Client

Project

Jost Siegfried, Team Leader Product Development, FITEC
"We found them to be good listeners, innovative thinkers and very willing to adapt and change as the project moved along and industry provided guidance and feedback. Sustained interaction by the project sponsor and its industries enabled these projects to be accepted and endorsed by industry upon completion. I can recommend Edutech KM to any organisation wanting to create learning resources for their industries."

In the last two years, Edutech KM has worked with FITEC on three substantial training resource development projects, including:

• Seven foundation skills packages for new wood manufacturing qualifications, covering technical, safety and induction skills. Blended learning materials with some elements designed to be trainer-led and others self-paced, as determined by audience, subject matter and environment. Included assessment guides
• Seven competitive manufacturing packages aligned to unit standards levels 2 - 4. Development of trainee guides, trainer guides and slide presentations
• Five operator and advanced-level packages. Blended learning materials designed around a series of block courses, with requirement for the trainees to apply the new skills in their workplaces between and post courses. Workplace support is provided both electronically and personally
  

Materials for the third and current project are being designed in partnership with Waiariki Institute of Technology, Workbase: The New Zealand Centre for Workforce Literacy Development, Learning In Action International Ltd and a number of industry representatives. Edutech is providing the project management for the project, which is currently on time, in scope and on budget.

Edutech KM was one of two companies that developed Unit Standard training resources for the Competitive Manufacturing Initiative, a partnership of industry training organisations, from both sides of the Tasman, who wanted to promote improved manufacturing and maintenance practices in their industries.

The main activities included:

• Joint development of units and qualifications
• Joint development of training and trainer resources
• Joint development of training delivery sytems and trainer assessor capability

Edutech's role was to develop content for half of the units required for the planned certificate, including text, illustrations, activities and assessment questions.

LT CDR Gordon Robinson, Royal New Zealand Navy
"Edutech KM was engaged by the Royal New Zealand Navy to develop two modules for a distance learning pilot course in 2005. They were one of 8 external providers engaged for the pilot from an initial list of over 30.

I found them to be a very professional group to work with. They went to great lengths to ascertain the needs of the customer and to identify the target audience. They proved to be hard working and thorough in their analysis of the material, responsive to feedback and highly creative. Despite being located in Christchurch, they also were able to visit the Naval Base in Auckland on a few occasions for face-to-face meetings.

They impressed to such a level that they were offered another contract to develop a more advanced version of one of the modules almost immediately afterwards.

The final product was exceptional, providing a high quality educational package at a very reasonable cost."

The RNZ Navy wanted to trial online learning to complement their existing system of face-to-face training. As a lean complement of service training staff were finding it more and more difficult to call away ratings for training, they saw a need to have a form of training that allowed them to learn while on the job on the high seas.

Edutech KM Ltd (then trading as Synapsys NZ Ltd) was one of several training developers to be asked to submit a sample training unit on CD ROM. Following on from the success of these pilot modules, we were asked to supply a third module.

These modules were built with an interface like a game console and included pick-a-path game scenarios where trainees were asked to use their knowledge of the Navy DFOs to solve a problem. Like real life, the scenarios often had more than one satisfactory outcome, and the trainees had feedback about their choices.

The modules ended with an assessment fashioned like a shooting game, where the ratings shot down and sank frigates! As they moved through the questions their scores enabled them to rise in 'rank'.

Tasman in Kawerau were about to upgrade a paper machine. New plants was to replace parts of the production run and operators needed to learn about ir prior to commissioning about three months later.

Edutech KM was asked to produce seven paper manuals with operational procedures and foundation learning material, including tests. Each learning page of the manual contained detailed illustrations which were also produced by Edutech KM staff.

The project was completed for operator training by the due date. The manuals will be updated as operators fine tune the plant and feed through recommended changes to procedures.

"Edutech KM developed the materials on time and as we required. The development included a background design, graphics, interactive pages, ongoing quizzes and a final test…. The final product meets our requirements and with the additional tools added will meet our potential future requirements." James Thompson, group training co-ordinator, Civil Defence Emergency Management Group

Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management Group wanted some basic training for local body personnel who are likely to step into a low level management role in the event of a Civil Defence emergency.
James Thompson, Group Training Coordinator, understood that the task was a huge one, given the numbers of local bodies needed to train staff at the introductory level. Although he had developed the training content himself, he wanted it transferred into a suitable online format.

