AUTO TECHNICIANS GET UP TO SPEED ONLINE

By Paul Brent

Service apprentice Dolly Grech and Roy Rump use high tech to learn about increasingly complex auto systems at Ottawa’s Roy Rump & Sons auto repair shop
(P. Doyle, CP Images)

Operating for half a century, Ottawa’s Roy Rump & Sons auto repair and service business has witnessed massive changes in automotive technology. Customers of the family owned business likely don’t realize it, but employees keep up with the dizzying pace of change through web-based training. “There is always something,” Roy Rump says of current advances that encompass diesel engines, gas-electric hybrids and the profusion of remote sensors measuring everything from outside temperature to tire pressure. “You think you have it down, and then they change something else.”

The Canadian Automotive Repair and Service Council (CARS) produces online courses geared to automotive technicians and service representatives. CARS introduced its program more than a decade ago, originally delivering it via satellite but converting to an on-demand, Internet-based service last year. Employers find this not only helps address the fast pace of technological change, but also the literacy challenges some employees might have comprehending a technical manual. At his shop, Rump says that the online service delivers the information in a clearer, more digestible form.

For a number of his workers, online courses are a superior way to learn. “Not for all of them,” says Rump, “but the newer ones, the young ones coming up.”

With about 980 hours of training courses available in English and French, CARS has enjoyed a surge in usage since switching to the cheaper and more convenient online format. The number of user accounts has jumped from 14,777 in February 2007, when it moved online, to 22,286 this year.

Canadian Tire was one of the prime movers in getting CARS to develop its original program. With 5,400 repair bays and approximately 3,000 technicians across the country, the company regards the new web-based service as a huge boon. “[Technicians] can do it any time they want, at home or at work,” says Phil Myers, Manager, Auto Education and Equipment. “It has taken the last big hurdle away in that they used to have to schedule time off the floor, which was a real hardship.”

Smaller operators such as Rump like the online training because it doesn’t require expensive satellite equipment or take his workers off the repair floor at crucial times. One of his employees, four-year service apprentice Dolly Grech, has taken CARS online courses ranging from air conditioning to engine and suspension repair. “It keeps you sharp,” says the 21-year-old, who is preparing for final automotive technician exams. “They are helpful, especially for people who are about to write their licence and may have a hard time sitting in front of a textbook.”

Currently, CARS is studying the area of essential- skills assessment and development after recognizing a few years ago that people might be having difficulties processing the information they need to do their jobs. “The information we convey now is so technical,” says Jennifer Steeves, Executive Director of CARS. “From our own experience with a support line technicians could call, we learned that they often had the information in front of them, they had the diagnostic bulletin, but they couldn’t follow it. They couldn’t pull out the information they needed.

We have workshops to help trainers recognize when a trainee is having an issue with the technology itself and when more fundamental skills are needed. They can pull back a little bit to address the real challenge and really help the trainee.

Essential-skills assessment is “still in its infancy,” Steeves adds. CARS focused first on reading, document use and numeracy, but discovered that for auto-sector technicians, communication and critical thinking were top required skills. There were no assessment tools for these.

CARS is working on the issue with other groups, including the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council. Many truckers and dispatchers also lack the skills necessary to deal with new safety materials and mounds of other documentation. “People who have been driving trucks for 30 years or so probably got into the occupation because they weren’t academically strong,” says Steeves. “The Council has the same sort of problems we do. So we’ve been sharing information both ways.”