The UK Ministry of Defence including the Army, Navy, RAF and Civilian personnel have adopted ECDL as the standard for IT User skills across the whole enterprise. With over 150 individual Learning Centres spread across the United Kingdom, Germany, Cyprus, Belize, Brunei, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, the MoD has one of the most widely distributed and effective e-learning infrastructures in existence.
They are engaged in training over 10,000 personnel each year in the European Computer Driving Licence Qualification using both Multimedia and more recently web-based training materials supplied by Activ Training Ltd.
Most of these centres are managed by an administrator who provides support and advice to the users as they progress through the learning materials, but the key to their success lies in the easy to use hands-on training material that has been specifically customised to suit the MoD user.
The key to the future is going to be the ability to provide the training to all personnel regardless of where they are geographically, and at a time to suit the user, whether they are in Belize, Afghanistan, or working the night shift at an operational base in the UK. As long as they have access to the Internet it will be possible for them to access ECDL learning on-line. They will even be able to take a test on-line provided they have a colleague present who has completed the Invigilator's training course; this could be their platoon commander, or staff sergeant for example. The flexibility of the system is the key here, and this is where the Activ Test software comes into its own. It has been designed using .NET Framework technology, the latest web application development tool from Microsoft. The advantage of using this technology is that it allows full scalability of the product. Thus, whether it is used in a stand-alone mode, over the network, intranet or Internet, it makes no difference, all Users see exactly the same thing. It is also possible to simulate far more complex scenarios with .NET technology.
Activ Training was determined to achieve real life complex simulation of the Microsoft Office application software with its Competency Based ATES for ECDL. The .NET environment provides exactly this, and this was another key factor for the MoD in their decision making process. In fact, having a test that assesses the ability of the user to actually use the application is more important initially than the qualification that it leads to. Having ECDL as the benchmark, however, has the advantage of giving the user an internationally recognised qualification to take away with them from the learning, something that has been missing previously.
Activ's Test provides the tools to assess the User's ability to make use of the application and, because it offers the user common pathway support, i.e. the ability to answer the question in the common ways possible, whether by keyboard commands, toolbars, short-cuts or right mouse clicks, this helps to avoid the common User frustration that other automated testing often brings, testing real skills rather than just the knowledge, or the lucky guess of a multi-choice type test.
Another key advantage to standardising across the board is the ability to allow staff that move from one location to another the flexibility to continue their learning and testing where they left off. This is particularly important when you realise that the average posting for military personnel is just 3 years. It is highly likely that many users will begin the process in one location only to find that they have to complete elsewhere, knowing that they will find a common approach everywhere else, adds to the incentive to continue the learning, where it could be easy to drop out under other circumstances.
As a result of the success of this venture many more organisations are adopting the Enterprise Managed ECDL model used by the Ministry of Defence. You could too!
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