michael connell eugene == eugene general bringing up to speed from a viewpoint of commercial shipping are you looking for the basis of the story to give in a certain context shipping industry look at it from the viewpoint of the parent operation the navy operation or something like P&O we provide infrastructure that supports learning, anywhere, anyplace, any time we create that 24 x7 access by learning capability helping the individual easily access knowledge that can support learning knowledge that can support development general learning the launch of learning, whether online coursework traditional computer based training type course enabled across the web administration and tracking of programs against content linked to coursework that might happen onboard ship or back at the head office we provide the environment for someone like P&O, that has a sizeable enviornment how do they create one environemnt that creates a learning infrastructure for that organisation that at high level the US navy is a very large scale organisation that has a number of stakeholder communities they have their employees serving officers and seamen at sea the various platforms and various they have their stakeholder community link to supplies ultimately that's a world of 1.2m people who over a time are gearing up to develop a learning environment we can take that down to a personalised level whether its an employee its provided with the learning experience or the evironment that suppots their specific needsc conceptually that's what we do there's some exampels of how that might work one of the interesting things around the shipping theme it is traditionally not a common platform really there's two things here how do you give access to people onboard, surface or submarine tyupe platforms we've got lots of experience providing standalone environments which can link back to the central environment we can get learning environemt if you think of the challenges of epople at sea they've probably got spare time this is a great oportunity to accelarate their learning or something like a degree you think of the different skill sets, engineering, how do they get access to updates, to continually drive the skill set development interlinking so that they're not losing the connection if you think very often these large engineering type needs the learning requirements helps the certification is quite extreme quite a lot of these guys might come out of the learning field there's been a traditional approach to that, make it instructor led, make it ladn based creating the content of blended learning, there's large chunks of the lerarning process that lend itself to the individual, maybe onbaord ship, as long as the environemtn you create can support that process virtual classrooms and interactions with other students from other areas that can be supported the testing and certification large companies and individuals can be more flexible in how they drive forward that learning need e-leraning drives a stronger and higher skillset into more people more rapidly if there are significant and additional training needs to be provided in the field that can be accomodated the whole world is just getting improved knowledge to people right place and the right time we rely on other people to make the content we provide a "learning managment system" that's typically a learning management system how the user comes online, how they track their system the whole adminsitration and control environment to create that learning world what LMS does content can be wide and varied in terms of what its supporting there's standard off the shelf courseware linked to language training that could be sourced from a number of commercial providers there could be engineering content a wide range of other content how does an organisation support content from multiple providers and stream it in a way that supports the learner we don't support developing content itself but we're involved in working with content providers to support the way the content is built and provided online we recognise and can be fully supported within that environment we don't actively deveop it ourselves we launch the content if you like we can treat the content as an entity the level of integration is more about the loccation of where that content lies the ability to access that content and launch it provides the whole adminsitration, track and trace its not as draconian as you might think we don't need to speak to every content vendor over time, the client will drive that whether its P&O or the US Navy if they want to use content and use it in a structured controled fashion they will want to check the onshore trraining facilities are key we fully support blended learning we support learning centres and their abilty to create curricula and other forms of training this might be access to CBT libraries whih could be the online training courses which could be booking out library material we fully support the creation and scheduling of faciltiies for trainn documentation etc we provide an environment which is more than an adminsitrator incorporate into that all of the online training needs we don't look at it as two separate entities we look at the learning experience as being a fully integrated environemtn you need to create it combines the physical world and dedicated training facilities onboard or on an office if you are going to create a learning enviornment to support your useers you need to support all modalities of training you need to you what we provide is an enterprie application we preovide a package solution like PeopleSoft or SAP we provide a package solution that allows enterprises to create skill learning environments marine type organisations, that tend to be large organisations that tend to have a large number of staff, that tend to have a fairly high churn within that we do the implementation ourselves or with partners or we work with a number of global partners, PWC, IBM some of the challenges are very real there's firstly the technical aspect, is it feasible to provide a learning environemtn onboard a ship? very significant cost the very significant answer is, yes it is with a number of clients, such as the Navy even with the submarine fleets we have roll on roll off type capabilities the guys have got a fully supported learning environment if you did want to update your learning systems you can download a summary report send that back to