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On Track is a Victorian Government initiative which surveys school leavers who have left school in the last six months to find out if they are on track to a bright future. On Track ensures school leavers are contacted within six months of leaving school to see if they are on a path to further education, training or employment. This report presents results from the 2010 interviews with 4299 young Victorians, as part of the longitudinal component of the On Track program. These young people either completed a Year 12 or equivalent certificate in 2007 or left school before receiving a Year 12 certificate during 2007. All of those interviewed in 2010 had been interviewed in 2008 as part of the regular On Track program and in 2009 as part of the longitudinal program. This cohort of young people will be interviewed again in 2011, and a final report on their post-school pathways will be released in late 2011.

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Leading to the development of a 20 year strategy for learning, this paper provides a practical outline of a local government partnership with higher education in the context of a geographic learning community. The paper is to document the development of the Hume Global Learning Village (HGLV) from the establishment of the Safe City Task Force, the building of the Hume Global Learning Centre, the development of the Hume Global Learning Village concept, the academic and other partnerships, research and learning activities that this supports. It outlines the vision and learning strategies that underpin the development of the HGLV, and concludes with factors that have contributed to keeping Village members involved and provides an indication of future developments. Originality/value: The value of this paper is that it provides an opportunity to stimulate thinking about local government and its role in learning which is not a traditional role. The key to this is the linkages with higher education especially in terms of access to research capacity and learning which contributes to policy about relevant topics such as lifelong learning, social and emotional learning, youth, secondary school regeneration, active ageing and so forth. Practical implications: The outcomes of the HGLV development demonstrate the strong link between economic development and the practical applications for those communities where education results are lower than average. Increasing the participation rate of the population involved in learning contributes to economic development and provides a more socially inclusive society.

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Of all the factors contributing to turbulent times in Australia, climate change is one that offers both challenges and opportunities for [vocational education and training] VET. In a time when the response to water availability is subject to ‘extensive debate and policy attention’, our paper explores what adults living and working in the Alpine region of Victoria understand about the changes to water availability, and what they have learned about adapting to significant climatic changes in their local area. Interviews were conducted in the towns of Bright, Mount Beauty and Albury, with participants from across the Alpine region. Our study found evidence of a strong understanding of the direct impact of climate change on participants’ local community area, and a keen desire to learn about adaptation to change. In addition to an identified need for more information around climate change issues and projected impacts in general, participants saw practical hands-on water education strategies as an important way to educate people to help themselves. Conversations about where or how people learned to adapt to change were broad ranging, and clearly connected to the participants’ backgrounds, livelihoods or where they were situated. This raised the question of what responses VET might develop to address these identified learning needs. Major local industries of tourism, agriculture, water harvesting and landcare are all covered by national Training Packages that include industry-specific units of competence to support learning to live and work in an environmentally sustainable way. In addition, the national Employability Skills framework offers opportunities to build climate change awareness and adaptation into units of competency where they may not be explicitly incorporated. Our paper will outline the opportunities for VET to act as a change agent in this and other Australian communities impacted by climate change.

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The Victorian Aboriginal Economic Development Group was a mix of 13 high-profile members of the Aboriginal, not-for-profit and business communities that was formed in 2008 to make recommendations on ways to close the economic gap for Aboriginal Victorians. The recommendations in this report give priority to: creating real pathways from school to further education, training or work; preparation for work, finding a job and support in the workplace; growing Indigenous businesses, particularly in tourism; building wealth from the land; and creating leadership skills and support from mentors.

