In a class by itself.

IN A CLASS BY ITSELF  
Web-based machining classes make employee training easy.

BY PATRICIA L. SMITH
MANAGING EDITOR

Imagine training new hires right at the machine tools they’re running, without taking up valuable cycle time. Or sending experienced employees home with Pocket PCs that contain lessons on the latest machining technologies. That’s what webbased training can do, says Jack H. Schron Jr., founder of Tooling University, Cleveland.

Tooling University isn’t a physical campus, but rather an on-line training site offering beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes in workholding, metalcutting, CNC, metalforming, materials, and material handling. Shop Essentials, the latest department, covers basic algebra, geometric tolerancing, and blueprint reading, among other things. Tooling U puts the curriculum together with input from industry-leading companies, training providers, industry experts, and community colleges.

In a basic course like “Chucks, collets, and vises 110,” a student learns to identify and describe uses for these workholding devices. “Basic shop math 110,” another beginner-level class, reviews basic fractions and decimals as well as triangle and circle geometry relevant to the shop. An intermediatelevel lesson, such as “Cutting variables 200,” teaches about the variables that impact common machining operations, while “CNC manual operations 200” describes the control features that let a CNC operator manually execute tasks.

“Tooling U gives you 100% web-based training,” comments Schron, who is also president and CEO of Cleveland-based workholding company Jergens Inc. “That means you can log in from home at 10 p.m. or at your desk at the office. You can even log in from a machine tool on the shop floor, provided you have Internet access and an Internet-enabled machine tool control.”

Tooling University is available to individual users, corporations, and other groups. Currently, more than 300 students are enrolled in the site’s more than 30 classes. Another 30 courses will be posted later this year, including press operations, modular workholding, composites, and quality control. Students range from experienced machinists who want to expand their metalworking knowledge to new employees seeking basic information to improve their skills.

The lessons are set up so that the student sets his own pace, taking a class in a day or a week, and sometimes longer. The student can stop at any point, then pick up where he left off.

Classes present information in text, audio, and video formats. Each lesson includes learning objectives, outlines, pre-tests, and post-tests as well as learning aids such as photographs, related descriptions, frequently asked questions, and vocabulary definitions. “But no matter what department or level, all classes have a similar look and feel,” says Schron.

For students with a slow Internet connection, Tooling U offers a CD-ROM for full-motion video and audio files. The classes, though, are still on-line.

For a typical lesson, a student reads the lecture or listens to the audio presentation, which reads the lesson word for word. “Educational models show that some students learn best verbally, while others prefer reading the information on their own,” explains Schron. Each lesson contains boldfaced vocabulary words. Students look up these terms by placing their cursor over the word to trigger a definition box.

Students wanting a hard copy of a lesson can print copies, which they can place in a binder. They can also use Tooling U’s electronic notebook feature, which lets them copy the text into a box at the bottom of the lesson to call up when needed.

Students with questions or problems can turn to Tooling U’s Tooling Professor. This special feature connects the student to a Tooling U faculty member who answers questions about the lesson. Students can also ask other students for help through Tooling U’s forums and chatrooms.

 “The forums let students post questions and upload application photos,” explains Schron. “Tooling University also has chatroom sessions with industry experts and a large industrialresources section containing helpful charts, formulas, conversion factors, and an industrial dictionary.”

At the end of each course, students take a final exam. Once they complete the exam, they may view the questions, their answers, and the correct answers. Tooling U doesn’t stop there; it also gives explanations of each question and links back to the relevant lesson.

“Tooling University won’t replace hands-on training,” says Schron. “But on-line training can often replace an instructor behind a podium. That leaves more time for the hands-on training.”

The corporate connection
Metalworking companies may purchase training subscriptions with unlimited access to Tooling U departments for one year. If they wish, they can set up the corporate account so that their own supervisors or managers monitor employee progress, schedules, and attendance. The tuition is $399 a year for one seat (one student). “The seat gets all the functionality, all the administration, and all the testing and monitoring documentation for human resources,” says Schron. “The administration side lets training managers or shop-floor supervisors guide the progress of their employees,” explains Greg Jones, director, marketing and sales. “They can log in to review the user’s progress. They can check on their status — what time they logged in, how they’re doing in their tests and quizzes, their log-in history, and what questions they’re asking faculty members. They can even send messages like ‘nice job on that last test,’ ‘you’re on the right track,’ and so forth.”

While Tooling U has on-line final exams, some companies may prefer to print out a hard copy of the test and give it to their employees. “Since this is web-based training, someone can ‘whisper’ answers over a student’s shoulder,” remarks Jones. The hard copy eliminates this problem by providing the training administrator with checks and balances. An added bonus of printing out tests is that companies can use them to screen prospective employees.

Being able to track employee progress gives a company a good overview of its in-house capabilities. “Perhaps a company will learn that its employees don’t have a grasp of the importance of ISO. It might then decide to nurture that concept within the organization,” says Schron. “Or maybe an individual doesn’t understand indexable carbides and should be taken off a $100,000 machine tool.”

Tooling U also lets companies create customized training, targeted to its employees. It does this by either developing new courses with company input or converting a company’s existing training materials into web-based classes. Customized classes can then be password protected for an intended audience within a company.

Another way businesses customize the Tooling U experience is by setting “permissions” for their trainees. For instance, they may require that employees complete prerequisite classes, take pre-tests, and achieve performance minimums before proceeding to the next level.

 “Everything is permission-based, role-based security,” says Chad Schron, Tooling U’s senior web developer. “So corporations set permissions as to what the user can and can’t do.” A new employee, for example, might be required to take classes in a particular order, while an experienced worker might be allowed to skip around. The new hire, however, might be allowed to re-take exams as many times as he wants versus an experienced employee, who might only take exams once. The company also decides whether or not students are given answers when they’re done with exams.

Companies can also customize the Tooling Professor. “For instance, I’m one of the Big Three automakers,” says Jones. “Rather than sending my employee’s questions to Tooling U faculty or other students, I route them to a designated in-house person for company-specific answers. Other students would not see my faculty members — just my employees.”

Wireless Training
With a corporate subscription of 25 students or more, Tooling U provides a Hewlett-Packard Pocket PC that provides relatively inexpensive Internet access. “The great thing about the pocket PC is that it lets students learn anytime and anywhere,” says Jones.

To use the device, the training manager assigns each trainee a course curriculum and a pocket-PC schedule. The administrator then uses a USB cradle to load Tooling U courses to the wireless device and to synchronize with the Tooling U on-line administration tools for each student. The student/employee takes the device home to work on a class and brings it back to the training manager. All the manager does is drop it into the cradle, which synchronizes it back to the Internet with all the things the student worked on — the classes he took and his test and quiz scores.

According to Jones, the goal of alternative methods of delivering course content, such as the Pocket PC and the machine tool control, is helping trainees work at their own pace. But these tools are also part of a bigger e-learning picture. He sums up the importance of e-learning among U.S. and global businesses by citing John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems. In his keynote remarks at the Comdex show, Chambers said, “It’s not just about any time, anywhere,” for e-learning; it’s about “availability on any device and always on.”