Are you a rail education or training provider? Are you interested in eLearning? If the answer is double Yes, we would like to hear from you.
Remaining relevant to learners and meeting students’ course expectations are key challenges for traditional education providers, ever increasingly grappling with how to stay agile as technology constantly evolves. eLearning is one way higher education and vocational education providers can reach wider markets in a flexible manner by offering components of their courses online to learners.
In the last few years, we have seen the rise of MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) as an entry point or marketing strategy to attract potential students to learning institutions. A recent, yet noticeable trend relates to Higher Education providers collaborating with online course providers such as Udemy, Coursera, EdX and other global eLearning platforms to develop interesting courses that contribute credits to full qualification courses as a way of reaching global audiences.
In a scan of rail specific courses offered by global institutions, the limited use of eLearning is noticeable, especially in engineering focused offerings. While many disciplines, especially education and health, have incorporated eLearning into their learning methodologies, the global rail industry has been slow to incorporate eLearning when compared to other sectors.
A research project conducted by researchers involved in the Global Network of Railway Universities (RailUniNet) and supported by UIC aims to investigate barriers to digital learning in rail, as perceived by rail education and training providers, and aims to give a set of potential solutions to overcome them.
These solutions could assist future course providers when preparing digital learning in rail for clients from both academia and industry. The project will also suggest a number of actions (a check list) for transport decision makers when considering upgrading rail staff skills using digital learning tools.
The researchers invite rail education and training providers to participate in contributing their ideas to the study by following the link: goo.gl/rc6N11. The survey is open from 9 April to 14 May 2018:
https://www.uic.org/com/IMG/pdf/barriers_to_digital_learning_in_rail_flyer_030418.pdf
