LearningWorks scoops two of seven national education awards

Thursday, 12 September 2019

LearningWorks won the ITENZ Innovative Use of Technology Award and the Leadership and Professional Development Award

The award-winning LearningWorks team: L-R Lisa Jones, Sandra Hutton, Donna Cunniffe and Jeremy Fitzpatrick.

Learning design, technologies and training specialist, LearningWorks has taken out two of the seven awards at the annual Independent Tertiary Education New Zealand (ITENZ) Awards.

LearningWorks, a Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) owned company, won the Innovative Use of Technology Award and the Leadership and Professional Development Award.

The awards were presented at the annual ITENZ conference where it was also announced that LearningWorks Chief Executive, Sandra Hutton will join the ITENZ Board.

Hutton says winning the awards “is a big deal” as capability is important in the education sector and her team deserve the recognition for the great work they do.

“Like many people who work in this field, we’re not good at singing our praises, we’re here to help learning work and make a difference to others.

“These awards have given us a chance to reflect on the work we do and the value of that. Winning is great, but even without that, we found the submission process really valuable.”

Wintec Chief Executive, David Christiansen says the awards are evidence of LearningWorks’ credibility in a changing sector environment.

“It has been a tough year for our subsidiaries while we work through the wider context of the Government’s reform for the vocational education sector.

“In the meantime, the team at LearningWorks has been quietly building their capability, creating new partnerships and adding value to the many organisations they work with and the learners experiencing their products.”

Hutton says this year, LearningWorks is focussing on diversifying and building its presence in a changing tertiary education environment and one where vocational education needs to be more responsive and flexible than ever before.

“LearningWorks has cross-sector working partnerships. We work across the Institutes of Technology (ITP) sector and Industry Training Organisations (ITOs). We recently partnered with Open Polytechnic to co-develop a course, where we are sharing resources and intellectual property.”

Hutton adds the collaborative partnership with Open Polytechnic is resulting in a high-quality multi-delivery product using capabilities from two organisations, to help learning work and enable quality learning.

“Being innovative with delivery and sharing resources with the learner success as the outcome is our greatest reward.

“Winning is confirmation that what we do and the path we’re taking, is in the right direction. At the end of the day, we are helping to shape the future of education."