About Us
The Automotive Academy has been growing from a desire to develop better Collision repairers. With more than 30 years industry experience and having been heavily involved in scuba diving education, I felt that I was well positioned for this task and like many trade people, I had my firm views on how this should be done.
However, the more I got involved, the more I realised that there is much more to it than what we see in the workplace and I decided to go to University and study how we learn best.
My studies and research confirmed what we all know and agree on, that the best place to learn a trade is in a work place; but how we can train more efficiently, learning faster and become productive sooner. Another important question is, what does an apprentice has to learn to become productive sooner and this is where my studies really helped. Instead of teaching the fundamentals of the trade, a much better result can be achieved if the apprentice learns how an experienced trade’s man thinks. As I have been able to demonstrate on many occasions, developing practical skills has a lot to do with understanding and not so much with doing a task over and over again. There is no substitute for practicing, but this part of the learning is done every day in the workplace and there is no doubling up in the college required.
In order to learn faster, the apprentice needs to learn what experienced technicians have learned over many years, by observation, trial and error and many many mistakes.
The ideal situation would be to have four or five apprentices in a workshop, guided by an experienced trainer. Unfortunately, this is not viable. However, with online technology, this ideal situation can be almost achieved and young people have already embraced this technology and are loving it.
Instead of the usual block training once a year, we are able to have much more one on one and group training with our apprentices. These contacts are much shorter and the apprentices do not have to leave the work place; in other words, there is much less work interruption. Because of these short learning bursts, even students with low attention spans can take in a lot more than if they are all day in a class room.
Although apprentice training is the fundamental business of the Automotive Academy, we believe that training for experienced technicians is needed to stay current with the rabid changes of the automotive industry. Welding as an example has changed and it is not that today’s technicians can not weld, but they need to understand the difference in steels so they can adapt their welding techniques. Like with the apprentices, understanding is more important for learning than the actual skill. For these reasons, we offer a number of short CrashChat courses for technicians. They are packed with information and can be accessed from your home or workshop anywhere in Australia or the world.
The Automotive Academy prides itself on breaking new ground in education and offering up to date and innovative training to anyone anywhere.