Edutech KM staff were able to turn the material into an online program that allowed trainees to login and have their assessment results stored in a database that an administrator could access to check results. The administrator is also able to alter questions in the assessment databank, from which questions are drawn at random.

"Edutech KM web developers were able to quickly understand the organisational structure and workload issues faced by employees, and built up a good relationship with us as we developed the material for online delivery." Glenda Rich, Clinical Manager

Access Homehealth has a large, dispersed workforce throughout New Zealand. Management wanted a simple way of ensuring that all employees worked to the same standards of care and professionalism, no matter where they were. Training manuals tended to sit on the shelf and not be referred to, but the workforce were resistant to online learning.

Edutech KM staff created an easy-to-use CD-ROM that could act as a reference and as a training tool. It came complete with assessments that could be emailed directly to a central office. Only three months after its distribution employees began demonstrating greater success in their training and regularly looked to the program for reference material.

Carter Holt Harvey Packaging used Edutech's services for two projects.
One was to capture and produce procedures for three areas of their operation: board manufacture (to corrugated card), board conversion (to packaging), and sales management. The second was to create and to post on their extranet a database-controlled system of Quality Control measures to be viewed across three sites.

Both projects entailed Edutech KM staff capturing existing knowledge from the heads of employees and turning that knowledge into easy to follow, step-by-step procedures, so that others could quickly become productive if they should be asked to take up a new position.

The Quality Control procedures were created as fields in a database, so that changes could be quickly made in the database and the new version would become instantly available across all company sites.

Truescape Visual Reality was a small company in rapid expansion mode in 2004. Consequently new staff were being brought in and expected to come up to speed quickly, because existing staff had little time to train or guide them. The new staff members needed reference material to check against so as to ensure they adhered to existing systems. Unfortunately, most of those systems were held in the heads of long-term staff, and each one held slight variations on what was the correct method.

Edutech KM staff helped key staff define all the possible 'products' and the procedures for each of them. We then wrote up and illustrated the procedures. These were circulated among long-term staff who were able to add and question any area they felt needed alteration. Finally, Truescape had a set of procedures that they knew would work for them.

"EdutechKM projects are consistently completed in a highly professional and organised manner," says Norske Skog human resources adviser Mark Haslam.

"Edutech KM people have a solid and highly practical grasp of current and emerging technologies in the performance support field."

Newsprint manufacturer Norske Skog was planning to introduce new isolation procedures for contractors and employees. Isolation procedures are essential as they govern how to protect staff who are repairing or maintaining dangerous plant on a working assembly line.

Norske Skog had to be sure that staff would pay attention to the new procedures. Some experienced operators were reluctant to upskill. They would resist change unless they could be convinced to buy into the process.

We suggested delivering the new procedures with related training over an intranet to ensure that everyone had access to the latest information. We also spent time with Norske Skog employees and management while they were gaining understanding of the new procedures and the reasons behind the changes.

We got to know the operators, securing their buy-in to the new system as it was being developed. The system is now available to a large audience. The advantages already identified are:

• It allows for easy feedback
• Changes can be made easily
• Everyone looks at the most recent version
• The training component enables managers to gauge how effectively the operators are learning the procedures

"Edutech KM provided good advice…We have had extremely good feedback from all those who have used our online training." Mike Engle, Marketing ManagerZeacom Ltd.

Zeacom Ltd. designs, develops and markets call centre technology. It was seeking a way to provide standardised training that would enable its 600 resellers, who are spread across the United States, to understand and sell the product effectively. Zeacom was interested in the feasibility of delivering training material over an extranet, removing the need for resellers to travel large distances to attend training courses.

We took the content of two product manuals and two sales manuals plus a generic sales guide and structured it into self-paced learning modules in an extranet environment. We also included assessment questions that would provide feedback on how effectively resellers were taking up the training.