25 November 2025
By Siobhan O’Sullivan, FSO Skills Accelerator-AI
Australia’s national conversation on AI in education is accelerating, and our FSO Skills Accelerator-AI program is driving practical action.
The Skills Accelerator brings together vocational education and training (VET) and industry to connect, collaborate, and share best practices, expanding access to AI skills for VET learners, educators, and administrators.
Last month, more than 100 partners joined our Action Learning Sprint #2 to co-design real-world AI projects that can be tested, refined, and scaled to build AI capability across the VET sector.
Built on a ‘strategic doing’ approach, each 90-day sprint follows a clear cadence:
- Days 1-30: Ideate and select a project
- Days 31-60: Test and iterate
- Days 61-90: Evaluate (keep, pivot, or discard)
Inside the sprints
Sprint #2 explored three key themes shaping AI adoption in VET:
- AI literacy and confidence building: helping educators and learners use AI safely, ethically, and effectively.
- Ethical and responsible AI adoption:ensuring governance and trust frameworks keep pace with innovation.
- AI for productivity and industry impact:testing practical use cases that improve teaching, learning, and workforce outcomes.
Sprint #2 also revealed strong demand for cost-effective AI upskilling for VET leaders. Partners emphasised the need for proven, low-cost leadership content to boost confidence and capability among RTO executives.
From these discussions, three project squads emerged, each developing a sprint project to test in the coming months:
- Piloting two stackable learning products – an ‘Introduction to AI’ micro-skill and a prompt engineering for VET micro-credential. These will showcase scalable, practice-based AI learning pathways.
- Testing AI-assisted workflows to boost quality, speed, and compliance in curriculum design.
- Digital literacy for learners, trainers and educators focused on building a baseline of digital fluency in AI tools.
Partners including Microsoft, Lumify Learn, Adobe, RockMouse, Institute of Applied Technology – Digital, Canberra Institute of Technology, TAFE SA and National Institute of Technology are participating in the squads, co-developing MVPs to test in real-world settings before year-end.
What’s next
Squads will continue working through the FSO collaboration platform, turning ideas into tested solutions that strengthen AI capability across the VET system.
A sprint update covering insights from Sprint #1 and #2 will be held on 16 December. Sprint #3 launches on 28 January 2026, expanding into new AI adoption challenges across the sector.
Want to shape the future of AI skills in VET? Register as a Skills Accelerator partner and join the conversation.
Together, we’re accelerating AI skills development for VET learners, educators, and administrators to meet the demands of a changing workforce.