Synapsys Blog - July 2009

Growth in the recession

For Synapsys, this is going to be our year of fastest growth, at this stage it looks like it will be around 50%. We feel very fortunate to be in this position, and have been asking ourselves, "why us?".

The typical catchcry in times of recession is 'training will be cut'. What's new this time? Our view is that the analysis is a little deeper this time round. Sure, training budgets are not immune to the axe, but we're also hearing:
-We need to be ready to respond quickly when things improve
-Recession or not, the skills shortage hasn't gone away in many areas
-So we want to keep our staff, and the best way to do that is work smarter.

In the past, it was often enough to simply tick off training activity (courses attended, dollars spent). The conversation now is much more around what the benefit is:
-Are staff changing how they work?
-What difference is it making to our costs?
-Are we actually clear about the processes we want to train people in?
-How do we get people to really apply what they learn?

When companies start asking these questions, they quickly start to challenge the assumption that 'off the shelf' is best. It may be easiest, but often the actual tangible benefits are less visible.

Clients in the past who saw blended learning and customised training as 'too complicated' are now asking us to make a difference to their businesses. That's a very gratifying process, and we're hopeful that the success we're having is also reflected in the difference we can make to their operations. As we scan the wide cross section of clients we work for, they appear to be very much in rude good health. Long may it continue.

Integrating Unit Standards - Good concept, hard work

We've noticed a change in the way a number of our clients are approaching the issue of creating learning resources for Unit Standards. There is a growing desire to provide learning packages that integrate a number of Unit Standards. The motivations include:
• More flexibility in creating innovative, engaging learning resources
• Reduced duplication of assessment across multiple units
• A more coherent learning pathway than simply serving up content Unit by Unit.

Some of these drivers also sit behind the Government's recently announced decision to limit the extent to which students can be re-assessed against competency standards they have not achieved.

In the past some clients have been reluctantant to tackle these issues because:
• There was a need to allow learners to be assessed and sign off on individual units
• The task of aggregating content for multiple Elements and PCs was seen as too complex
• The task of writing integrated assessments for multiple Elements and PCs was also seen as too complex, particulary given the downside of multiple range statements being aggregated.

The heart of the problem is that while aggregated Units are great for learners, assessment and adminstration processes still need to manage content on a Unit Standard basis for recognition.

Our approach to this issue is to template a process that:
• Creates a matrix of aggregated P.C.s that define new topic structures but still leave transparent the Units they relate to
• Generates a matrix of assessment questions that maps aggregated P.C.s to assessment tools and keeps the linkages transparent.

That has taken us to the point where are able to provide to the development teams a coherent roadmap detailing how the content needs to be written. The next challenge is that creating integrated content resouces that meet these requirements is more complex that writing for single Units. More about that in a subsequent post....