Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1522641
44 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2024 to be exposed to these careers. We can shout from the mountaintops that manufacturing is not dark, dirty, and dangerous, but the effec- tiveness of that approach is minimal compared to exposing people to modern manufactur- ing facilities. e IPC Education Foundation works with our school chapters to ensure there is access to manufacturing facilities and the people who work in them so that students can actually see and experience what it's like. If you are never exposed to it, you are far less likely to make a career decision in that direction. Our growing-up experiences are a testament to that. Can you explain the concept of scaffolding in education and training? Scaffolding is core to what we do. I like to use this example of learning how to play gui- tar. Does your teacher start out at the first les- son by handing you the sheet music for Metal- lica's "Enter Sandman," and say, "Here you go, have fun"? No. No one does that. ey start with one note and build on that. We combine that one note with another one, then we learn a chord, then another, and put them together to learn a simple song. e idea of scaffolding is that no one learns anything in large chunks. at's not how the human brain works. You learn in smaller pieces, and then you connect them together. We introduce a concept, followed by a related concept that builds on it. We put another related concept on top of that, kind of like the scaffolding on the side of a building. Instead of explaining the building from the top down, you're building from the founda- tion up, which significantly increases student understanding and retention. Using the tech- nical terminology on how the brain works, this layered way of learning—scaffolding—is how we create new neural pathways. Define the terms "onboarding" and "upskill- ing" from the perspective of this white paper. Contextually, we define onboarding a little dif- ferently than HR would typically use the term. For us, onboarding is about reducing the time it takes someone to reach full productivity. When you start a new role, you won't be pro- ducing at your optimal amount for the organi- zation. You probably don't even know where the bathroom is, and you'll have to ask some- one and then go find it. But you're nervous about asking, and you don't even know who to ask. Something that should only take five minutes now takes 15 minutes. It's an extreme example, but it illustrates the point well. ink about that for every aspect of a new employ- ee's job. From a technical perspective, the same thing is true with knowledge. e more I know about how to do a job, the more efficient I am at doing that job. Of course, there's a period of learning that occurs in a new job, where you're moving from a low level of productivity to your full level of productivity. All that lost produc- tivity is waste for the company and frustrating for the individual. e IPC onboarding pro- grams help individuals to reach full productiv- ity rapidly. Instead of taking eight months for a new engineer to reach full productivity, it takes them six weeks. at's our definition of onboarding. Upskilling is similar, but it's about anticipat- ing emerging changes. ink of the engineer who goes to the best engineering program in