THE five phases of the journey

The five phases of the student’s journey are important to Australian Operator Training to ensure the quality of the student experience.

Australian Operator Training supports ASQA’s student-centred performance assessment approach and is structured to follow a student’s experience through the five key phases of the student journey.

Journey mapping is a creative tool used to visualise students’ relationships with a training organisation. Capturing and understanding student voice using a journey map will help the complete life cycle of a student. The entire story is told from the perspective of the student; from initial contact and then throughout the process of engagement.

A map represents the process that a prospective or current student goes through when interacting with a training organisation over a period of time. It provides an insight into the minds of our students’ – their needs, motivations, decision-making processes and pain points. This information is used to identify touchpoints (specific stages of a learner’s experience) and pain points (problems or difficulties the student encounters).

The first phase of the student’s journey focuses on a student’s experience of marketing and recruitment.

Students and employers need clear, accurate and readily accessible information to make informed choices about the training that will best meet their needs.

It is important to students that the information they receive about their course before they enrol is factual and accurate.

Australian Operator Training is proud to have clear and concise marketing information in the way of Course Brochures that define what the student and employers are receiving.

The second phase of the student’s journey focuses on the student’s enrolment experience with Australian Operator Training.

It is important that potential students receive accurate advice about a course to ensure it meets their needs before they enrol and understand details about the course—such as how long the course will take, the study requirements and assessment methods.

Students should be aware of costs, payment terms and conditions (including refund policies) and understand their own rights and responsibilities as well as Australian Operator Training’s

The third phase of the student journey focuses on how Australian Operator Training support students’ progression in their learning.

Australian Operator Training is responsible for supporting students, keeping students informed and managing complaints and appeals.

We aim to maximise the outcomes for the learner through our students remaining fully informed about any changes to agreed services.

Our support to the learner and other services are tailored to students’ needs which means we have stronger completion rates and client satisfaction, enhancing our reputation.

Australian Operator Training has a publicly available complaints and appeals policy on our website www.aot.net.au which allows learners to easily engage with our staff about their concerns can stop minor issues becoming larger and provide valuable feedback that can be used to improve our services.

This phase of the student’s experience focuses on the training and assessment. High-quality training and assessment means students are well equipped for employment or further study; their qualification is seen as credible when they enter the job market; and they are judged by employers as holding the skills and competencies specified in their qualification.

In turn, high-quality training and assessment means that employers can have confidence that vocational education and training (VET) graduates in the workplace will safely and productively apply the skills described by their qualification.

It’s important to Australian Operator Training to have our trainers and assessors be professional and knowledgeable about their subjects and industry areas, the amount of training is enough to allow learners to practise new skills before they are assessed. We ensure that our learners can access good-quality learning resources and facilities and assessment activities are fair and well explained and students are given helpful feedback.

In the training and assessment phase of the student journey, Australian Operator Training is responsible for:

• Implementing, monitoring and evaluating training and assessment strategies and practices
• Engage with industry
• Conduct effective assessment
• Employ skilled trainers and assessors
• Provide supervision of trainers where needed
• Employ experts to teach trainers and assessors
• Independent validation of training and assessment qualifications
• Manage transition from superseded training products

The fifth and final phase of the student’s journey focuses on the completion phase of the student’s experience with Australian Operator Training; the end of the learners training and assessment; and the issuance of their certification.

The integrity of qualifications issued is critically important to students (and their employers). They need to be confident that their training and assessment has been high quality. Students want to receive their certification in a timely way to ensure they are not disadvantaged in seeking employment.

Australian Operator Training is responsible for providing secure certification and participate in the Student Identifier scheme.