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Online Plastics Training – Classrooms Without Walls

January 25th, 2008

The traditional "classroom" of corporate America has undergone a revolutionary change over the past 5 – 7 years that is impacting the way employees learn the new skills required to keep pace with fast changing technologies. The most important element of this revolution for the plastics industry is that online plastics training is slowing leading to the disappearance of the traditional "corporate classroom" and offsite seminar that so many of us have taken for granted as part of our employer’s investment in us as employees. Instructors are being replaced by computers and classrooms are being replaced by online education courses. Of course there will always be some need for employees to gather together for training because face-to-face training can’t ever be completely replaced by technology. But the considerable time and dollar savings that online training offers simply make it a better alternative in more and more training situations.

Even in the manufacturing world, where getting hands-on training time with production machinery was the key part of training, online training is making inroads. Computer based simulations, pioneered by flights simulators in the aviation industry, now let employees actually "run" the machines they will be working on and complete complete with defect parts and even scoring criteria to measure just how much profit is being made by specific machine set-ups.

The impacts are exciting for training executives. For the first time, automation is becoming commonplace in the training world, No more variations in learning because the computer combined with online delivery automatically customize training curriculums for each individuals training needs.

Entry Filed under: Business