Woodworking Training and Education Adjust during Pandemic
- On 18 Nov 2020
- By Tovi Spero
SHARED FROM WOODWORKING NETWORK
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought many day-to-day activities to a halt, but woodworking and technical training is continuing, both in person and online.
Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin, is currently offering hybrid instruction. Students attend lab every other day. On their off days, students access videos and other learning resources online. When in class, students are required to wear masks and practice social distancing, said Patrick Molzahn, Cabinetmaking & Millwork program director. He has actually seen an increase in enrollment, and 80 percent of their students who had to delay graduation this past spring have returned and planned to finish by the end of October.
“Over the summer, we created over three dozen videos of our demonstrations to replace face to face instruction,” Molzahn said. “Contrary to previous productions which were highly edited, these are longer in length, but have been extremely effective at conveying the concepts and processes for specific machine operation. After four weeks, students are on par with previous groups.” …