What do COVID 19 and automotive skills have in common?

Professor Jim Saker of Loughborough University's Business School observes that the acquisition of knowledge isn't enough without the interactivity that helps instill how to use that knowledge.

Read on to hear his views on human contact's role in skills development in this latest instalment of his monthly Viewpoint guest opinion articles for AM.

Over the summer I had two interesting conversations about the impact that the COVID pandemic has had on young people. The first was with one of the industrial placement officers at Loughborough University. The School of Business and Economics has one of the largest undergraduate placement programmes in the country and students after completing two years of study work in the business world for a year before returning to complete their final year.

I was interested to know how having a protracted period of their studies online had impacted them. The officer said that in reality the academic side seemed to be fine and that the students seemed to have picked up the knowledge required, the problem arose with their self-confidence.

The cohort appeared less confident and reluctant to face the level of social interaction needed to succeed on their placement year. In summary they had the skills but by comparison to previous years lacked the spark that Loughborough students seemed always to possess.

By comparison in a separate conversation, I was speaking to Joanna Hollingdale, the IMI’s careers manager, after she had been involved in successfully running the IMI Skills Competitions where young technicians from different parts of the automotive sector are tested with the winners going forward to the World Skills UK event.

She commented that ‘the average scores were significantly higher than the previous years in Body Repair, Refinishing and Heavy Vehicle, but were significantly lower in the area of Light Vehicles.’ The difference was more than a statistical aberration, car technicians were on average performing worse than in previous years.

Her suggestion was that some of this was down to the impact of the remote learning and disruption in education during the pandemic. During that period some subsectors were seen as an ‘essential service’ and that as a result one to one on the job training had continued using PPE and social distancing, but this had not been the case for the light vehicle technicians.

The comparison between the two sectors is really revealing. Remote learning allows for the development and acquisition of knowledge but without the social interaction confidence in how to use the knowledge is lost. While for skills development the personal interaction is imperative in supporting and encouraging their acquisition.

The technicians who had received this input came out highly skilled and confident. Working alongside their mentors possibly in the more pressured environment of the COVID protocols had meant that they had a level of skills above those of previous non pandemic cohorts.

Putting everything online does not necessarily give the best results. Perhaps skills and the virus have one thing in common they are best spread by human contact.