Like a lot of industries, compliance training is mandatory in commercial aviation. That’s a good thing, because compliance training plays a significant role in improving safety and reducing costs. In fact, training is one reason that aviation is so safe relative to other forms of transportation. But it’s not enough to simply mandate training. Compliance training needs to be more than checking a box; it must be a meaningful process through which learners achieve measurable mastery.
One common mandatory training program in aviation is known as Basic Indoctrination. All commercial pilots, regardless of experience, are required by the Federal Aviation Administration to take the Basic Indoctrination course whenever they join a new airline. But the course itself has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s because it’s considered “standard” information.
Not surprisingly, Basic Indoctrination has turned into a routine check-the-box training program before pilots can begin flying for a new airline, rather than an opportunity to learn the essential material, prove mastery and transfer the knowledge to practical use. Working with Allegiant Airlines, and in conjunction with the FAA, Fulcrum Labs asked, “How can we transform Basic Indoctrination from a dull exercise in compliance to a meaningful learning experience?
Make It Personalized
The nature of Basic Indoctrination illustrates a challenge common to all training scenarios: People learn differently. For some pilots, the class is old hat, because they’ve taken it several times before. For other pilots, the experience is new and the learning curve steeper. Moreover, some people are visual learners, while others master material more easily through reading or lectures.
One way to make a course fresh and engaging is to personalize the experience to individual learners so they can go at their own pace. Pilots are no different than other adult learners; they want to choose their own route. In a new approach to Basic Indoctrination, pilots can choose their learning modality and watch videos, read lecture notes, practice with interactive activities or even combine these activities. This approach is completely new to Basic Indoctrination, where students are used to sitting in a classroom, watching PowerPoint slides and listening to lectures. It involves the pilots and allows them to be owners of their learning experience.
Challenge Your Learners, but at the Right Level
It’s not enough to allow a pilot to choose his or her learning modality and to make excellent content. Pilots are awash in compliance training and must review more than 120 hours of material before they are cleared to the next phase of hands-on simulator training. Our challenge was to meet each pilot at the appropriate level and make it efficient for both the learner and the airline.
The solution was found in adaptive engines that individualize each learner’s path. In this course, pilots work through a set of activities, and an adaptive algorithm serves questions that offer an appropriate level of challenge – never too difficult or too easy. This technique is called Optimal Challenge. Using Optimal Challenge allows an experienced pilot to move through the course faster, while a pilot who is newer to the material, or simply needs more time to understand it, will take longer. No longer are the pilots stuck at the same pace. Gone is the idea of “seat time.” If a pilot can prove competency and mastery over a subject, the pilot can move on.
Back It Up With Data
As a recent Forbes article pointed out, corporate America can’t be sure if the $162 billion it spends each year on training achieves its goals. An adaptive, personalized learning platform represents a goldmine for performance data, because each new student and learning event represents an opportunity to gain enterprise-level insights.
“Personalized, adaptive training brings us the peace of mind that our pilots have truly achieved mastery at every step of their training. It also gives us the analytics we need to be more effective and efficient in our training approach,” said Daniel McCoy, chief learning officer at Allegiant Air.
Not only can the airline ensure that each of its pilots has mastered the necessary information, but it can also dig deep into the analytics to better understand a variety of business considerations.
Patrick Weir is CEO of Fulcrum Labs.
