Skills-First Consulting Services
Let's get clear on your skills, evidence, and pathways.
We help institutions work out what their skills problem actually is, why it’s costing them enrolments and funding, and what has to be designed before technology steps in.
The Core Problems
PROBLEM #1
Identifying Skills and Bridging Language Gaps
Institutions can describe what they teach. They can't always show what skills that teaching actually produces.
Education providers naturally talk in the language of curriculum, assessment and grades. Learners and employers need plain language that shows what a person actually knows and can do. A grade doesn’t prove capability – in an AI-enabled world, mapping verified outcomes to specific skills is the only way to show a qualification still means something.
PROBLEM #2
Linking to What Industry Needs
Naming the skills is step one. The next question is whether anyone outside the institution recognises them.
Labour market data helps, but only to a point – it shows broad hiring trends, not whether your program produces what employers in your sector actually need. With funding increasingly tied to outcomes, that gap is exactly what everyone deciding whether to fund you is asking about.
PROBLEM #3
Making That Visible for Learners
Even with skills identified and linked to industry, most learners still leave with a grade, not a clear account of what they can do.
That means they can’t explain their own capability to an employer, and you can’t point to it as proof your programs work. It doesn’t take a big platform to start – even a clear, well-structured record makes the difference.
How We Work
Solution First
We start with your problem, not our software. The consulting stands on its own – you don’t need to buy or deploy anything to work with us. Where it genuinely helps, we can recommend technology solutions, but that’s a “when it’s useful,” not a precondition.
Capacity Relief
Most institutions already know they have a skills problem. What they don’t have is the staff, time or data structures to act on it. We’re a specialist team injection that clears the strategic backlog.
Pragmatic Translation
We convert dense academic policy and curriculum data into clear, specific skills data that makes sense to funders, employers and learners.
Our Services
SERVICE 1
Skills Identification
We help you find the skills already present in your curriculum or learning assets and turn them into a structured, usable skills foundation.
Reviewing curriculum documentation, learning outcomes, or competency statements to identify explicit and implied skills. Outputs include structured skill profiles categorised by domain and course level.
SERVICE 2
Skills Mapping and Consulting
We translate education language into skills language, and help you map the relationships between curriculum, assessment, evidence, credentials and workforce relevance.
Connecting skills across course assessments, credential targets, and institutional frameworks to build an operational translation layer between what you teach and what the workforce requires.
SERVICE 3
Gap Analysis and Pathways Consulting
We help you understand what a learner already has, what they need next, and the most efficient pathway to close the gap.
Designing evidence thresholds, mapping current competencies against target programs, and establishing precise pathway logic to support flexible, modular learner mobility.
SERVICE 4
Skills and AI Consultation
We help you use AI in skills and recognition work without pretending AI solves the underlying curriculum, evidence, privacy or governance problems for you.
Conducting AI readiness reviews, defining operational parameters, managing privacy or data security guardrails, and designing realistic process mechanics for AI-assisted mapping.
SERVICE 5
Technology Consulting and Solution Architecture
We help you use standard technology to operationalise your architecture safely, without making system choices too early.”
Assessing system data paths, mapping integrations across your LMS and student information ecosystems, and providing build-vs-buy guidance to ensure long-term stability.
SERVICE 6
Skills Literacy and Capability Building
We help build shared institutional understanding of skills language to ensure project sustainability
Developing workshops, capability-building blocks, and internal materials to help academic, training and product teams build shared skills-to-curriculum translation concepts.
How Our Services Help
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE
Unlocking seamless pathways across higher education, vocational, and non-formal learning
Post-secondary institutions face mounting government mandates and public pressure to eliminate credit transfer barriers between universities, TAFE/VET providers, and industry. We help you harmonise disparate qualification frameworks into unified, transparent skill models without forcing multi-year degree re-accreditation.
- Bridge the structural disconnect between dense academic learning outcomes and competency-based training units.
- Establish standardised credit translation rules that satisfy national harmonisation and qualification guidelines.
- Design transparent, evidence-backed pathway maps that accelerate student transfer credit and lifelong mobility.
CORE STAKEHOLDERS:
- Pro VC (Academic Partnerships) / Vice Provost of Academic Affairs
- Directors of Articulation & Pathways
- TAFE/VET Alliance Leads / Community College Transfer & Articulation Directors
- University Registrars
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE
Mapping curriculum parameters to clear career outcomes
Higher education institutions are facing compounding trust, relevance, and ROI pressures. We help you extract embedded skills directly from your syllabi, documentation, and attributes without disrupting academic balance.
- Identify explicit and implied skills inside your existing course parameters.
- Convert academic learning outcome documentation into usable skills intelligence.
- Align curriculum elements to meet regional policy and harmonisation criteria.
CORE STAKEHOLDERS:
- DVC (Academic) / Vice Provost of Academic Affairs
- Pro VC (Education) / Dean of Curriculum & Instruction
- Curriculum Chairs
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE
Building precise evidence and granular pathway logic
Vocational training providers require strong, granular mapping models to navigate structural program updates, credit transfers, and regional cross-sector alignment.
- Map clean learning pathways across diverse vocational and higher education qualification modules.
- Structure robust evidence-based mapping to address policy harmonisation frameworks.
- Design tailored gap analysis blueprints to accelerate regional workforce transitions.
CORE STAKEHOLDERS:
- Directors of Learning Technologies
- Compliance Leads
- Pathway Managers / Community College Workforce Development Directors
STRATEGIC INSIGHT
“We establish the granular mapping required for complex transitions – such as cross-skilling workers entering high-growth industries – without defaulting to full qualification pathways.”
Recommended Entry Point: Service 3 (Gap Analysis and Pathways Consulting)
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE
Linking short-form assets to explicit workforce value
Micro-credentials require clear links between learning outcomes, underlying evidence patterns, explicit skill statements, and direct ecosystem relevance.
- Design clear skill structures that provide defensible real-world capability definitions.
- Establish explicit credential-to-framework translation maps across disjointed industry codes.
- Differentiate short programs by embedding verified, specific assessment validation guidelines.
CORE STAKEHOLDERS:
- Heads of Micro-credentials / Directors of Continuing & Professional Education
- Short Course Product Managers
Our Team
This Isn't Theory. It's What We've Been Doing for a Decade.
10 years connecting learning, skills and evidence – across higher education, VET, and workforce systems in Australia, Canada and beyond.
Anyone can hand you a framework. What you’re buying with Edalex is the fact that we’ve built the skills, mapping and evidence infrastructure behind real institutions – and we know where it breaks.
Dan McFadyen
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Margo Griffith
Principal Skills Consultant
Melinda O'Halloran
Senior Project Manager
Nelson Cheng
Technical Lead
Institutions we've worked with:
CASE STUDY
Identifying embedded skills within existing curriculum
Working with CQU to systematically surface the skills already embedded in course content, giving institutional leaders a clear, defensible picture of what students are actually learning.
CASE STUDY
Linking curriculum skills to industry needs
Partnering with Southern Cross University to connect mapped curriculum skills directly to workforce and industry requirements, strengthening the case for funding and enrolment.
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT
Skills-First Strategy Check
Request a 1-Hour Strategic Diagnostic
Review your institutional objectives directly with our specialist consulting team. We focus entirely on actionable next steps.