Siemens is providing the global academic community with on-line access to a library of product lifecycle management (PLM) software training courses.
The new Learning Advantage offering will help better prepare students for jobs in today’s highly competitive manufacturing industry.
The offering allows students to augment classroom learning with anytime access to training in Siemens’ NX software, Teamcenter portfolio and Tecnomatix portfolio through the same courses used by commercial manufacturing companies worldwide to train their employees.
An individual subscription to the entire library of more than 1,000 self-paced courses is being made available to technical high-schools, colleges and universities for less than the cost of an average single textbook.
“There is simply not enough time in our curriculum to cover every aspect of the software,” said Nate Hartman, assistant department head and associate professor, Department of Computer Graphics, Purdue University.
“The projects we ask students to perform in NX and Teamcenter require them to dig a bit deeper than the concepts we demonstrate to them. So Learning Advantage helps us supplement what we demonstrate to the students in class and also helps us keep our faculty’s skills sharp.”
The ability to enhance and grow an effective talent base is core to competitiveness among traditional manufacturing leaders and, increasingly, among emerging market challengers, according to the 2013 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
The Index found that access to talented workers is the top indicator of a country’s competitiveness, followed by factors like foreign trade, financial and tax systems, and the cost of labour and materials.
Siemens’ Learning Advantage allows teachers and students to supplement their classroom and lab experience by providing hands-on, web-based interactive learning.
Self-assessment tools enable students to measure and validate application knowledge as well as track and record their progress throughout each course. This helps them fortify their engineering skills and enhance their resumes for potential job opportunities.
“We’ve heard from the global academic community that engineering classroom and lab time is focused on software training in basic concepts, leaving little time for advanced instruction,” said Bill Boswell, senior director, Partner Strategy, Siemens PLM Software.
“Through the use of Learning Advantage, students and educators can augment their educational experience using the same training courses that their potential future employers use every day.”
“Learning Advantage is a great tool for both educators and students,” says Joe Vanstrom, instructor and program chair, Iowa Western Community College.
“Learning Advantage helps students isolate issues and provides a concise learning plan to address them. Its self-paced format helps me stay ahead of my students and develop comprehensive lesson plans covering sometimes overlooked features in the software. In the future, I will also use Learning Advantage’s online assessments for testing my students’ skills.”