Developing a Joint Training Course for German Aerospace Companies: Cooperation and Co-Design of Customer Oriented Training Material

Abstract

Companies of the German aerospace industry rely on hiring employees with no prior experience in aerospace software development, who require an elementary introduction to the relevant topics. A network of eight companies formed under a publicly funded research project aims to develop a compact, joint training course for employees who enter the field of software development without experience in aerospace. The Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences designed this training course with the required theoretical and practical content. This paper describes the methodology and the steps carried out by the university, starting with the needs analysis in cooperation with experts of software development departments of the companies. The needs analysis took into consideration the different internal work processes and compared the company needs with the subject-related study courses offered in Germany in order to accumulate the common fundamentals of potential employees. The module outline of the course was developed by selecting the content of the training covering the thematic breadth and was completed with the teaching methods and the training material. The evaluation incorporated a short training course for the target group with quantitative and qualitative research methods to assess this joint training course and to explore its benefits among different companies. The developed compact joint training course is able to fulfil the companies' aims by combining the experts' know-how within a stringent course design process. The feedback provided by the participants offered suggestions on how to develop further this methodology and the training course.

Lessons learned during a blended training for new employees in aerospace companies

“…Our experience confirmed the need for at least 22% of face-to-face session, but the blend between face-to-face and online modules depends on the training material and the availability of the participants[1]. The time allocated to the face-to-face session can differ according to the availability of the participants.…”

“…During the online phase the participants had access to lecture videos, literature material, quizzes, forums and virtual meetings over the Moodle platform. After the conversion of the ASSET-2 classroom-based training, the proportion allocated to the online phase was planned to cover approximately 78% of the training's material, which resulted in approximately 22% for the face-to-face session [1]. The average commitment for the online phase was estimated to be 10 hours.…”

“…All participants assessed as most important the practical activities and the interaction with the other 50th Annual Conference in September 2022 1468 employees from different companies and projects, with the trainer and the subject matter experts. The feedback from ASSET-2 was extensively analyzed in [1].…”

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This research follows a previously published paper presented by Pourtoulidou and Frey which describes the conversion of a classroom-based to blended training for new employees entering aerospace companies [1]. This paper presents the lessons learned that derived from the analysis of the results after evaluating the blended training according to the participants', subject matter experts', and trainer's perspectives.

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