Commonly Used Terms

• Accredited learning
  – Learning which leads to a recognised qualification.
• Co-design
  – A process where a programme of learning is designed with input from both the education provider and relevant stakeholders, most commonly members of industry that employ graduates. The aim of co-design is to more closely align the needs of industry and the capabilities of learners. The desired result is to see more work-ready graduates finish their studies and find employment more easily.
• Community of practice (COP)
  – A group of people who have come together as a result of a strong interest or passion for an activity (such as teaching) and interact in order to improve practice in this activity.
• Competency
  – Competency is the ability to apply and use a set of related skills, knowledge, and abilities to successfully perform functions or tasks in a defined work setting.
• Competency-based training (CBT)
  – An approach to training used widely in technical and vocational education and training. It emphasises mastery of learning outcomes that define the skills and knowledge needed. A learner must be considered competent before moving onto the next stage of their learning journey. For this reason, CBT is not a time-based approach.
• Digital literacy
  – The ability to use the ICT tools required to participate in the workplace ,learning institutions, and everyday life. These include the abilities to find, understand, evaluate, create and communicate digital information.
• Dual system
  – Education or training with time in an educational institution or training centre and in the workplace. This is often part of a formal apprenticeship where the learner is at the same time an employee and student.
• eLearning
  – The use of any digital device for teaching and learning, especially for delivery or accessing of content. Thus e-Learning can take place without any reference to a network or connectivity. The digital device used by the learner to access materials need not be connected to a digital network, either a local area network or to the Internet (or even to a cell phone network if a Tablet is used as a terminal or access device).
• Embedded literacy and numeracy
  – Combining literacy and numeracy with vocational skills so that they are practiced more frequently and applied in realistic contexts.
• Formative assessment
  – An activity that is used as both a learning tool and assessment tool. It is used to gauge a learner’s understanding prior to a more formal assessment activity. It should provide both the teacher and learner with information that can be used to improve the learner’s understanding of the topic.
• Learning outcome
  – An intended, identifiable, and measurable learning or behaviour that is demonstrated by a learner following a sequence of learning.
• Open education resources (OER)
  – Teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work.
• Quality assurance
  – Processes involved with ensuring that relevant standards and requirements for teaching, learning, assessment, and management have been met in accordance with legal and or organisational requirements.
• Recognition of current competence (RCC)
  – An assessment process where people with existing knowledge and skills can have these recognised with an awarded qualification following an assessment of evidence against outcomes of the qualification.
• Recognition of prior learning (RPL)
  – The granting of credit towards a qualification based on the formal and/or informal learning that a learner has completed previously.
• Rubric
  – A framework – usually a matrix or grid, made up of a set of criteria and standards that describe an expected level of performance.
• Summative assessment
  – An evaluation made by a teacher or assessor at the end of an assessment activity that usually counts towards a grade or a score for a unit of learning.
• Technical and vocational education and training (TVET)
  – This refers to education, training and skills development relating to a wide range of occupational fields, production, services and livelihoods.