. So I think that is one that each organisation needs to tackle themselves. Thanks Shannon.
Shannon:
Thank you. So the next question is from Tobias. He had to leave unfortunately and wanted to know if the copies of the presentation or recordings will be available. And I have been informed that they will be published.
Kathryn Foley:
That’s correct. Yep. Thank you.
Shannon:
And we have a question for Russell as well. Did you want to answer that one now or after? After? All right.
So we have another question from Andrew.
Q: Is a copy of the developed criteria the Department are using for appraisal activity three available?
Kathryn Foley:
Yep Andrew. So that’s part of what we’re hoping to publish in our next round of uploads is giving more information about the criteria that we’re assessing on appraisal activity three. But it does come through the learning partner’s checklist, comes back to the learner and so they can see some of that expanded criteria in there.
Shannon:
So Vivian had a comment.
Q: This PowerPoint would be a good learning tool.
And Kathy had another question.
Q: I know that some of the certification has an end date. What are the plans for a recertification?
Kathryn Foley:
Great question Kathy. We’re currently discussing that at the moment definitely for delegates. We know that they are required to do their qualification every two years so that’s something we’re actively discussing with our groups as well.
Shannon:
Okay. A question from Samantha.
Q: When you say put everyone through the course does that include existing assessors?
Kathryn Foley:
Yep. So Samantha we’re focusing on new learners at the moment, so getting new people in to be certified as assessors. And we are continuing to discuss how we can look at offering the training to existing learners in terms of refreshing and getting additional qualifications. So that’s something we’re actively discussing and we’ll keep you updated on that.
Shannon:
Sorry. We’ve got one more question from Tony.
Q: To ensure team names and roles are not filled in incorrectly it appears we can personalise the appraisal forms with the correct team name. Is that okay?
Kathryn Foley:
Yep. That sounds good to me. Yep. And as I said in terms of the outlets or the RAS organisations it should be on each learner’s registration on MAClearning. So that’s a handy hint to go back and just check there.
All right. Well I think that’s the end of our questions. I hope you found this session informative. We do appreciate all the work that you do and we are keen to keep supporting learners and trainers out there to complete their qualifications. And as I said we are happy to receive any comments back. So I’ll just share the email addresses again that we want to receive comments back. But yeah really appreciate you dialling in today to listen to our presentation. And thank you very much.