Virtual trainings become popular: the training as intacs™ Certified Provisional Assessor (Automotive SPICE®) as well as further seminars take place online
June 19, 2020
It is essential for every company in the development environment that its employees always remain up-to-date with the latest technology and become familiar with the current methods, tools and working practices so that they can use them efficiently in their own projects. Especially in the embedded environment, numerous training courses are offered, starting with a systematic requirements elicitation, structured system and software architectures, and ending with the necessary testing and other verification measures. The accompanying processes such as project management or quality assurance also play an extremely important role.
Many of these training courses are offered as face-to-face sessions, which have the big advantage that the newly acquired knowledge can be discussed, practiced, and deepened through interaction with the trainer and the other participants. Unfortunately, most of these events have had to be cancelled in the current period, but in the meantime many of them are offered as online trainings.
The fact that the training to become an intacs™ Certified Provisional Assessor (Automotive SPICE®) including the corresponding exam has been officially allowed to take place completely online for a few weeks now arouses the interest of many customers. We offer seminar participants the opportunity to learn the contents over a longer period of time, with several shorter sessions. This makes it easier for our customers, who are often faced with the additional challenge of childcare, to integrate the online seminar into their daily home office routine.
But does this type of training really have the same effect? Can the trainer make sure that all his participants can follow? How exactly can you create a goal-oriented interaction? What else is different and therefore needs to be considered explicitly?
Our trainer Bernhard Sechser faced this challenge, from which we derived some guidelines for the online execution of seminars.
You can find a summary of his experiences as follows:
Conclusion: Even if direct personal contact and the use of body language cannot be replaced by online seminars, it is still possible to achieve a comparable learning success if these and other guidelines are considered.
Many of these training courses are offered as face-to-face sessions, which have the big advantage that the newly acquired knowledge can be discussed, practiced, and deepened through interaction with the trainer and the other participants. Unfortunately, most of these events have had to be cancelled in the current period, but in the meantime many of them are offered as online trainings.
The fact that the training to become an intacs™ Certified Provisional Assessor (Automotive SPICE®) including the corresponding exam has been officially allowed to take place completely online for a few weeks now arouses the interest of many customers. We offer seminar participants the opportunity to learn the contents over a longer period of time, with several shorter sessions. This makes it easier for our customers, who are often faced with the additional challenge of childcare, to integrate the online seminar into their daily home office routine.
But does this type of training really have the same effect? Can the trainer make sure that all his participants can follow? How exactly can you create a goal-oriented interaction? What else is different and therefore needs to be considered explicitly?
Our trainer Bernhard Sechser faced this challenge, from which we derived some guidelines for the online execution of seminars.
You can find a summary of his experiences as follows:
- Our online seminars last a maximum of 6 hours per day including breaks. This makes it easier for our participants, who often face the additional challenge of childcare, to integrate the online seminar into their everyday home office life. Example: our 2-day classroom training is conducted online on 3 days, the Provisional Assessor seminar on 6 to 7 days.
- Additional "repeat sessions" and questions rounds help participans to catch up on any content they may have missed.
- We offer our participants a shared working directory (cloud storage), where all documents are stored and where exercise results can be exchanged.
- We use virtual whiteboards to encourage interaction and not just to present static slides.
- We use features like "hand signals" and "mute" to ensure efficient communication between participants.
- The use of a webcam has also proven to be effective for the participants, so that they can see each other during the introduction round and in between and not only have to recognize voices.
- For training courses with a final examination, we carry out a technical and content test to take away the participants' fear of possible problems.
Conclusion: Even if direct personal contact and the use of body language cannot be replaced by online seminars, it is still possible to achieve a comparable learning success if these and other guidelines are considered.