Research

Research Projects

Need social or market or industry research done? Shea Business Consulting has extensive experience in the design, oversight, conduct, analysis, report writing and evaluation of research projects. Both Lyndon and Sherinda have worked on a broad range of education and training initiatives and managed the conduct and delivery of high profile national projects. Some of the projects we have participated in include:

• High Level Review of Training Packages, ANTA 2002-2004
• Integrated Skills and Qualifications Framework, IBSA 2005-2007
• Employability Skills in Training Packages, ANTA 2003, IBSA 2005-2007

Project Evaluation

We would like to see an evaluation culture where some form of review is built into all projects. Do you want to know if your program or projects have achieved their objectives? Have they been a success? Do they meet standards of excellence? We can help you answer some of these questions. Lyndon set up the national system of evaluating training materials and inducted a team of consultants into the process.

We’ve thought a great deal about different approaches to evaluation–people tend to measure what is easy to measure, when that may not necessarily be the most meaningful indicator of achievement of outcomes. We will collaborate with you to get the most thorough and thoughtfully appropriate success measures and indicators.

Project Co-ordination

We are co-ordinating the judging of the 2008 Victorian State Training Awards, OTTE.

Writing

We do report writing and letter writing in plain writing. We have been influenced most recently by the excellent Don Watson in his argument, Death Sentence–the Decay of Public Language.

What have we done in the ghostly grey world of Training Packages, to advance the cause of better writing? We have consistently, and with some success, railed against the expression of competency Performance Criteria in the passive voice. Previously it was decreed that the passive voice be used because no-one wanted to take responsibility for such a stupid decision. It was the way it was. More recently it was made optional to convert the criteria to active voice, a non-decision again wisely made in the passive. We can make a promise: we will make it clear who is responsible for doing what.

Our clients include

• Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST)
• Specialist Energy Training Network
• ASCET Institute
• Tricorp Logistics (Singapore)
• Victoria University
• Office of Training and Tertiary Education, OTTE