the organisation with the update, with those records in terms of people coming in two months on, one month off the last thing people want to do is come off ship and discover they have to spend four of those weeks in a trainng centre the whole quality of life issue as long as the individual might have access to the internet they could create and support lots of things such as, pre course reading, pre course testing test and assessment, post course the ability to truncate the ability for instructor led training during that one month at home they can get an extra week or two weeks at home. the key thing to what we do is we support that environemnt the organsation never loses sight of the learning process of the individuals the standalone system is linked back to the ship you don't get the benefit of the full ongoing track and trace and skillset analysis part of that world, if you think of another thing within the marine side what skills you need for future embarkation very much part of what we have within THINQ is a very accurate, up to date record of the skills of your people if you're looking at the roster of who's going to be onboard all that data is on hand, it can be easily accessed and provided in addition to that, there's a need to say i've got an 80 per cent fit to what i need, 20 per cent of people need to be retrained, that whole skill gap analysis capability what skill do these people need at an individual level they could then commence preparation for their next voyage linked to their real time need of the business we could probably come up with a number of high value areas that this could affect the maritime world the delivery of those people a lot of organisations to be ready for change we create agility within the organisation i'm sure the possibility is there i'm not that familiar with the maritime content i am familiar with people like Rolls Royce, who provide a lot of the propulsion systems yes the US Navy undoubtedly will be linking to a number of commercial and standard type packages there's standard content type vendors there's probably a raft of content vendors then you have the manufacturers themselves all of these guys are potentially producing content that a shipping company migh need the creation of an environment of the system that can manage content there's no question that what we're doing with the US Navy they have the same physical challenges to most commercial maritime fleets we have done a lot of specific development towards addressing that's absolutely something it wouldn't be too smart to start downloading major chunks of content when it comes to the whole process of learning lends itself towards collaboration whether it lends itself to live chat, or threaded discussion groups we're creating communities of users they can create discussion groups, when they have access to an online then it goes to more advanced levels, like the context of a virtual classroom we have the ability to create as much like a real life learning environment as you can live interaction with your other pupils the ability to bring in and show all the aspects of the training facility if it sits online, on your desk, whiteboarding, all your typical enviornemtns all of this is ultimately supported in a virtual environment you can incorporate vidoe conferencing that is part of the world that we could support simulator: again, a lot of the simulation stuff is very chunky you're not going to provide that stuff online where we incorporate all of that of course we arrange access for simulation could we launch and track simulation programs, yes we could do it depends on the programs you're supporting it depends on some of the discussion lots of our clients are heavily involved in simulation, people like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, civial engineering use is very key we are very familiar with some of those enviornemnts but equally we support the booking of simulations we support the collection of test data as part of the transcript that follows the student right through that course it captures the progress of that course running the test in that environment capturing certification, do you need to collect comments from the instructor do you need to collect comments from the officer onboard ship streamling and support of workflow, get comments from seafarer could take responsibiliy for their own training it supports that self service mentality absolutely it creates an environment which allows the seafarer to control their own learning environment creating an environment for them, and tells them what they should be learning a mixture of personal needs or business needs the key challenge, when you think of all those variables, the physcial training vs online training what skillsets are needed for specific job roles vs the specific skillsets of inidividausl a learner coming online and doing skill gap analysis what do i need to do to do that job over there what courses do i need to take to do that now those are the enviornments that we support those are the environments that we build controlling the user environment it becomes a very personalised we utilise something called an N-tier architecture you can segment your key layers you think of the presentation layer, that's your world of portals, that's the point of access we can decouple the presentation layer from the application layer, from the presentation layer that gives you a phenomenal capability in how you can access the system are they coming at it from an internet cafe, their own PC or a system onbaord a ship all of that variation of presented as aprt of the presentation layer then you're giving different modes of access into the application layer the application layer is very flexibile, it can create different communities from one central place you can provide application funcionaliy and capability for multiple streams of learning at the lower level, in terms of the data layer you have the ability to support Oracle, SQL type databse, but also to take that off into supporting more localised environment, whether its a shipboard type enviornemtn That N-tier architecture means we can support the complexities of what a maritime environment might throw up we don't carry the traditional constraints of an n-tier architecture we don't carry those core constraints that reflects the leading tried, proven and established architecture of the enterprise. we love send delegate list eugene.deeny@thinq.com