Experts choose interaction as preferred way of learning

Our world is changing around us in such a pace that if we do not continue to grow and develop with it; we will soon be left behind. We all need to be lifelong learners. We need to continually keep our skills sharp and up to date so that we have an edge in all we do. This is also true for drying and dewatering techniques

With this survey we wanted to gain inside in the satisfaction of the current offer in learning materials and are looking for topics and channels to fill the gap. The survey was send to the drying community at ISPT projects and events and to the NWGD community. It involves both industry, teachers, consultancy firms, engineering firms, CROs and universities.

Summary of findings for life long training of drying & dewatering professionals in industry:

• Indicated main target groups by teaching and non teaching part of the respondents are: process engineers , researchers and students.
• Massive open online courses MOOC’s are not used as education source and completely new for 65% of the respondents, but 90% of the respondents want to know more about the only platforms as presented TUD, EDX, Futurelearn, Schneider Electric Energy university etc.  70% of the respondents want to increase the impact of the online courses with face2face meetings with experts. The teaching part of the respondents are all familiar with online training potential and indicate the need for certification and quality assessment to be able to integrate the courses in their curriculum.

The survey illustrates the  trend towards usage of online material to support the life long learning needs for the drying community.  Access to knowledge and the competence to scout and integrate knowledge and technology are growing to become more and more important

• The respondents have a clear preference to learn in interaction with other experts in a community settings or at a congress. This supports the idea of to create a  learning community on drying topics. These interactive learning formats received an almost double score compared to classroom courses and literature  when ranked as satisfying learning channel.
• Many topics were mentioned as potential training subjects but most frequently mentioned were:
  • Energy use of drying process (including energy saving options and the impact on the drying process, heat pumps, heat recovery, residual heat use)
  • Drying curves, sorption isotherms and temperature product

• Measurement an monitoring techniques are the most frequently mentioned training topics, with a main interest for product humidity and usage of extra data for process optimisation and control. The teaching part of the respondents all indicated this topics as important.
• The interest for training material for electrification was only mentioned by 25% of the respondents

More on GRIP

The GRIP project is one of the projects in the drying & dewatering clusters of ISPT. It is focussing on creating and communicating new knowledge about drying processes to  stimulate sustainable innovation. The project follows different routes to achieve this goal.

• In brainstorm sessions by experts we work on industrial challenges from different sectors,
• we organize workshops with project members,
• we spread new insights via contribution to congresses etc.
• we aim to provide training materials towards the community. Training material on topics that need attention  and via channels that match the current possibilities of online and traditional teaching methods.

Download the full report here.