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The ePortfolio Australia Conference 2010 was held on 3-4 November 2010 at the Angliss Conference Centre in Melbourne. This set of papers, case studies and abstracts showcase current ePortfolio practice amongst the vocational education and training, higher education and adult and community education sectors. Presentations include: ePortfolios to support the developmental progression of UniSA graduate qualities against academic standards and professional requirements / Syed Mahfuzul Aziz, Margaret Faulkner, Vicki Waye, Kate Andre, John Fielke and Liz Smith; Implementing ePortfolios: success and sustainability in TAFE NSW Western Sydney Institute / Nayomie Baihn; Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in laboratory medicine at RMIT / Meaghan Botterill, Indu Singh and Jane Moon; Developing professional skills: introducing students to graduate attributes in first year engineering at RMIT / Meaghan Botterill, Caleb White and Tom Steiner; ePIE: ePortfolios for Indigenous educators: successful partnerships for sustainable solutions / Alicia Boyle, Ruth Wallace, Kerry Grace, Renu Sharma and David Morgan; The Augusta Community Portfolio: challenges of community revitalization through community curation / Darren Cambridge; Prior Learning International Research Centre (PLIRC): an international research agenda for the recognition of prior learning / Roslyn Cameron; ePortfolios: a Boomer's perspective / Michael Coghlan; The ePortfolio selection process at the University of South Australia: a case study / Stuart Dinmore; Qualifications Navigator / Wendy Davies; Giving life to teaching portfolios / Allan Goody and Brian von Konsky; A discussion of 2 case studies / Margaret Granger; ACE ePortfolios! / Liz Grigg and Lynne Gibb; AeP PostScript survey: 2010 / Gillian Hallam and Lynn McAllister; Digital portfolios as a window into the learner's mind and potential: a developmental look at assessment for the 21st century / Evangeline Harris Stefanakis; Using digital portfolios to remove the cloak of invisibility / Bronwyn Hegarty; The role of ePortfolios in an adaptive learning framework / Paul Houghton; Delivering on the promise: a model for successful ePortfolio implementation / Peter Johnson, Catherine McDermott and Russ Chess-Williams; The role of ePortfolios in mentoring adult learners seeking professional certification / Asheley Jones, Pamela Barnes, David Lindley, Anita Steinberg, Vinita Upadhyay and Kim Wilkinson; Troublesome ePortfolio implementation: a threshold concepts approach to considering institutional maturity / Gordon Joyes, Lisa Gray and Elizabeth Hartnell-Young; The use of an ePortfolio in assessing informal learning / Gordon Joyes, Angela Smallwood and Emma Crawford; Using ePortfolios to assess engineering interns / Lauren Kane and Kim Blackmore; Blended (hybrid) learning at Australian Industry Trade College Gold Coast, Australia / Olivija Komadina; PebblePad: from pilot, to implementation, to evaluation and beyond ... / Megan Lawton; The standards analysis and ePortfolio design in a learning portal platform environment / Hai Nam Le and Chien-Chung Lin; Seoul Accord iPortfolio template for computing students / Andrew Marriott and Francis Chomba; ePortfolio implementation case studies: challenges and opportunities / Margot McNeill, MingMing Diao and Amanda Parker; Implementing ePortfolios: successes and sustainability / Jo-Anne McShane; ePortfolios for supporting successful learner outcomes / Allison Miller and Owen O'Neill; ePortfolio implementation in Medical Radiation: enabling ongoing professional development for higher education students / Denise Ogilvie and Hayley Timms; ePortfolios, employability and standards: how might emerging ePortfolio systems assist the implementation of national policies of academic standards and key graduate capabilities? / Beverley Oliver; The Society and College of Radiographers (SCOR): ePortfolio at the heart of professional development activities / Chris Peat; ePortfolios in professional practice: the use of PebblePad by professional associations / Alison Poot, Shane Sutherland, Colin Dalziel and Lee Davies; The Vumi ePortfolio experience at the Metropolitan South Institute of TAFE (MSIT) / Jenny Ryan, Carol Chambers and Andrea Smith; Resource development for supporting ePortfolio engagement / Kitty Ryan and Lynn McAllister; Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education / Mary Ryan and Michael Ryan; Using ePortfolio in a virtual work placement unit to enhance learning outcomes: a reflection of the changing nature of student engagement with higher education / Melinda Shirley and Tina Cockburn; ePortfolios as a sustainable assessment tool in first year engineering / Elizabeth Smith; How do ePortfolios fit in a virtual campus? / Roger Stack; Personal Learning Networks: creating dynamic and participatory knowledge environments / Adam Staples and Laura Sanchez; Encountering ePortfolios, a mature aged student's perspective / Sandra Stewart; The challenges of maintaining a professional midwifery ePortfolio in the cloud / Sarah Stewart; Meeting the needs of students within an institutional Personal Development Planning (PDP) framework: piloting, informing, embedding and evaluating ePDP in a School of Arts, Media and Education (SAME) at a UK University - the PIeR project / Barbara Thomas and Maria Rodriguez-Yborra; The use of video portfolios as subset capability of the greater student ePortfolio / Geoff Lubich, Guy Truss, William Tree, Richard Ross, Val Evans and Dianne Wallace; The iPortfolio: a tool for work integrated learning for health promotion students / Brian von Konsky and Jude Comfort; From Pets to Pebblepad: using ePortfolios to assess workplace learning in Veterinary Nursing / Kaye Widdowson; Can ePortfolios assist university students' work integrated learning?: exploring professional competencies in Nursing and Construction Management / Anthony Williams, Tracy Levett-Jones, William Sher, Catharine Simmons, Ning Gu and Lynette Bowen. 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This paper considers the positioning of work in community learning spaces through insights drawn from a particular case of adult community education in Victoria, Australia. Despite the rhetorical behaviour location of adult community education in Victoria as a legitimate and important sector of post compulsory education and as part of the platform on which the government’s lifelong learning agenda is realised, perceptions held of it continue to devalue the significant educational work that is done within it and the outcomes it achieves. The paper draws on an analysis of a sample of qualitative interview data collected in the course of related research projects (Clemans, 2005; Billet et al., 2005; Seddon et al., 2008) to highlight the ways in which work in a community learning space is positioned, perceived and (mis)understood. These perceptions stem from those who work both within and are located outside of the community-based adult education sector. The findings demonstrate the centrality of the notion of the ‘domestic’ or home space in the ways that educational work in community settings is constructed and perceived. They suggest that a consistent emphasis on care overlays notions of unpaid, private and domestic work onto those who work in the community learning space.

