The benefit of eLearning

Challenge

The effective development of team knowledge and competencies is key to the success of maritime survey and construction businesses. New employees require entry-level education and training geared to their roles, while even well-seasoned staff, already proficient in data acquisition and processing software, can benefit from continued professional development. 

Moreover, with software often quick to evolve with patches, updates and new features, and novel products being released, companies need assurance that their staff are not left behind if they are to retain their competitive edge.

A leader in offshore construction and related survey and positioning services as well as a customer of EIVA software, Andrews Survey exhibit many of the training needs of the offshore survey community.

Gordon Brown, Survey Manager at Andrews Survey said: ‘It is critical to our business to have the tools to effectively educate new staff and ensure continued training of our more experienced colleagues. For the former, there is much to learn both conceptually and in terms of specific software packages and survey data handling. For the latter, refreshing one’s knowledge, and remaining on top of developments in industry software, is key to performance.’

The solution

‘Having our graduates work through the courses in combination with offshore and classroom training speeds up their progress from trainee status to effective junior team members.’

EIVA’s response to the training and education needs of maritime industry stakeholders is a corporate account to NaviSuite eLearning — a comprehensive, web-based platform for training in EIVA NaviSuite software and related sciences. 

Delivering first-class educational content anywhere in the world, 365 days a year, NaviSuite eLearning may be approached and studied at one’s own pace, from the comfort of one’s home, the office or even a vessel’s crew quarters.

The solution is one that Andrews Survey adopted: ‘We opened a corporate account with EIVA eLearning to invest in our people and as a way to keep them up-to-date with development of EIVA NaviSuite software, improve familiarity and generally prepare them for their roles,’ said Brown.

He added: ‘The course contents are ideally suited to the needs of both types of user mentioned earlier — new recruits and existing staff — and it greatly simplifies our work as educators to have all these materials available through a single platform.’

Since studies can be undertaken without supervision or instruction, the NaviSuite eLearning platform minimises a company’s allocation of training resources, whilst at the same time represents a cost-saving alternative to sending trainees to classroom-based courses.

Commenting on the benefits of this format, Brown said: ‘Being available 24/7, eLearning allows users to study at their own pace in a highly flexible manner, and also to return to modules at a later time to review things they have already gone through, therefore providing a route to reinforcing and building on their knowledge.’

Contents of NaviSuite eLearning 

NaviSuite eLearning is a holistic training solution, insofar as its modules — covering core aspects of NaviSuite — are classified according to two levels: 

• Essentials | Entry-level modules for individual NaviSuite software package solutions

• Advanced | In-depth modules that build on one or more of the Essentials eLearning modules 

Upon completing training modules, participants may undertake tests awarding certificates which can be used to document proficiency with the NaviSuite product in question.

Corporate account benefits

‘Our corporate account to NaviSuite eLearning ensures we keep up to date with our investment in EIVA software.’

While NaviSuite eLearning is available to individuals, a corporate account is not without its own benefits, including reduced pricing and additional features.

Addressing course and team leaders’ requirements, corporate accounts to NaviSuite eLearning provide dashboard and reporting features which deliver real-time insights on how a team’s training is progressing. 

Ready-made reports concerning an individual’s module results and participation, or reports created to customised specifications, are also available.

‘We use the eLearning reporting tools to keep a track of who is making progress, who isn’t and to spur people on,’ said Brown. ‘These reporting features have helped us to keep people engaged in the course material, but also bring us confidence over the knowledge and skills our staff are developing.’ 

The results 

Andrews Survey opened its corporate account for NaviSuite eLearning in January 2017 and currently has nearly forty employees engaged with its modules. 

Reviewing the experience to date, Brown commented: ‘We have found eLearning a beneficial addition, complementing our utilisation of the full suite of EIVA products and use of EIVA classroom training. With new modules being added and updated, it ensures we keep up to date with our investment in EIVA software.’

‘A great educational foundation to get familiar with important concepts relating to subsea surveying.’

Brown described users gaining different things from the modules, saying: ‘Course materials, for instance on fundamentals of geodesy, provide our new graduates with a great educational foundation to get familiar with important concepts relating to subsea surveying. Other modules serve to quickly and effectively get people familiar with NaviSuite software itself. For instance, one may gain a better understanding of things like NaviPac DataMon through the Essentials course and how this could be used to create complicated outputs from input data.’ 

‘Even our more experienced staff have found the main courses very useful as reference material, as well as beneficial as a step-by-step guide for aspects of data processing in NaviSuite,’ said Brown.

‘More experienced staff have found the main courses very useful as reference material, as well as beneficial as a step-by-step guide for aspects of data processing in NaviSuite.’

An evolving platform

As our work at EIVA to refine and improve our software is unrelenting, NaviSuite eLearning modules are refreshed to incorporate new and relevant content. Upcoming releases of eLearning modules and the ideas we are working on for future eLearning modules are made publicly available.

‘Knowing that EIVA continue to add fresh materials to eLearning, and that we have immediate access to this, is important to us — it means we can be assured of having the means to keep our staff up-to-date and well informed about how to get the most out of NaviSuite software,’ said Brown.