Before starting online training, it’s important to recognise what skills already exist amongst your employees. If they have acquired particular skills through self-tuition, study or life experience, they may not have to actually participate in the course to achieve a qualification.
Skills recognition acknowledges that an employee has gained the skills required to complete the online training, without actually having to do the course.
Registered Training Organisations apply skills recognition in two ways:
- Recognition of Prior Learning
- Credit Transfer
Recognition of Prior Learning
Recognition of Prior Learning is a formal acknowledgment of skills and knowledge acquired through:
- Life experience or hobbies including musical, mechanical or linguistic skill
- Work experience or volunteer work
- Formal training through other courses, college of training programs at work
RPL looks at the existing skills and matches it to the course the student is planning to study. The student may then be able to skip over a couple of units/modules because the skills are already obtained.
Benefits of RPL include:
- Students can complete course sooner
- Study load and price is reduced
- Student can decide to add other units/modules to acquire an additional qualification
- Training requirements can be targeted
If students believe they have RPL for a specific course, they will be required to provide the RTO with evidence.
Credit Transfer
Credit transfer gives students the opportunity to count relevant, completed study through various training providers (TAFE, university, professional organisations etc.) towards their current course.
This generally works in two ways:
- Students receive credit from courses they have previously completed and therefore do not need to repeat them.
- Students may receive exemption from introductory courses, but are still required to complete the total credit points for the course.
Don’t miss out on recognising existing skills! It can save employees a lot of time and money.
