As face-to-face training came to a halt last year, the move online has presented new opportunities to streamline engineering skills management
As face-to-face training came to a halt last year, the move online has presented new opportunities to streamline engineering skills management.
Much of the training in this sector was delivered face-to-face as it required direct access to an expert engineer trainer and their extensive industry knowledge to learn how to apply this highly technical content in practice and discuss the nuances specific to a learner’s work.
During the pandemic, training provider Engineering Education Australia adapted its workshops for online delivery to ensure engineers could continue to access the learning and development they required remotely.
Given the specialised nature of this training, it wasn’t just a case of transferring the workshops online. It was important to redesign them to be effective and engaging in the online environment as well as continuing to connect engineers with industry experts.
Breaking full-day courses up into a series of shorter sessions to maintain engagement levels, interactive elements, and quality reference materials to access after the workshops were critical to the success of delivering these workshops online and achieving the learning outcomes.
Expert engineer and Engineering Education Australia trainer Mike Hurd was skeptical at first, when COVID hit and was asked to deliver his workshops online.
“I worried that online training would lose the emphasis and quality that the face-to-face environment provided.
“However, since we developed the workshops for online delivery, I realised that the content could still be effectively delivered online through the use of two-way communication and discussion tools afforded by Zoom.”
Through this live classroom environment engineers have the direct access to industry experts to develop a deeper understanding of a topic, discuss real world examples relevant to their work and resolve queries for application.
Since delivering online, Hurd also found it was easier to roll out training for companies requesting customised workshops for their teams.
“We can now deliver to companies who have staff all around Australia concurrently, without having to fly around the country”, said Hurd.
“Including a mix of people from all over the country also enhances the experience as learners can share their unique learnings.”
Customising workshops allows companies to meet specific business and L&D objectives, contextualising content to their engineering team’s work with specific project case studies and activities that relate to their work.
Strategic Education Partnerships Manager, David Trott said the ability to deliver customized workshops online is helping engineering firms achieve their engineering development needs in a faster and more consistent manner.
“Customised online workshops are becoming an increasingly popular format among Australian engineering firms to educate and develop their employees.
“Tailoring a workshop achieves greater flexibility in course content, increases cost effectiveness and targets business outcomes”, said Trott.
Combining the most effective online learning methods with unique, customised content has enabled many organisations to continue to upskill their engineering teams in a remote work environment.
Find out more about customised online training for engineering teams from Engineering Education Australia.
