Training & Personal Development at Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts

As mentioned before, I have been unimpressed with the graduate certificate training offered through the university as they have been very disorganised and not as inclusive as they advertised to be (a lot of assumed knowledge, not as flexible with wfh arrangements etc)

There has been a lot of training as a graduate. We do training every wednesday that we have not been at the university doing our graduate certificate. I think it has been very beneficial to learn more about different processes, sensitivities, and best practices. We have also had a lot of guest speakers and hearing about different perspectives from both within and outside the department has been beneficial. The graduate certificate itself has been useful experience from an academic perspective.

Most training and development programs we have been subject to have been really good. Some though have been insanely dull and even repetitive at times.

We have conducted a variety of training including for project management, writing for the aps, cultural awareness, dealing with difficult people and policy that has provided us with different perspectives for our work and situations we might be in.

We have a graduate certificate built into our program. As mentioned previously, while this is a really good and attractive aspect of the program, the classes are run poorly and do not feel relevant or applicable to our work. We have an extensive formal training program which spans from working skills to cultural competencies and building a good culture. These have always been informative and really helpful. I appreciate their efforts in trying to equip us and helping build a open and learning culture. On the job training has been good but again depends on the team

A lot of formal trainings for graduates, including writing in the aps, project management, etc. Some trainings were better and more useful than others

Very in depth

- not only technical, 'work' skills but also interpersonal skills like respectful language and accidental counselling

The university experience could be made way more productive and useful. The professors were all quite detached from young people and the outside world. Most of them made a number of problematic comments that made students feel uncomfortable or loose respect for them. Often materials were not included or were incredibly disorganised, with wrong rubrics attached for assignments, sessions not recorded properly, etc. It felt like they did not care about our learning and we were not provided the highest quality content for the use of departmental resources. Online learning was incredibly poorly done which made it really hard for those who often need to wfh for a variety of reasons. The breaks were too long and I personally did not feel motivated to attend uni or engage in the sessions in a way that would allow me to make the most of it. We had many assignments where the material was not taught and it was put upon us to teach ourselves. We were also not given time to study during the day which was really hard to manage in our rotations which were also busy, on top of busy or unaccommodating personal lives. I think the concept of the graduate certificate is great but the department should seriously re-evaluate its choice of uc as a provider and how they carry out the graduate certificate.