There’s no question that COVID-19 has impacted the travel industry in unprecedented ways. Airlines are drastically reducing capacity and the number of passenger jets in service is the lowest it has been in 26 years. And while this mass grounding has been devastating to the industry at large, there is one bright spot: aviation maintenance.
It turns out that it takes an incredible amount of work to safely park, store and maintain the integrity of grounded aircraft:
“Aircraft can’t simply be dusted back into action. They need plenty of work and attention while in storage, from maintenance of hydraulics and flight-control systems to protection against insects and wildlife...” - Bloomberg
Aviation Maintenance Opportunity
For FAA-certified mechanics already working in the field, this means job security. It’s also good news for students who are still studying to earn their FAA mechanics license. There was already high demand for aviation maintenance skills, but the pandemic has increased the urgency for these skills and made them even more valuable.
With news like this, now is no time for the aviation maintenance training programs serving these students to let their foot off the gas. They should be helping students complete their coursework and prepare for the FAA certifications in every way possible, so that students can capitalize on this hot job market.
Limitations of Learning During COVID-19
But, just as COVID-19 has created unprecedented challenges for the airline industry, so too has it brought forth new hardships for aviation maintenance training programs. For the first time, many Part 147 schools are being forced to deliver much of their curriculum online. Gone are the in-person classes and hands-on training that resonate with this student group. Instead, aviation maintenance programs are using conferencing platforms — like Zoom, YouTube videos and even podcasts — to deliver their curriculum. And while these tools can certainly keep the ball rolling, they’re limited in their efficacy and often don’t live up to the experience and reputation of these training programs.
For example, within these passive videos and lectures, it can be hard to mimic the one-to-one engagement that learners are used to. These also remove the “hands-on” components of the curriculum that so many aviation maintenance learners like to engage with. And videos and conferences aren’t great at helping students grasp the volume of information they need to acquire in these programs to be successful on the FAA exams — they just can’t deliver the same quality of instruction.
Finally, people are starting to experience “Zoom fatigue.” As more is done via video conferencing — from exercise classes and happy hours to work meetings and professional conferences — many people report that they’re feeling exhausted, disengaged and over-stimulated.
These limitations have left providers struggling to:
- Engage a diverse set of learners with various experience levels
- Empower them to work independently, master the material and build confidence so that they’ll sit for FAA certification exams
- Efficiently use remote learning time to keep them moving forward and be able to hit the ground running when students return to the classroom
- Deliver the same level of quality instruction their students expect from them
Technologies for Improved Remote Learning
In response to these challenges, some aviation maintenance schools are turning to online learning tools that can more closely mimic the in-person learning environment and keep learners engaged and on track, even when they can’t be in the classroom. They’re seeking out programs that present learning in a microlearning framework and that can integrate interactive components that enable learners to feel that they’re “practicing” their skills, even if they’re not actually on-site turning the wrench themselves.
For example, the biggest aviation maintenance school in the nation, Aviation Institute of Maintenance (AIM) — which, in 2019, was responsible for graduating 20% of all FAA-certified aviation mechanics — has gone “all in” with an adaptive learning platform. This company first began using adaptive learning technology in 2017 as a Capstone program to help its students prepare for the FAA General, Powerplant and Airframe certifications. The program was so successful in boosting certification exam performance and confidence that the school decided to expand its use into some of the program coursework. And, when COVID-19 struck this spring, the school was able to quickly pivot — fully adopting this platform to help serve its students an effective, proven, remote learning option.
“For several years, AI-powered adaptive technology has been an essential part of the program at AIM,” said Dr. Joel English, VP of operations at AIM. “But within the context of the pandemic, what was originally envisioned as a supplement for exam preparation has been adapted to provide full online education for our students. Students work at their own pace and, as they demonstrate ‘mastery’ of the A&P content, they finish and pass the course.”
Figure 1 is an example of AIM’s microlearning, adaptive courseware that is available to all its students remotely during the COVID-19 crisis, with data from the platform’s instructor dashboard showing the performance of one student in this section of material.
Why Adaptive Learning for Aviation Maintenance
Adaptive learning is an especially appropriate tool for aviation maintenance programs struggling to deliver high-quality, remote learning because it is:
- Personalized & Competency-Based: Adaptive learning platforms provide learners with a personalized experience that adapts to meet their individual learning needs and close their specific knowledge gaps. They also work on a competency-based framework, only allowing students to progress to higher-order learning when they’ve mastered fundamental concepts. The most advanced adaptive systems — those that are powered by AI and machine learning — can closely mimic one-on-one instruction of the classroom. Adapting content, feedback, learning recommendations and motivational messages in real time — just like an in-person instructor would do in a classroom.
- Interactive: One of the biggest benefits of adaptive learning is that it offers learners an environment to practice what they’ve learned from reading and/or watching a lecture/demonstration with a variety of interactive practice question types. Practice is one of the ways that these systems are able to build both mastery of information and confidence in that knowledge — so learners are equipped with the skills they need and can accurately apply them when it counts (e.g. FAA certification exams and maintenance careers).
- Self-Directed: Another benefit of adaptive learning systems for aviation maintenance programs is that it can be highly self-directed. This means that learners can spend time focusing on the content they need to review most and quickly move past what they already know — making adaptive learning an ideal tool for a learner population with a wide spectrum of knowledge and skills as is the case in aviation maintenance. Using AI, these systems can even recommend personalized pathways to mastery to each student based on their performance and behavior within the learning experience.
- Measurable: The most advanced of these systems leverage machine learning to provide deep insights into student knowledge, depth and degree of mastery, confidence and predicted performance in a way that no other remote learning tool is able to do. This helps instructors better understand specific areas where an individual student might be struggling and why, so they can reach out to offer support, as needed. Additionally, for institutions and instructors that are required, for example, to measure hours spent learning for FAA accreditation, adaptive learning can be very helpful. These systems can track learning times, along with mastery down to the learning objective-level, so schools have a wealth of data to pass along to accreditors.
As students and schools grow more comfortable with the “new normal” brought about by COVID-19, there will be a call for more engaging online learning tools that can address the challenges of remote learning and that are proven to help aviation maintenance students build, master and apply their critical skills. In this new world, schools and institutions working to deliver high quality training that keeps their aviation maintenance students on track so that they’re prepared to capitalize on the opportunities of the market in the near, mid and long term, adaptive learning can be a powerful tool.
In 2014, Patrick Weir saw an opportunity to combine artificial intelligence, cognitive science and data analytics into an adaptive learning platform as a solution for a rapidly changing education and training market. He founded Fulcrum Labs and began pushing the company to develop a world-class, Adaptive Learning 3.0 platform with a customer-centric mindset. Under Weir’s guidance, Fulcrum has helped partners from both enterprise and higher education achieve, and often exceed, their most critical goals and earned numerous industry awards.
