By the netbook
25 February 2010
Lugging around a bag filled to the brim with textbooks is a thing of the past for Kangan Institute's Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Occupational Health and Safety 2010 intake.
Students from two classes were presented with new netbooks this week as part of a training initiative which features flexible online learning.
Developed by Kangan Institute's Learning, Research and Design department for the Centre for Better Living, the netbook project will allow students to work on assignments and tasks at a time and place that suits them.
Centre for Better Living manager Dianne Semmens says a pilot program launched in 2009 lead to the development of this new initiative.
"We learnt that students wanted even more flexibility, so providing more online studies was a good way to help them balance their busy lives and the demands of work, family and studies," she says.
"We also discovered occasional glitches with hardware and software when students used PCs outside of the Institute.
"The perfect solution was to provide a netbook fully configured and ready to go on the Kangan Online e-learning platform."
Each netbook has the technologies commonly available in modern laptops, including high speed wireless, allowing students to start the course as soon as they enrol - anywhere and at anytime.
Delivery of both the diploma and advanced diploma course will be blended with both face-to-face and online sessions.
"We hope this project will better meet the needs of our students, allowing them to gain a qualification and be truly engaged with the course content," Dianne says.
"Students will be surveyed over the coming months to assess the netbook project. The results will help us fine-tune Kangan Institute's capacity to create flexible learning options."
