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Changes to our OBS > S1 Process
Entry posted by Adam Arkley in ATC Training ·
1405 views
Dear all,
Since the beginning of my tenure, I have been discussing the OBS > S1 process with our New Controller Training Group leads in order to discuss potential improvement in that process. At present, we run a seminar roughly monthly - although these are typically delayed at times like summer and Christmas - in which we invite 30 people to join a seminar. Those 30 people are made up of batches of invitations that are sent out in groups to people at or near the top of the waiting list, until we have a seminar of 30 people.
That seminar then involves anything between 8 and 15 S1 mentors gathering in Teamspeak and Discord to go through what are largely administrative processes. Whilst the seminar touches on introductions to VATSIM-centric concepts and very simple Air Traffic Control principles, the bulk of the session is spent getting student controllers to open Euroscope and make sure that they can see it correctly.
Given the competence of the UK Controller Pack, the readme included therein and the availability of videos to supplement the readme, we recognise that this is a waste of our mentors time. We also recognise that the publicly available video is slightly out of date, but our collective opinion is that it’s not so out-of-date as to be unusable. Accordingly, we’ve been discussing a new process which has now been reviewed by the Region as being GCAP compliant and that we will be implementing imminently.
The New Process
Our new process aims to ensure that engaged and willing student controllers are fed into the training process. Instead of inviting people to a seminar and then expecting them to complete theory training before a training place is awarded, we’re changing the structure of the seminar and we’ll ensure that people are only invited to that seminar when they have both completed the theory exam and they have demonstrated that they can appropriately configure Euroscope.
The purpose here is simple: we want to ensure that our mentors are teaching practical skills rather than teaching people how to perform basic configuration of software and ensuring that they have followed the theory. We also want to ensure that there are as few bottlenecks as possible after the seminar, such that we don’t inhibit engaged people from joining the process because an un-engaged student ahead of them in the process has not completed the theoretical elements of their training in the required timeframe. To that end, our process is now:
- The waiting list will be reviewed and the first 30 people who have completed the CTS Theory Exam for Observers will be invited to demonstrate that they have correctly installed and configured Euroscope. This invitation will take place by e-mail and the student controllers will be expected to demonstrate this by submitting a ticket to the Helpdesk with an appropriate screenshot of their connection.
- A date will be arranged for a Seminar and those 30 will be provided with that date. If, by the time the Seminar takes place, a prospective attendee has not demonstrated that they can connect to Euroscope, their place at the seminar will be forfeit.
- If, during establishing the list of 30 attendees, prospective controllers are found near the top of the waiting list that have not completed their CTS theory exam, they will be e-mailed separately requiring them to complete the exam. If, by the next time a batch of invitations is sent, the exam has still not been completed, the student will be removed from the waiting list and notified accordingly.
- In light of this new process, no no-show spaces will be offered to seminars. Our anticipation is that the waiting list will move much more quickly and, of course, if out of 30 students invited only 5 attend the seminar, we’ll just run another seminar!
The New Seminar
Given that the seminar currently has a large focus on ensuring that Euroscope is configured and ready for use, the seminar will change in structure. Significantly fewer mentors will be required and the seminar will largely focus on:
- An introduction to VATSIM - understanding VATSIM UK’s place within VATSIM and how VATSIM works
- An overview of course content
- Expectations of students
- Roles and responsibilities of controllers
- An introduction to simple ATC concepts
Why are we doing this?
Our attrition rate in the OBS > S1 process is really very high. On average, of each 30 people who are invited to a seminar, we lose more than half before the award of an S1 rating. In a batch that we analysed, which consisted of more than 30 students attending a seminar:
- 10 students were removed before the start of practical training, likely because they did not complete the CTS theory exam
- 21 students (48.8%) were removed at the mentoring stage, likely because of a lack of availability or session request
- A number that I can’t read because the slice on the graph is too small (!) didn’t attend a seminar that they were invited to
- An equally small number are still on a buffer list
- The rest have passed their exams
At the time of writing, our waiting list is 777 people strong. When I first published a quarterly review in March of this year, the waiting list stood at 660 an increase of 117 people over a seven month period. We must act to ensure that engaged, excited prospective controllers are offered the ability to train promptly and we weed out those people quickly who express an interest in training but do not then engage with the training process.
We’ll implement and review these changes, with a view to determining quickly whether or not this makes a material different to training times and process through the waiting list. We’ll seek to maintain some statistics where can and share this when it’s appropriate. I’ll also submit requests to our technology team to ensure that we support as much of this process technologically as we can, including visibility of position on the waiting list.
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