A 3 Glossary of Terms

• Admission: This involves accepting a trainee’s enrolment into a specific programme after ensuring they have met all programme entry requirements.
• Access: The opportunity for a diversity of applicants to enter GTI programmes, as long as they meet the specified entry criteria, ensuring equality and objectivity.
• Activity: A pre-arranged developmental exercise designed to stimulate learning in support of a key learning point.
• Aim: An overall statement of what the training programme will achieve on its completion.
• Assessment: The process of gathering, evaluating, analysing, and judging evidence in order to measure whether an individual has achieved the intended learning outcomes, or the performance outcomes set for a specific unitor qualification.
• Assessment Criteria: Explicit predetermined standards of required performance to demonstrate competence.
• Associate: An independent contractor performing a service for GTI. They may be associate trainers or service contractors.
• BQA: Bahrain’s Education and Training Authority.
• Certification: The formal documentation process that records the successful achievement of a qualification.
• Competencies: A combination of Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (Behaviours) that can be taught, implemented and measured.
• Competent: A trainee who meets all the prepublished assessment criteria to the required learning outcome standard.
• Continuous Improvement: GTI’s commitment to the ongoing elimination of any problems that keep its learning programmes, services or processes from meeting the expectations of its trainees and key stakeholders (see Quality Improvement).
• Credit: The value assigned to the amount or volume of learning required to complete a unit of learning or achieve a qualification. One credit is equivalent to ten total learning hours.
• Credit Transfer: A process whereby the credits already earned by a trainee in one qualification are recognised toward a new qualification.
• Diversity: Acceptance and respect for all trainees regardless of their educational backgrounds, religious beliefs, creed, colour or gender.
• Driving Question/Problem: A key engagement activity used to stimulate learning and engagement at the beginning of a session.
• DVR: Directorate of Vocational Review.
• Facilitator: The role that the trainer takes in guiding and supporting trainees to achieve specific learning outcomes. Typically, facilitation utilizes skilful questioning to stimulate higher-order-thinking, providing activities and experiences to develop trainees’ knowledge, understanding and skills, whilst helping them to take increasing responsibility for their own growth and development.
• Formative Assessment: Assessment at regular intervals to support a trainee’s progress, with provision of feedback in order to help the learner improve their overall performance. As well as identifying a trainee’s strengths and areas that need improving, formative assessment results also assist the trainer to improve their teaching.
• Inclusion: Ensuring that the diversity of learners is well-catered for and that all trainees are actively engaged in learning. Inclusion necessitates that trainees of all levels of ability are provided with appropriate support, that their learning needs and learning styles are identified, and well-catered for.
• Level Descriptors: A set of progressive statements assigned to each level of the NQF, that describe the complexity of acquired learning in terms of knowledge, skills, and competence.
• Learning Outcomes: A set of statements setting out what trainees will know, be able to do or understand by the end of a Programme/Module/Session.
• Learning Resource(s): The tools, materials and equipment required to support key learning experiences or activities, and to facilitate growth and personal development within a session.
• Moderation: Moderation activity ensures assessments are valid and reliable. Effective moderation necessitates processes for appeal and the ability to register complaints so that natural justice is assured if systems fail to deliver what is perceived as a fair outcome.
• Module: Sometimes known as a course, this is a second-tier learning component that forms part of a programme.
• Module (course) Descriptor: A Document that sets out all of the learning, development and assessment requirements for a specific unit of training and development.
• National Qualifications Framework (NQF): An instrument for the classification of qualifications according to a set of criteria for specified levels of learning achieved. It integrates and coordinates national qualifications sub-systems and improves quality, transparency, access, and progression.
• Pathways: The vertical and/or horizontal routes trainees take to navigate through their learning experience, by building on their knowledge and developing their skills, competencies and life experiences through education and training.
• Policies: Policies are guidelines intended to save time and effort on the part of individuals (staff and students) by providing direction on how to tackle certain organisational requirements based on what has worked in the past and international best practice.
• Programme Descriptor: A Document that sets out all the administration, learning and assessment requirements for a programme of learning and personal development.
• Quality: ‘Fit for Purpose’ – Meeting the required standard in the most effective and efficient way.
• Quality Assurance: Is about giving GTI’s stakeholders confidence that we do what we say we will do.
• Quality Assurance System: GTI’s Quality Management System (QMS), comprising policies and procedures, together with its Quality Audit and Review systems, which ensure that the quality of teaching and learning is maintained, that services are improved, and that we meet stakeholder and government agency requirements.
• Quality Improvement: Is GTI’s systematic and continuous monitoring, measurement, and analysis to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
• Quality Maintenance: Checking actual performance against the standard and actively working to remain within that standard.
• Qualification: A package of units judged to be worthy of formal recognition in a certificate issued locally by GTI or by an Awarding Organisation (AO).
• Reflection: An opportunity for trainers to reflect and share best practice and make recommendations for session or module improvement.
• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL): The assessment of an individual’s knowledge, skills, and competence acquired through previous Non-Formal and Informal Learning, which is used to grant status or credit towards a qualification.
• Session: The smallest learning component within a unit of learning (course or module).
• Session Plan: A plan that sets out the structure, content, learning and assessment strategies for a single lesson.
• Short Course: A series of sessions that progress trainees to meet the overall learning outcomes. A Short Course must not exceed 16 Contact hours.
• Special Needs: Special needs are education requirements resulting from experiencing learning difficulties and/or having physical, intellectual, social, or emotional capabilities that restrict or hinder the capacity of a trainee to participate in or benefit from education and training.
• Stakeholder: An individual, a group or an organisation that has interest in, or can be affected by, GTI’s teaching and learning interventions.
• Students of determination: Trainees with identified special needs on admission are sometimes referred to as students of determination, to acknowledge their tenacity and resilience, as they strive to overcome any limitations posed by their disability or disabilities.
• Summative Assessment: To measure the trainee’s level of competence to specified learning outcomes at the end of a course/module or programme of learning.
• Training Programme: A combination of modules and sessions that progress learners to meet the overall programme learning outcomes. A Training Programme shall be more than 16 Contact hours.
• Trainee: An individual learner who is actively enrolled on a GTI Programme of Learning, whether studying in the physical or virtual classroom or learning ‘on-job’ in a work placement.
• Verification: A predetermined assessment to test all trainees against specified session/module learning outcomes.