Industry desires regarding training needs and methods

By Anne Algers (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)

 

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Two surveys were conducted in October 2007. The purpose of these surveys was to gather information about industry desires regarding training needs and training methods within the field of pig and pork production in order to develop educational material that will enhance the transfer of knowledge from Q-PorkChains.

 

One survey was sent to people involved in training to the pig and pork chain and one to users of training at different levels in the area. In total 169 people participated from different parts of the world; 70 responses from users of training and 99 responses from trainers.

 

The surveys showed that Internet access is good, creating absolute conditions for e-learning as delivery model. Only about 10 % of the users of training had slow connections (figure 1).

 

 

Figure 1. Proportion of responders with different kind of Internet access. A) Modem/ISDN, B) Broadband, C) Direct connection, D) Don’t know.

 

Users of training pointed at eight subject areas of high priority: Food safety, quality management and HACCP, meat science and meat processing as well as market research and animal hygiene and pig welfare (figure 2).

 

Correspondingly many of the trainers in the survey can fulfil these demands by providing training in most of the subject areas but digital learning resources need to be developed.

 

Figure 2. Number of users needing training in different subject areas.

 

 

A) Consumer behaviour B) Market research in relation to meat C) Pig production D) Sustainable pig production E) Animal hygiene in relation to pig production F) Pig welfare and management G) Pig genetics H) Molecular biology in relation to muscle biology I) Meat science J) Meat processing

K) Microbiology L) Food safety M) Food bio security N) Quality management O) HACCP / ISO systems P) Disease control programmes Q) Nutritional science R) Logistics S) Life cycle assessment in relation to meat T) Other

 

The users of training did not want to allocate more time than maximum two hours per week on training (figure 3).

 

This is a clear signal that the learning resources should be relatively short in order to allocate time and to be able to do the training session without interruptions.

Figure 3. Proportion of users of training who are willing to spend different time on training.

Fewer than 2 hour per week, B) Between 2 and 5 hours per week,
Between 6 and 10 hours per week, D) More than 10 hours per week.

During the first period we have identified teaching & training methodology as well as training needs. At the moment we are setting up a model and an infrastructure for the coming learning resources.

 

Download the full report on industry desires regarding training needs and training methods within the field of pig and pork production.