2020 will go down in the books as a special year. The coronavirus made its appearance and brought the whole world to a standstill. The virus also had major implications for Special Cargo College. What has the past year taught us? What opportunities have been seized to innovate? And how do we look to the future? Operations Manager Patrick Schoenmaker and Customer Service Teamlead Nikki van der Poel look back and ahead.
It is March 16, 2020 when Prime Minister Mark Rutte holds his first corona press conference and calls on everyone to stay home as much as possible. “Our classrooms were closed…,” Patrick Shoemaker begins to recount. “We were forced to shape our education differently. That was quite a shift. We already had a wide range of e-learning and blended training, but it gained momentum at that point.
Special Cargo College is not one to sit on its hands. Not even in times of crisis.
Our teachers also had to adjust their teaching immediately; teaching online is very different from teaching with people in a classroom. When you see participants physically, you can easily check if someone is coming along; digitally it is much more difficult. I want to give all praise to the colleagues; as a team we acted incredibly quickly and well on this.”
Digital education permanent?
So because of the circumstances, online education took off last year, but what do Patrick and Nikki expect for the coming year? Is digital education here to stay? Or are we going back to school all over again? “We expect there will be a nice mix,” Patrick continued. “For short trainings, it’s incredibly nice if you can take them online. You then do that in your own time and at your own pace. For the multi-day training courses, I expect we’ll go back to giving those in full classrooms.”
New developments
Sitting still is nothing to Special Cargo College. Not even in times of crisis. “We are in full development,” Nikki takes the floor. “Take our latest branch in Veenendaal; a great step that allows us to keep expanding our national coverage.” In addition, a new training course was developed: Controller Air Cargo X-Ray. “This is specialized training for all air cargo inspectors who work with an X-Ray machine. In this training – which consists of a theory and a practical part – employees learn all about how the X-Ray works, the dangers of radiation and how to recognize suspicious objects on the images the machine shows.”
Competency-based training is a development that brings theory much closer to daily practice
Future
Education is always on the move. Special Cargo College is preparing for competency-based training, a development that brings theory much closer to daily practice. “From January 1, 2023, this will be mandatory for IATA aviation,” Nikki explains. “There must then be training for every functionality: a cleaner at the airport will be trained differently than someone who puts the bags on the plane. The material you have to learn is then completely tailored to the function you perform. This allows you to go much deeper into the material with a group of people who perform the same function as you. This form of learning will also merge all forms of education: e-learnings for preparation, classroom meetings for peer review and digital assessments. This way you really get your own learning lines that you can follow. Exactly as you need it. Wherever and whenever you want. These are really great developments. Come on through, we’re ready for it.”
