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The NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training (BVET) commissioned LH Martin Institute Associate Professor Leesa Wheelahan and RMIT University's Gavin Moodie to prepare a paper on skills.The result is a report which argues that vocational training has to adapt to meet the needs of a changing society and economic conditions. It advocates a shift from a narrowly defined competency basis to a capability framework in order to more effectively prepare students for broad occupations in loosely defined occupational streams, a feature which may underpin the next generation of vocational education. More...

This three-year project, funded by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), investigates how to improve pathways within education, within work and between them. The project is using the notion of vocations to explore how we can better link educational and occupational progression. More...

In 2002, Assoc Prof Leesa Wheelahan was the principal researcher in a consortium that was commissioned by the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) Advisory Board to:

• research recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy and practice in each of the four sectors of post-compulsory education and training in Australia (senior secondary school; adult and community education; vocational education and training; higher education) 
• develop AQF national RPL principles and operational guidelines for post-compulsory education and training in Australia.

These principles and operational guidelines were endorsed by the AQF Advisory Board and are available to view on the AQF website. More...

Understanding market dynamics, student demand and competitors as well as the cost of provision will be critical to developing institutional and pricing strategies in a deregulated higher education market. More...

In Australia, increasing workloads — driven by larger classes, demands for demonstrable research productivity, occupational stress, increased numbers of female part-time academic staff and a desire for improved work/life balance — have seen workload management become a key industrial and management issue. More...

The increase in the number of researchers, growing pressure to publish, and the competition for research funding over the past decade, has put pressure on the academic research community. More...

This online subject provides students with an overview of the key elements of effective institutional governance in tertiary education. Including:

• The legal basis of the institution and its charter or mission;
• Roles and responsibilities of governing bodies and executive officers;
• Defining mission, setting strategy, developing policy;
• Managing stakeholder relations;
• Delegations, decision making and committee processes;
• Systems for ensuring legal compliance, financial control and risk identification;
• Types of risk such as strategic, financial, compliance, operational, reputational;
• Performance information and accountability reporting. More...

This subject provides an overview of research evaluation and its place in science policy, and gives participants knowledge and insight in areas such as

• The function of evaluation in science and the ways in which scientists, scientific processes and results are subject to evaluation
• The institutional context of research evaluation in science policy and its function in governing
• The science system organisationally, nationally and internationally
• The type of evaluations that exist on different levels (project, program, institutional evaluations and rankings) as well as the tools used in evaluations (peer review and metrics)
• The social and organisational impacts of evaluation on the science system
• The ways in which evaluation can be studied scientifically
• Various approaches to evaluation research. More...

This subject provides an overview of key elements of institutional research in tertiary education, to provide participants with knowledge and insights in areas such as:

• the foundations of institutional research: its history, emergence as a profession, contexts of application, and the role it plays in institutional governance and management
• international developments, concepts and approaches: the emergence of benchmarks and rankings and the use of institutional classifications
• analytic resources: common tools, techniques and technologies
• common domains of analysis: student enrolments, progression and completion, programs of study, research activity, workforce planning. More...

Maintaining Quality within Institutions focuses on how people undertake, define, measure, monitor and improve quality and quality assurance processes and procedures within tertiary education. Tertiary education institutions are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their quality as a measure of social and financial accountability to students, the public and the government. More...