Sofema Aviation Services www.sassofia.com considers factors associated with Internal Maintenance Training.
To deliver EASA Compliant Part 145 Aviation Maintenance training – or for that matter any relevant training which is required in support of our maintenance organisation requires understanding of the challenges to engage with an adult audience.
If we study adult learning programs we understand that adults do in fact learn in a different way to kids. Adults bring life experience and knowledge to the learning environment. This experience and knowledge includes work-related, family, as well as social and cultural elements. We should also understand that Adults learn best when they can relate new knowledge and information with previously learned knowledge, information, and experiences.
As “Trainers” and “Instructors” we should ensure that we do in fact connect to them ( How can we do this?) – So to ask a direct and relevant question, in this way we can draw a person into the conversation.
We can also solicit opinion related to the current topic for example do you think a or b.
Can we provoke to involve interaction?
Well yes but how and what is reasonable ?
We should never try to embarrass, rather to gently draw out the student so we can try to see the subject matter from their point of view.
A consideration regarding HF training is that we are not “really” teaching people about XYZ rather we are sharing an understanding of what happens!
In other words – What goes wrong and why it goes wrong, so that we are able to build on this understanding to see the role and involvement of the individual as well as to see the opportunities for positive intervention.
Adult Learning Expectations – Adults have self-pride and desire respect. They need their experience, beliefs, knowledge, questions, and ideas acknowledged as important. Adults want practical, goal-oriented, and problem-centered learning that can immediately help them deal with life’s challenges.
So as we mentioned above for successful Maintenance training our delivery needs to be relevant to the individual, It also needs ideally to be “theory light” conversely we do need to get several messages across (what are these messages as instructors we are the message managers !) As instructors we should also understand fully the nature and importance of our messages and to use CFU (checking for understanding) process to ensure that the message is received.
As we try to motivate our group we will find that they are at different levels of understanding and engagement so it becomes an interesting challenge for the instructor to keep everyone on board
Sofema Aviation Services (www.sassofia.com) offer Training for Aviation Trainers both initial and recurrent for more details please visit the website or email office@sassofia.com
