Collaboration

Things have been quiet here at the Cultural Studies and Education SIG of late. Recently, after some discussion with another of the Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre Special Interest Groups it was decided that for the rest of 2011 we would collaborate with the good people from the Inclusive Education SIG.

With that in mind, last week I joined in their monthly videoconference where Karen Seary from CQUniversity reported on her visit to Adelaide in April where she attended a forum on dual sector institutions. This was of particular to all of us as CQUniversity has recently been given the green light to go ahead with merger plans with the Central Queensland TAFE. This would make the institution one of the very few in Australia that blends TAFE and University operations. Naturally, there are many implications to be considered and the merger is in its very early stages. Karen had a great deal of interesting material to disseminate. It was interesting that she noted the forum spoke of how most institutions were not dual-sector ready but in preparing they needed to focus on building strong, collaborative relationships. At present there are only five dual sector institutions in Australia - four in Victoria, and one on the Northern Territory. They each have adopted various management and organisational structures and the concept of "transfer shock" was used at the forum to describe the culture shock that the newly blended institution and its people can suffer through - even at the best of times. Despite the fact that TAFEs and Universities can exist side by side it was noted that there is no such thing as a seamless transition from one sector to the other for students. Karen observed how many speakers at the forum discussed the gap in expectations that needed to be filled by providing TAFE to Uni students with tertiary learning skills in order to aid them to succeed.

All this was food for thought for all us who were present and no doubt as time goes on more will be revealed as to how CQUniversity plans to move ahead with its proposed merger. Collaboration it seems, is the word for the week.