Air Traffic Management

EUROCONTROL has just published a best practices document for e-learning developers in ATM.

This document, covers the following themes:

• roles and teams,
• suitable e-learning design,
• successful e-learning methods,
• e-learning pedagogy,
• a guide to programming basics and
• e-learning development project management.

If you want to create your own e-learning courses, but have no prior experience of doing so, we suggest that you read it before making your first moves.

The document is structured in such a way as to allow you to skim though it at a high level, looking only at the main points, or to dig deeper into any particular issues that you should wish.

The document was produced by the e-Learning Developers Task Force (EDTF), which I chair, as part of the SENSE program.

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EUROCONTROL has published the first e-learning newsletter.

In this newsletter you will find articles aimed at training managers, instructors, e-learning developers and other interested readers.

The articles are kept short for easy reading.

Some of the article subjects are:

Learning 2.0 and ATM training,
What is SCORM
Best practices in e-learning development
and much more.

Go and have a look for yourself, it is very interesting!

http://elearning.eurocontrol.int/IANS//ELEARNING_Newsletter/newsletter_July07.html

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I have recently read an article on the Harvard Business Review [March 2005] about three different learning styles.  Each one of us has a preferred style for learning.  The three styles mentioned in this article are:

The analyser who likes to examine the elements of a problem and to reconstruct them piece by piece.

The doer who learns by performing and

The watchers who learn a great deal from seeing the total performance of how it should be from beginning to end.

So how does this relate to ATC training?

It relates into how flexible is our training provision to adapt to each of our student’s styles.Â

One of our problems is the failure rates during training.  Is this solely because of the level of cognitive skills required to perform ATC tasks? Or is it maybe also partly due to the concentration of the learning by doing [and to a lesser extent the learning by analysing, but very little of learning by watching] style of training that we impose on our students?

Should controllers be predominantly doers?  Who are able to act on problems immediately?  Would analysers or watcher not make good controllers? Will the analysers take too much time analysing?  Or once trained and skilled are they capable of going through this process in virtually no time?  In the latter case, would they not be also more precise and efficient than the doers who first act and then think?

The debate is open, however what is important in training is to recognise that these styles exist and that, if selection and recruitment are allowing students with varying learning styles to start training, then training should accomodate to these styles.Â

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On the 3rd of July ENAC was formally certified by the French Civil Aviation Authority as an ATC training provider.

 Congratulations to ENAC, but also to all the other providers who have obtained the certification from their local CAA.

May this certification continue in the path of improving quality, effectiveness, efficiency and innovation in ATC training in Europe.

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Once upon a time training managers actively participated in harmonising ATM training  for 3 main reasons

The first being that it was a bottom up approach so they owned the proposals.

The second being that they believed in the benefits of the proposals.

The third being that they knew it was guidelines material with the only aim of improving training and not to oblige them to do anything they would otherwise not do.

Presently, we seem to have come against a hurdle which is hard to overcome.  Training harmonistation has been severely slowed down in certain areas like:

Revisions and additions to CCC

Other guidelines

The reasons may be manifold but here are some:

First is that the initiative many times has drifted from bottom up to top down by interpreting requirements stemming from European Union directives or ESARRS. [Note I write interpreting because mant times a top down direction of what to work on is not clear either - this the whole system is left in vacuum]

Second, some trainingproviders fear that in the past they have been cheated because the work they have participated in with the intent to serve as guidelines was hijacked and became regulation.  They are very defensive not to repeat the same mistake again.

Third the system of defining a working plan has not changed with times.  The system is still looking for consensus from the wron forums where sometimes we are obliged to develop material.  Here the direction setting from the commission is very weak.

It is time to change all this.

A difference needs to be made between obligatory work for which we get  by the European Commission to execute - and which would then support some sort of regulation, and bottom up work to produce guidelines – which will always remain thus, with the aim of sharing knowledge and harmonising / improving training.Â

Until such time a difference is made, we will continue to stumble with every few steps.

[Note - the situation is only gloomy where it comes to guidelines and standards, common material development is still very popular, highly used and highly encouraged.]

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