AltEd to provide courses to bridge digital skills gap

Six education providers have formed a new industry group to offer courses that train people in skills for the digital economy.

The new industry group ­wanted to show employers how they could fill their skills gaps.

Six education providers from outside of the mainstream system have come together to form a new industry group to represent their interests as they take advantage of the growing opportunity to offer courses that train people in skills for the digital economy.

Riley Batchelor, a co-founder of a new group called AltEd, says the organisation has been set up to boost the profile of the new breed of non-accredited ­educa­tion providers offering short courses in many areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and digital technology.

“We thought, let’s work together collaboratively to come ­together as an industry,” he said.

“These types of businesses are not as well known as they should be. Universities and TAFEs get the headlines and government funding.”

Mr Batchelor, chief executive of online provider Masterly, which offers courses on ­blockchain, cyber security and ­artificial intelligence, said the group ­wanted to show employers how they could fill their skills gaps.

Other founding members of AltEd are The Plato Project, which offers business education programs; General Assembly, a large international provider in new technology and entrepreneurship skills; QLC, an online school that places students in ­online internships with startups; Zambesi, which offers short ­­face-to-face workshops with ­practi­tioners in business skills; and Echos, a school of design thinking

According to Mr Batchelor, the new group has three main goals. One is for its members to help and support each other.

A second is to communicate with government and challenge the way education is currently structured and regulated.

“We want to make sure that government knows the good learning outcomes we are getting.

“We’d like to think that at some stage in the future there would be funding opportunities for people like ourselves,” Mr Batchelor said.

The third goal is to engage more widely with employers.

“We teach the skills that employers want in industry,” he said.

Traditional learning institutions often weren’t able to move fast enough to keep up with ­technological change, he pointed out. “Our products are generally more flexible, efficient and effective than accredited certificates and diplomas and degrees in meeting student outcomes,” Mr Batchelor said.

He said the courses offered by AltEd members were not an ­alternative to an undergraduate degree but they could bridge the gap that people often needed to fill in order to work in a modern company that needed up-to-date business skills.

While traditional providers ­focused on the time students spent on a subject, or performance in exams, AltEd providers focused on fast and efficient ­delivery of skills and knowledge, Mr Batchelor said.

“Students want to be able to pick and choose the specific skills they want to learn at any given time, to stay ahead in their career on a ‘just in time’ basis, instead of battling through a four-year ­one-size-fits-all degree or a $50,000 MBA program,” Mr Batchelor said.

He said that one hallmark of the educators in AltEd was that they worked with practitioners from industry as teachers.

“Learning from industry practitioners is the key to learning the right stuff to get yourself a job.”

Mr Batchelor said the six founding members of AltEd knew each other well and were quality businesses.

“We’ve vetted each other,” he said.

Any other education providers that joined the group would have to be of a similar level of quality and be just as student-focused, he noted.

Non-accredited providers do not work within the Australian Qualifications Framework and they are not regulated by the ­Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency or the Australian Skills Quality Authority.