In the few months since the awarding of Richard King Mellon Foundation funding to digitize the New Century Careers curriculum to accommodate and empower new generations of trainees, significant progress has been made toward the use of a mobile web application to augment NCC’s pre-apprenticeship and credentialing training.
“Our goal is to better prepare students to adapt to the technology of the advanced manufacturing workplace,” said Neil Ashbaugh, NCC president and CEO.
Collaborating with NCC on the project are Rewyndr, a Pittsburgh-based software company that provides an innovative mobile web application for interactive visual work instruction and remote training for workers performing physical work, and Pittsburgh’s World-Class Industrial Network (WIN), a project development and management consulting firm with interdisciplinary experts. “The WIN Digital Solutions team enables clients to tackle problems and seize opportunities beyond traditional solutions. We’ve collaborated with Rewyndr for several years. Implementing their tool is a new way we can help our clients develop innovative solutions,” said John Werling, WIN partner.
The project focus is to build consistent visual procedural content for the Manufacturing 2000 (M2K) curriculum to be engaged through the Rewyndr application on tablets so that trainees can reference instructor and industry knowledge as they complete their assignments.
Digesting the tome of information covered in instruction and machine manuals, instructors’ notes, and standard operating and safety procedures, along with step-by-step photos of machining processes -- no simple task -- was undertaken by Emily Adair, WIN partner, and Madi Milan, WIN consultant. In addition, NCC instructors and trainees offered significant input and feedback. Trainees have been testing the app, with several from a previous cohort documenting each step of a lathe operation along with photos. The project team – Werling, Adair and Milan of WIN, Craig Waller of Rewyndr, and Ashbaugh, Larry Hayhurst and Eric Pferdekemper of NCC -- meets weekly to review and adapt content.
“This project creates an interactive, visual way of learning that communicates complicated material through a tablet – a medium current trainees are familiar with because they grew up with it,” said Waller, Rewyndr CEO and co-founder. “Although we work with industry primarily, NCC is the first training center we have worked with. We expect this to boost program interest and raise the confidence level of those applying and in training,” he said.
“Each element of the application provides interactive photos and tags to access layers of more detailed information with just a click on that instruction or tag,” Adair explained. This reinforces what the instructors have taught, as well as giving the trainee the opportunity to review particular points both verbally and visually as they work.
“The platform will significantly enhance our content, lower the entry-level skill required for participants, accelerate learning and enable feedback from remote site coaches and trainers,” Ashbaugh noted.
The team expects to roll out the beta phase of the project during NCC’s Manufacturing Day promotion in October.
Project funding was provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation Career Readiness for All Ages Grant investment area that focuses on advancing the education, training, and development of adults in the region to help all adults gain the skills and training necessary to succeed in the evolving economy. It also seeks to help build and support people-centered workforce systems, career pathways, and pipelines to employment that accommodate the many different ways adults map their careers.
