Making The Part-CAMO Familiarisation Course

What is the Part-CAMO Familiarisation Course?

The Part-CAMO Familiarisation course is a new eLearning Course designed for learners who have accountability, or wish to gain accountability, in Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisations (CAMOs) in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Part-CAMO is a regulation originally under Part-M that has recently become its own approval certificate. This means learners who have experience working with Part-M may already understand the majority of Part-CAMO; which for course designers, posed some challenges. For example, how do we design a course for learners who may already know the content, as well as appealing to learners who may be completely new to the industry?

Does the course meet the regulations?

This course is an in depth look at section A Maintenance Organisation Regulations.

In the ‘design’ stage of the build process, we used these regulations to form the contents of the course to ensure it would be compliant. Once the course was built, a subject matter expert also checked the contents’ accuracy to ensure that regulations were met.

The course is structured in the same way as the regulation, making it easier for learners to revisit and navigate the course when needed.

The course is designed for both EASA and UK CAA as the regulations are identical.

What were the challenges in designing this course?

The Regulations in Part-CAMO were originally a part of Part-M, meaning that some learners may already be familiar with the regulations. To avoid some learners being taught areas they are already an expert on, a solution had to be put in place.

The solution was to design the course with multiple learning pathways.

At the start of module one, the learner can choose to skip the learning that covers the basics of where the aviation legislation comes from. At the end of module one, the learner is asked to complete a self-evaluation checklist which will recommend the modules that they should complete. Modules two and four have been highlighted as very similar to Part-M, which is why it is up to the learner to decide if they will take them.

During the design process, it was discussed whether all modules should be made compulsory. We decided, however, to allow the learner to self-evaluate their knowledge and make the decision  they feel is best. This way, the learner gets to be in control of their professional development.

But how can we be sure we’ve made the right design choice?

Would giving the learner too much control lead to the majority choosing the quick option and simply skipping modules?

After publishing the course, we decided to answer these questions by conducting an experiment.

First, we wrote a hypothesis; If given the choice, most learners will choose to skip parts of the learning.

To answer this, we used xAPI. By tracking the number of users who selected the ‘fast-track’, and those who did not, we could find the percentage of students who decided to cover all the learning.

After a month, the results showed that 75% of the students did not select fast track.

This opposes our hypothesis and shows that most students went through the entire learning. This shows that, even though the option was there, learners were sensible and made the decision that suited them and their learning pathway best.

Part-CAMO is an important part of aviation regulations; but it’s also about paperwork. And who likes doing paperwork? Our solution? Make the learning engaging and interactive.

Content is broken down into real life scenarios where the learner is challenged to think through ‘real world’ problems and come up with logical solutions. Learning designed in this style helps the transfer of training into the workplace.

Learners are engaged further by stimulating prior learning, to relate new information to something that they already know.

Another solution to deal with the complex regulation was to present it through simple illustrations and diagrams to help illustrate learning points effectively.

It’s easy to believe that a learner may become overwhelmed with the course, but our carefully planned design means this isn’t the case. Following Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning, this course uses both visuals and audio.

The combination of visual and audio elements in the learning removes unnecessary text from the screen, so learners are less likely to become overwhelmed from the content.

Where can I find the Part-CAMO Familiarisation Course?

The course can be found on the Resource Group website here.