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This study was commissioned by the Victorian Government’s Adult, Community and Further Education (ACFE) Board, as part of a suite of initiatives to assist adult and community education (ACE) providers operate effectively in the new funding environment. It distils best practice from the literature and provides case studies which show the application of best practice. The examples provided throughout the report are drawn from Australian and international sources. The report begins by defining who are hard-to-reach learners and presenting information on their location. Understanding local conditions is an essential element in the development of effective training. Best practice principles are then discussed in two contexts: (1) a set of principles broadly applicable to all hard-to-reach groups is described along with the strategies and techniques that flow from them; and (2) several particular groups are also considered; these groups - vulnerable workers, young people, Indigenous Australians and people with a disability - are less likely to immediately engage in a demand-driven training market, and more detailed information about them may be useful to ACE providers moving into these markets. Concluding comments provide suggestions for applying best practice, as well as the possible challenges for ACE providers trying to engage hard-to-reach learners while operating effectively in the new environment.

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The established Indian Australian community mainly consists of people with professional occupations who came to Australia after 1970, and their Australian-born children. They come from the educated urban middle class in India, speak English fluently, and are doing well in Australia. In contrast, the wave of Indian students who arrived mainly after 2001 are more likely to come from rural backgrounds. Even though they may have bachelor degrees from India, they often have poor English. Many have enrolled in vocational courses in cookery and hairdressing in the hope, often realised of gaining permanent residence. As is now well known a number of them have been subjected to robbery and violence, often racist, and some have died. This article explores this recent history and also draws on interview data. It uses this to outline some of the differences between the established community and the growing number of students, and to describe the efforts made by the two groups to bridge these differences.

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In late 2007, the Australian Industry Group commenced the Faster, Smarter, Higher Trade Outcomes Project. The project was established to consider training options which would result in apprentices gaining their trade qualifications more quickly and/or supplementing their trade training to finish with a higher or broader skills outcome. The project comprised individual pilot projects across four states; two in each of Victoria and New South Wales and one in Queensland and South Australia. The pilots were to operate: across the manufacturing sector, in skills shortage areas; across the range of company sizes from an international company operating nationally in Australia to [small and medium-sized enterprises] SMEs; across the full range of combinations of acceleration and higher qualifications - new entrants; existing apprentices; concurrent trade level qualifications; concurrent trade and higher level qualifications; and upfront training, combined on and off the job training; and across a variety of training organisations - [registered training organisations] RTOs, group training companies, other training organisations.

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Although many Australian universities have been proactive in responding to students' diverse needs through orientation and support programs, very little is known about programs needed for the successful transition of students from refugee backgrounds into tertiary study. Facilitating the early engagement of students with their studies and campus life is linked to greater student satisfaction, improved retention rates and better educational outcomes. One of the challenges that academics face is the paucity of research on the learning styles and academic needs of African and Middle Eastern students from refugee backgrounds. This paper reports on a needs analysis undertaken with a group of students from refugee backgrounds in Victoria and Western Australia, using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Participants reported that current support systems and programs are inadequate or non-existent and that many feel disadvantaged compared to Australian-born and international students. The article concludes with recommendations on how universities can better respond to the needs of students from refugee backgrounds.

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