By Dennis Robelo
Members of the first cohort of the inaugural Berkshire Innovation Center’s Manufacturing Academy receive hands-on instruction during a recent class. The 13 members of the first cohort graduated in October.
Sometimes you innovate to collaborate. The first cohort of the Berkshire Innovation Center’s Manufacturing Academy graduated last month after submitting their final presentations. This is a different kind of learning institution. Fueled by federal funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, General Dynamics Mission Systems and support from the Massachusetts
Technology Collaborative and MassDevelopment, the BIC’s Manufacturing Academy represents a deeply collaborative approach to training, learning and development.
As the BIC’s Chief Learning Officer, I was tasked upon my arrival with the responsibility
of building a collaborative industry-driven learning experience for incumbent workers of
our Berkshire regional innovation-enabled companies. The core training program was developed after countless hours of interviews, meetings and learning from a diverse
range of Berkshire area industry partners. After deliberating about “what to call it” we decided to name it Systems Thinking for the Application of Technologies, or STAT.
Determining Initial Goals
The STAT program was designed to answer two key industry concerns: (1) developing employee troubleshooting and systems thinking and (2) enhancing human skills. Both goals were to be accomplished through one effort, one program, one learning experience.
It’s been a history making 26 weeks, and in re-thinking the journey of building and supporting students and instructors, here’s what I’ve learned.
#1 Approach is Everything.
Here’s my lesson #1. For years instructors have done the “sage-on-the-stage” bit, driving the energy of the classroom to their goals as instructors, teachers and sharing what they know with little or low engagement. Our approach was anything but that older way of sharing information. Instead, we adopted the approach that “experience is the key” for adult learners.
As a group of instructors, we believed that if we were to impact learning, the significance of each class had to be felt for each student. Our approach was always to be in-service to the student experience for each and every section of a class; every moment was designed to have impact. We believed that - much like a great streaming Netflix or PRIME episode grabs your attention and pulls you into it - we had to foster “pulling students in” to create stickiness through constant engagement. That approach was everything; it worked.
#2 Sometimes the Voice of the Customer is More than One Voice.
One of the key lessons our instructional team realized and tuned into was related to the Voice-of-the-Customer (VoC). It is actually a concept we teach that is a part of how to problem-solve in real-life. Our instructors used this VoC perspective to ensure we were always building content that mattered to the voice of our customer. However, the issue was that there were many voices: the students, their supervisors and leaders at their companies, and their customers.. Instead of picking one voice we had to ensure we built content and delivered an experience that incorporated all of these important perspectives.
#3 Everyone Learns from Retrospectives which are After-Action-Reports (AAR).
Retrospectives are another key concept and lesson that was part of the curriculum. Retrospectives involve - as you may have guessed - “looking back” in time to reconsider what happened, analyze decisions made and gain a better understanding of any corrections to the ways a person may be able to evolve what happened for a future better outcome.
As instructors, though we teach and preach this method, we also applied it along the journey in preparing each week’s classes, using the last week’s class and insights to perform “Retrospective Analysis” as an After-Action-Report to better our instructor efforts. We even began using Retrospectives immediately following class instead of waiting a few days to ensure we captured each other’s insights just minutes following the conclusion of a class. This specific lesson proved to be powerfully helpful in shaping our collaborative efforts.
Instructors United.
By sharing these lessons learned through this BMA community update, it’s my hope that you can feel the shift into collaborative teaching we, as instructors, experienced. It’s rare these days.
The word collaborative is tossed about in modern chit-chat frequently; people seem to love this word, perhaps it is even trending. However, true collaboration involves “people working to create something,” and that creativity is a by-product of individuals contributing meaningfully then experiencing integration of their efforts into something new. That’s what happened here.
From our work with John Liu, Julie Diop, Haden Quinlin and Zhen Zhao (all from MIT) and with Patrick Becker (chief logistics officer at General Dynamics Missions Systems) and Tim Butterworth (the BIC’s Operations Manager) along with Rich Peters (former chief scientist at SABIC), true collaboration was not only an aspiration, but pragmatically achieved.
By being receptive, adaptive and driven to align with the needs of our industry partners, we were able to explore then co-create a curriculum, then - just as importantly - deliver the performance of that curriculum in a manner that inspired another level of collaborative efforts with students from all ages and stages of life and from varied work types.
As Rollo May, who wrote The Courage to Create, noted: “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”
The last bonus lesson I have worth sharing is just this point: it takes courage to create. Whether it’s better learning programs, instructional planning or class experiences, courage must be part of the recipe. To create a better impact on how we do innovation right here in the Berkshires, the courage to create collaborative outcomes is certainly essential, and it can even be fun.
College Credits Possible.
At a time when training, learning and development is quite costly, we are honored to announce that this 26-week program - which is certificate bearing - is free of charge and students who are accepted into the program and complete it may even earn college credits through PLA (Prior Learning Assessment) coordination with our local educational partners such as Berkshire Community College (BCC) or Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA).
A New Cohort #002 Begins November 7th.
As we move into preparation mode for his week’s graduation at the BIC of BMA STAT Program Cohort #001, we also are finalizing the roster for Cohort #002. Beginning classes on November 7th, 2023, Cohort #002 will include students from existing BMA participating Berkshire firms, but there are also 2 + seats that we reserved for new companies to join in this learning experience.