South African parastatal giant Transnet`s Esselenpark has become the first company in Africa to embrace advanced voice interactive distance education technology via the Internet, offering skills upliftment for its 10 000 staff nationally.
Head of tertiary education and technology at Transnet`s extensive training facility at Esselenpark, Chipane Kgaphola says this new method of training will bring about significant savings to the company.
"It is Transnet`s policy to ensure that it has a skilled workforce. This new education technology called InterWise, provided by Pretoria-based company CampusWise, is going to cut down dramatically on travelling expenses as well as staff productivity losses.
"We have traditionally focused on face-to-face training as well as distance learning through video-conferencing. Both are expensive ways to conduct training. We are now taking the technology one step further offering an on-line software solution."
CampusWise director, George Verster comments: "The time is right in SA for online training to become the answer to our education problems. Students do not need to travel to a venue to be educated as all courses can now be conducted "live" over the internet from anywhere in the world.
"InterWise offers a complete, cost-effective distance learning and training solution for corporates, government organisations and educational institutions. It brings together a new-world philosophy and the technical capability of the Internet."
Esselenpark looked at a number of products before standardising on InterWise.
"InterWise is the only available product that is truly live, interactive and can run on today`s existing bandwidth in South Africa," says Kgaphola.
"For example, if we need to update some of our technicians on a new product, we would traditionally fly them to a centralised site; now, with this new system, we can educate our employees in their local areas via the Internet without incurring huge costs.
"It also opens up training to staff that traditionally have found it difficult to travel or be away from home, single mothers in particular will benefit from this type of training facility."
This product is backed up by the expertise and infrastructure supplied by Datavia, Transnet`s IT and networking division.
Datavia`s CEO, Nobusi Shikwane, suppliers of the Web application hosting and networking comments, "We are proud to partner with Esselen park in providing this "new age", education solution. Using the corporate Intranet and the internet, is a fast growing trend to take education closer to the users. "
"We are very excited about this new technology. It will put us in a position to quickly upgrade skills throughout our organisation. This will also bring information technology skills to more and more Transnet employees and the broader South African community.
"The benefits of live, distant learning are enormous. Esselenpark will forge ahead of its competitors thanks to this drive into skills upliftment.," says Boni Dibate, CEO of Esselenpark, Centre of Excellence.
Kgaphola concludes: "While we will continue with face-to-face education, this new technology will lift many of the constraints that we have been faced with in the past. Transnet`s staff and management will benefit tremendously by the offering of this cost-effective, best of breed technology solution."
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