SkyRadar - Simple Deliveries and Training in Times of COVID-19 and of Restricted Travelling

COVID-19 and limited travelling hampered important projects during the last months. SkyRadar set up a simple and easy to handle delivery and training procedures.

The last months imposed lots of problems on aviation academies and universities. Social distancing and COVID-19 related budget cuts let to the implementation of emergency strategies and the establishment of distance learning structures within days.

Now, the institutes are preparing their post-COVID-19 strategies. 

Distance learning has become an important pillar in the new concepts of blended learning, but presence learning and labs need to be relaunched.

We received many calls during recent weeks as SkyRadar's radar training systems (radars and simulators) are built for both. Students and teacher can work on the same laboratory. But the students can also access the labs remotely, e.g., while the professor is alone in the laboratory. So hands-on learning is made possible even in a distance approach.

To make life easier, SkyRadar developed reference installations of learning management systems (which we provide free of charge to our customers, based on the open source LMS Moodle). These LMS allow for the immediate operations of all SkyRadar products.

Figure: the left image shows a student screen, when accessing the radar remotely. The right image shows the lecturer, explaining the radar (e.g., through Zoom or Google Meet).

Simplifying Delivery of Radar Training Equipment

To simplify project delivery, SkyRadar implemented the following steps:

• all deliveries are made in a plug and play way. Systems are preinstalled, software configuration is not needed anymore.
• Hardware assembly is reduced to a minimum. Videos explain the procedures.
• Connecting the solutions into the institute's intranet is supported by our experts e.g., through Zoom or team-viewer. The experts also give support concerning all other questions on assembly.
• A broad variety of teaching materials is provided (hand-outs, exercise guides, product manuals, etc) to allow for high quality education from the beginning
• Training is supplied via Zoom. Our teacher will log  into your system and enable a full-fledged training course, even in times of social distancing.
• On demand, we can give additional guidance on the general teaching infrastructure and education supply (incl. the use and implementation of Moodle, or educational concepts around blended learning). 

Covid-19 was challenging the planet like few other diseases beforehand. But it also accelerated change towards digitization. We, the education experts and institutions need to be the spearheads of this change process. And in the same time prepare our students on future work-forms which will be increasingly building on virtual teams.

Also continuous training of the lecturers, e.g., on new modules and Artificial Intelligence in Radar technology, is made easy. Many of the modern teaching contents are also new for the teachers and require regular expert training.

Thinking this process to an end, our modified delivery approach is part of the new mindset. And it has a nice side-effect: it makes processes more simple and more flexible.

Do not hesitate to contact us for further information.