Workforce development: a professional training system integrating high technology industry and academia

In these troubled economic times for technology industries the maintenance of a flexible professional training system for continuing employees becomes difficult. When faced with workforce reductions, the decision of many companies is to eliminate in-house training to the detriment of the continuing professional needs of its technical employee base. In this contribution we discuss a novel training system that is funded by the governmental sector, administered by the academic component in the state, and benefits the high technology industries and their employee base. Coined the Agile Courseware Delivery System, we present the overall structure and mechanism by which companies may take advantage of this state supported program. The Agile Courseware Delivery System can provide a regional high technology manufacturer with training and professional development activities equivalent to their previous in-house training organizational efforts. The program includes a secure database that allows employees to directly register for training and courses, supervisors to track on enrollments, plant administrators to assign course selection options and presentation schedules, and employees and employer to obtain summary information at appropriately filtered levels. Agile also includes course development and presentation components that are driven by the industrial partners needs and presented by appropriate faculty from USF´s college of engineering or FL-ATE partner community college technical programs. This presentation will review the structure of the database, demonstrate its levels of accessibility and provide brief synopses of typical courseware. If possible an online Demonstration will be provided.