Article
Do corporate universities provide their students a technological edge?
By Skyler Richmond | Oct 2022
Is it better to centralize education or not? That is the issue with developing technical skills. A startling 79 percent of businesses were considering or planned to implement a private college or centre of excellence model for specialized skills at the start of the epidemic. This startling figure was obtained from a Training Industry research study, and in 2022, the causes for the trend were glaringly obvious.
Federated training methods make it impossible for managers to match learning initiatives with strategic company objectives. If your company is still using a decentralised model, you're not getting the ROI that comes with changing your strategy. To understand more, see the research results below.
Early pandemic data from corporations and universities
A corporate university is a learning facility housed
within a company. It is a tactical tool for carrying out individual and group
learning tasks in support of corporate objectives. Center of excellence:
A group, a space that is pooled, or an organisation that provides guidelines,
benchmarks, analysis, advocacy, and/or education for a particular specialty.
Despite the fact that sometimes the case, a corporate university frequently
falls under the L&D division. A centre of excellence, on the other hand,
frequently lies in a technical division like Research and innovation or IT. What
can these models do that distributed and autonomous models find difficult to
accomplish?
Attendees in the webcast expressed these difficulties.
REPERCUSSIONS OF DECENTRALIZED TRAINING 1. Divergent norms amongst groups 2. Variations in training methods and forms 3. Conflicting training standards 4. Effort redundancy 5. Inadequate contracting (four versions of the same course from four different providers) REPERCUSSIONS OF FEDERATED TRAINING 1. Unpredictability of standards 2. The quality of learning solutions varies greatly. 3. Unclear who is in charge of general skills training 4. Different or conflicting signals in the training 5. Duplicated approaches The epidemic presented a new difficulty for the decentralized concept. We have a number of organizational
procedures and divisions that normally run their own instruction. Each, however, found it difficult to
modularize their stuff when travelling remotely, according to a participant. They requested assistance
from our Human resources department. As a result, there is a bottleneck of projects and an influx of work.
Individuals who have used or are thinking about a corporate university model also mentioned difficulties.
"Tech training evolves so rapidly that keeping up seems to be almost daunting," wrote one participant.
The lifespan is limited. The time needed to create material must be compared to the lifespan of that
material. In light of this, "Who changes the content and how?" naturally arises. And this sparks a wider
conversation.
Stakeholders had mixed opinions about the best place to house technical training
Organizational sectors frequently debate over who should be in charge of the
training courses for IT specialists and software engineers.
Investors disagreed on where to put technical training, according to some. Should it be housed in a division with an emphasis on adult education and instructional strategies? Alternatively, is it preferable to house it with technical subject matter specialists in R&D and IT and depend on them to develop and impart coursework? The models of training delivery that businesses choose are influenced by the responses to these questions.
The 280 poll participants tended to favour hosting technical training beyond the L&D. In a textual conversation, webinar attendees expressed opposing points of view regarding this. One participant observed that "IT teams or professionals aren't always the best lecturers."
"We are IT Training and nestled within IT," said an another. We discover that our work doesn't fit the conventional L&D model in our organisation everytime we meet with other L&D units. Thus, I believe that separating us seems logical.
A fourth person responded, "But I think people administering the training need to know how to convey knowledge in such a way that it fosters acquisition and retention. Another person said, "Learner involvement is crucial for sure." Many people agreed that it's crucial to combine active learning best practices with subject matter expertise. But they disagreed on what approach was the best for achieving it.
Investors disagreed on where to put technical training, according to some. Should it be housed in a division with an emphasis on adult education and instructional strategies? Alternatively, is it preferable to house it with technical subject matter specialists in R&D and IT and depend on them to develop and impart coursework? The models of training delivery that businesses choose are influenced by the responses to these questions.
The 280 poll participants tended to favour hosting technical training beyond the L&D. In a textual conversation, webinar attendees expressed opposing points of view regarding this. One participant observed that "IT teams or professionals aren't always the best lecturers."
"We are IT Training and nestled within IT," said an another. We discover that our work doesn't fit the conventional L&D model in our organisation everytime we meet with other L&D units. Thus, I believe that separating us seems logical.
A fourth person responded, "But I think people administering the training need to know how to convey knowledge in such a way that it fosters acquisition and retention. Another person said, "Learner involvement is crucial for sure." Many people agreed that it's crucial to combine active learning best practices with subject matter expertise. But they disagreed on what approach was the best for achieving it.
The challenge of consolidated technical instruction was highlighted by this debate.
It is difficult to keep courses current due to the
quickly evolving technology landscape. Someone might need to update the
curriculum each time there is a software upgrade, for instance. The smartest
candidates to maintain the training are probably individuals that use the
technology on a daily basis. When many people think technical teams ought to
be in charge of modernizing, it might be challenging to defend a centrally
controlled training strategy. Nonetheless, the trend toward centralised
delivery methods was and continues to be in the ascendant.
Nonetheless, the trend toward centralised delivery methods was and continues to be in the ascendant.
Notwithstanding who operates them, CUs and CoEs have a perpetual emphasis on
productivity and benchmarks. For the purpose of developing precise,
efficient vocational education, corporate universities and centres of
excellence rely on feedback from SMEs. They may be domestic, foreign, or a
combination of the two SMEs. It might be challenging to synchronize
scheduling among a CU or CoE and domain experts, but both models are driven
to working with SMEs to keep training current and useful.
About the author
SKYLER RICHMOND
Skyler is a red teamer, she holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering and has earned several technical certifications during her career. She has been teaching certification training courses, not to mention other courses on cyberspace security and ethical hacking/penetration testing. Skyler regularly writes blogs, consults, and teaches on a wide variety of technical and security topics.
