Technician Training School To Overhaul LMS

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 09/13/11

A technician school with 11 campuses will be moving onto a new learning management system starting in 2012. Universal Technical Institute (UTI), which trains professional automotive, diesel, collision repair, motorcycle, and marine technicians, has chosen Pearson LearningStudio and Equella, Pearson's digital resource repository. The institute, which has its headquarters in the Phoenix area, has about 18,000 students.

The LMS implementation will begin in early 2012 at the institute's Dallas/Fort Worth campus and then expand to the remaining locations. UTI's program blends hands-on training in class with instructor-led classroom time and interactive online lessons.

LearningStudio follows a software-as-a-service model and integrates features for course administration, a grade-book, syllabus, e-mail, document sharing and group collaboration, real-time user interaction, chat, a dropbox, and a journal, among other functions. The Web-based application also integrates enterprise reporting to monitor and analyze student performance; "Exam Guard" for secure online testing; and eCourse Evaluation, which allows for creation of surveys and course evaluations. The Equella repository allows members of an institution to store, manage, and share digital learning objects.

"The delivery of our dynamic curriculum, which includes a blend of intensive hands on, classroom, and interactive online learning environments required a comprehensive, robust learning management system with the scale, analytics, and reliability to support our training model," said Tom Riggs, senior vice president of operations at UTI. "By partnering with Pearson, we can ensure that our students have the resources they need to fully engage in this unique training environment."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • student reading a book with a brain, a protective hand, a computer monitor showing education icons, gears, and leaves

    4 Steps to Responsible AI Implementation

    Researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning (CIDDL) have published a new framework for the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence at all levels of education.

  • glowing digital brain interacts with an open book, with stacks of books beside it

    Federal Court Rules AI Training with Copyrighted Books Fair Use

    A federal judge ruled this week that artificial intelligence company Anthropic did not violate copyright law when it used copyrighted books to train its Claude chatbot without author consent, but ordered the company to face trial on allegations it used pirated versions of the books.

  • server racks, a human head with a microchip, data pipes, cloud storage, and analytical symbols

    OpenAI, Oracle Expand AI Infrastructure Partnership

    OpenAI and Oracle have announced they will develop an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, expanding their artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership as part of the Stargate Project, a joint venture among OpenAI, Oracle, and Japan's SoftBank Group that aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of computing capacity over four years.

  • laptop displaying a phishing email icon inside a browser window on the screen

    Phishing Campaign Targets ED Grant Portal

    Threat researchers at cybersecurity company BforeAI have identified a phishing campaign spoofing the U.S. Department of Education's G5 grant management portal.