stated by the Panel, and yet, until August 2006, no efforts to address the situation seemed evident.3After review, there appeared to us two fundamental problems to surmount:
- Provide market-driven, industry-focused Skills, Education and Training packages in terms of topic, timeframe and delivery mode - which would allow work-based learners in industry (particularly SMEs) to engage meaningfully with learning material, and in doing so, subsequently impact beneficially upon a company's competitive advantage.
- Include engineering topics not at present adequately provided-for, but also look beyond this slightly-narrow remit of course provision, and consider incorporating non-engineering course topics such as 'Business Development', 'Innovation Management', 'Decision Analysis', 'Marketing & Sponsorship' etc.
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| Don't just sit there, do something |
After some analysis, it became readily apparent that the key industry requirements identified above could be addressed rather well by a focused, three-pronged strategy: |
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Engage industry fully in course development from Day 1, have them inform curriculum content, provide authentic case studies, strategically steer and critically review material, provide some foresight into the future of the industry, and (ultimately and optimistically) endorse the course. This is easier said than done, and the SAE Motorsport Congress Paper referenced earlier highlights some of the impediments to this.
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Develop courses that teach 'Innovation', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business Development', 'Marketing', 'IP Protection and Exploitation' concepts etc. which empower individuals either to make a difference to company competitiveness and bottom line profit, or to develop their own companies.
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Provide courses developed to conform to and address the diktats and constraints detailed above in a form that would yield asynchronously-acces
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It is important to note here that, in respect of 'fit-for-purpose', there has been some disquiet from industry over the past six years or so about the real worth of educational provision targeted at the motorsport sector. This has been to the extent recently that some sort of 'benchmarking exercise', akin to that conducted by the automotive industry's SMMT Industry Forum, has been sought by the national Motorsport Academy. Such an exercise would seek, in essence, to sort the wheat from the chaff by investigating a particular institution’s overall industry engagement, the calibre of its industrial placement scheme, industrial investment (cash and in-kind contributions) to courses and facilities, graduate destinations, industrially-sponsored research pursuits, Government funding leveraged for pure, specific motorsport educational pursuits, and industry endorsements. If the survey/benchmarking exercise is indeed undertaken, the results should prove interesting.
Addressing the problem - innovating the way that the racing community can upskill and improve competitiveness, on its own terms
With the core need identified, it then became the MKE's overriding goal to investigate ways to properly address the problem. The MKEproject budget (which is funded through the second and third rounds of the Higher Education Innovation Fund, HEIF-2 and HEIF-3) unfortunately was insufficient to provide for |
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course development of this sort, so other funding avenues were sought. In August 2006, funding was won from an Oxford Brookes University-internal competitive bidding process (through the University's Business Enterprise Investment initiative). We now have a £151,000 investment which is being used to progress the initiative, and the MKE currently is developing three new, market-driven, modular CPD motorsport programmes: these will be delivered primarily through the distance- and blended-learning environments. Course delegates will also have the option (at additional cost) of attending short, intensive practical sessions 'boot-camps' - which supplement the theoretical content: these will be undertaken using the School of Technology's new state-of-the-art facilities contained within our new Motorsport Engineering Centre. The Centre is equipped with a Cluster Computer System (a Supercomputer), a Remote Access CAD Suite, a Virtual Teaching Environment, an industrial-scale Multimatic 4-post rig, a Data Acquisition lab, state-of-the-art vehicle dynamics software packages, and a Formula Renault racing car, amongst other facilities, all of which support the CPD programme.
Flexibility is paramount
Making available a number of pioneering CPD modules means that the overall content of a CPD programme can be geared flexibly towards either an individual's or a company's direct needs. Modules are cross-discipline i.e. they contain both engineering and management-oriented material, q.v. Innovation Management, Entrepreneurship, Business Development etc. Through primary market research undertaken by the Motorsport Knowledge Exchange, the School possesses an extensive list of industry-focused course topics which have helped to inform the programme's curriculum, and which will inform later course development when more modules are created. This modular approach allows phased roll-out and provides for a gradual build up of the CPD portfolio, which in time will produce gradually-increasing revenue streams, including surplus, which will impact beneficially on the sustainability of the project (which is always a big issue with projects of this nature).
These developments dovetail well with the recent announcement by the University of the Fernando Alonso Scholarship - the reigning F1 World Champion of the last two years will be providing, through one of his personal sponsors (the CajAstur bank), 12 MSc scholarships for Spanish students: this will cover course costs, as well as providing a student stipend of 36,000 euros). Our Motorsport CPD programme means that students from overseas will be able (if they desire) to study modules online before they attend campus, thus allowing greater flexibility in a number of areas including module choice, ultimate programme focus, and study timeframe.
What we've done so far, strong words softly spoken
The Motorsport CPD project at Oxford Brookes University consolidates the collaborative work currently being undertaken by the MKE and the Open University, in our co-development of a 20 CATS-point post-graduate level Data Acquisition CPD course, which will be delivered through the online and blended-learning environment. This has been heavily supported by industry, including RenaultF1, where Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering, was interviewed to camera, and allowed access to the Enstone premises for filming purposes, including a discussion about Data |
