August Is Curriculum Development Month For The RV Technical Institute

The RV Technical Institute will be making a big curriculum development push this month!

In June, the RV Industry Association and RV Dealer Association Boards approved funding a strategic plan for the Institute. That plan called for a significant investment in new curriculum to develop a hands-on approach to RV technician training using new world-class curriculum and teaching tools.

Subject matter experts who assisted in creating that plan will continue the work of developing new curriculum throughout August. As a group, they have already drafted an outline of technician training curriculum and credentialing, including paths for both RV technician generalists and specialists.

An occupational competency testing and job skills assessment company, NOCTI NBS, will work with the RV Technical Institute curriculum team during a 3-day in-person workshop at the RV Industry Association’s office in Elkhart, Ind., to validate the RV technician occupational behavior skills. Once validated, the curriculum team will take the best practices from all existing training and supplement it with new and innovative approaches. NOCTI NBS has provided assessments, recommendations and certifications for a range of industries and clients including The Boeing Company, the Hose Safety Institute, the Loyd E. Williams Pipe Trades Training Center and the Bearing Specialists Association among others.

“We are excited to be able to combine these newly allocated resources with our industry experts to develop curriculum and deliver tools that will be the heart of the Institute’s training programs,” said RV Industry Association Senior Director of Education Sharonne Lee.

Later in August, a group of industry experts who are engaged in the association’s Technicians in Training (TnT) program will gather in Elkhart to discuss how that program’s offerings will be mapped into the Institute’s training.

“TnT has done a great job of delivering supplier component training to technicians at the local level,” said RV Industry Association TnT Manager Tammy Holland.

“Transitioning the coordination of delivery of this vital training to the institute is the perfect time to take a good hard look at the program and make any needed improvements. There are some aspects of old training programs that may need to be reinstated or the industry may have evolved to a point where an entirely new approach to supplier component training is called for.”

The industry subject matter experts will discuss the current state of the program and what aspects, if any, may need to change as the institute re-invents RV technician training. The meetings will cover TnT performance statistics of what is working, what isn’t working, potential improvements and changes and rebranding TnT as an RV Technician Institute offering.

To learn more about the RV Technical Institute, click here.