Beginning next week, technicians in the RV industry will be able to access training toward certification without traveling to Indiana.
The RV Technical Institute (RVTI) announced the launch of its self-paced online (SPO) training program Oct. 12 for the first of four levels of certifications available to technicians.
Level 1 online training will begin next week, while RVTI Executive Director Curt Hemmeler said work on a Level 2 online module would begin immediately, with a goal of having it prepared for launch by June 1, 2021.
“We kept hearing from dealers that we needed something that was online,” Hemmeler said, adding that dealers were concerned about sending techs to Elkhart, Indiana, for in-person training, or otherwise taking technicians off their floor.
SPO training for Level 1 will be open for 90 days for technicians who sign up, at a cost of $995, although there are volume discounts available. Level 2 training will be open for 180 days once the online course is made available, and it will cost $1,995.
Hemmeler said RVTI planned to develop an online course as part of a three-year plan, which first would begin with the creation and expansion of live curriculum before offering an online option.
The pandemic changed up the timeline.
“Within 30 days the whole world flipped,” he said. “We’ve got to deliver some kind of education. … In theory, we know all these sales are going to occur and no one is thinking about training right now. But I’m glad we got this done in October of this year, rather than the middle of next year.”
The development of the Level 1 education – which takes students through seven core areas of the curriculum – was hampered in part by the learning curve for RVTI’s third-party partner.
“The third party we use never really worked with technical material like this; they worked extensively with colleges and some career training,” Hemmeler said. “Educating them did take some time. That might’ve delayed things a little bit. But now Level 2 will be (created) much quicker.”
Hemmeler said RVTI’s goal is to train 2,000 technicians in 2021, although he would not commit to how many of those would be trained online. Live training in Elkhart has been on hold since the pandemic but is expected to restart in January.
“We’re anticipating … the SPO program by itself is going to be a majority of how we deliver this education,” he said.
The technicians who participate in the program will be in control of the information from their education. Although dealers who have purchased training for their technicians in the past might have “owned” the outcome of the training, Hemmeler said results of individual online testing will be given only to the technician, unless the technician expressly provides permission to share it with others.
“We are going to be following all the privacy laws,” he said.
Technicians will be able to see preliminary results of their tests as soon as it ends. Assuming there is no tampering with the test results, RVTI will get those results from the test proctor, ProctorU, in 48 to 72 hours. Those who pass will be granted a certificate in their online system, and once or twice a month, RVTI will mail out a hard copy of the certificate, along with a certification patch.
“We’re changing 20 to 30 years of how this has been,” Hemmeler said. “It’s important we try to keep it as clear as possible. This is something everyone will wrap their arms around.”
For those outside the industry who are interested in the training, RVTI will have an offering which corresponds to Indiana’s workforce training program.
RVTI is finalizing a partnership with the South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership to become an eligible training partner with Indiana’s Next Level Jobs program. The Next Level Jobs provides free training for state residents and reimbursements to Indiana employers for training completed through eligible training partners.
Indiana residents will be able to take advantage of this program when in-person classes begin in January. Other states offer similar kinds of workforce training programs and offsets, and RVTI said it will be researching those as well.
Along that vein, RVTI has a training offering for non-industry technicians, with Level 1 SPO training costing $1,995 and Level 2 training at $2,995. By encouraging companies to first register with Indiana’s program, the state will offset the cost of training for those technicians.
