The headlight of the car needs replacing, or the washing machine door won’t close, what do you do? Get a tutorial on YouTube, and you can fix it.
Want to learn a language or play a new number on the guitar? Online is the answer again.
You can even gain a degree, through many online Universities, such as the Open University in the UK. These educational establishments have been attracting graduates based almost entirely on learning remotely.
Turning our attention to oil spill response and managing a pollution incident that is hazardous to life, potentially an environmental disaster and likely to impact the operations of even the biggest of multinational companies. Can you learn to do that online?
OSRL has run successful and popular accredited online courses for several years. These take up to one full day and are principally for Offshore Installation and Incident Managers. Even before the current pandemic brought in the travel restrictions, we discussed the merit of moving one-day refresher courses to a remote delivery platform. Remote training has considerable benefit to delegates such as time and cost savings and is also a more environmentally sustainable option reducing carbon footprint.
But how could we deliver the IMO recognised courses of up to 40 hours of learning, including practical deployments?
It is entirely possible. OSRL now has a complete suite of courses for remote delivery to accompany our established online courses. Through an investment of significant development time and extensive internal trialing, we have developed these courses by building on our existing adult learning experience. These courses have OSRL accreditation, and the external accreditors have made allowances for the COVID-19 pandemic, with the requirement for the completion of any practical element within a designated period. We are platform agnostic and able to use the client’s preferred platform of choice, whether that be Zoom, Teams or Skype.
In some cases, there is no substitute for face-to-face delivery, the interaction between fellow delegates, and the hands-on learning is invaluable. Just visiting one of the OSRL Tier 3 Bases is an experience, deploying a variety of equipment, inspecting the Emergency Operations Centre, and working alongside response specialists. Practical training will always remain as such, whether at an OSRL base or the client’s site.
However, the new remote courses are flexible, interactive and enjoyable. Feedback from clients to date has been very positive.
Remote delivery is filling a need in the current time of restrictions, but there is no doubt that it is here to stay. The last few weeks show that this form of delivery can be financially, logistically and operationally beneficial to our members and clients. And for as long as that remains the case, OSRL will continue to offer remote training options.
