The In Company Department's adaptation to the Covid-19 confinement

04/06/2020

The Coordinator of the In Company Department tells us about the process of adapting its courses to the confinement measures: the changes made, the difficulties faced, and how the situation has been successfully dealt with.

What was the situation of In Company classes at UAB Idiomes when the Covid-19 lockdown began?
Together with the UAB and all other educational centres that form part of the FUAB (Fundació de la UAB), UAB Idiomes closed down all face-to-face classes on Friday 13th March. At that point, our In Company department was running over a hundred groups teaching six different languages (Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French and Italian). All of these classes were being held on the premises of our In Company clients at various locations in the city and Metropolitan areas.

How did UAB Idiomes In Company department prepare for the lockdown?
We had foreseen the lockdown and were just uncertain of the timing. We had already had plans in hand and had approached clients to discuss the option of moving our face-to-face classes online. To this end we had started to train our teachers in the use of different teleconferencing Apps to be prepared for the changeover.

How did you manage the move to the online format?
We had to negotiate with different clients individually, and unfortunately some clients decided to cancel their classes for the remainder of the academic year – often because of the potential difficulties caused by extremely large groups, or students who work in professions that were suddenly overwhelmed by work as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. Nevertheless, we have now got over 85% of our In Company courses back on in the new online format.

How long did the new courses take to get up and running?
Our first face-to-face online classes were held on Monday 16th March. The vast majority of our clients agreed to our proposal during the next few days, and the last re-start took place on Thursday 26th March. Any classes that had been lost in the interim period have now been recuperated.

What problems have you had with running your courses online?
There were some teething problems in terms of technical hitches with some of the Apps we have been using but these have been overcome, usually as the Apps themselves (which may well have been overwhelmed by the sudden surge in world-wide demand) which have improved their technical specifications, as well as support from our teacher trainers and IT technicians.

How have clients reacted to the new system?
Naturally, we were concerned about client reaction, but in the event the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, both from individual students and from client companies’ HR departments. In terms of both the quality of the service offered and the learner experience itself, our clients have invariably reported that they have been delighted to find that – in effect – “nothing has changed” and “the feel of the classes is exactly the same”.

What have you learned from the experience of the last few weeks?
To begin with our teachers have learned how to use a wide variety of different Apps! Different clients have requested we use the App their workers are most familiar with, and we have been using Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype and Google HangOuts. UAB Idiomes has invested in several licences for Zoom Pro, which gives us certain technical advantages. Of course, the most important thing we have learned as a company is that we can run courses which are normally face-to-face, but now carried out using an online platform, and the quality of the service we provide remains as high as ever.

Moving forward, how does this experience affect your future plans?
We have been delighted with the smooth running of the online programme, and the clients’ positive response to it. Indeed, many individual students have said they actually prefer working this way – the classroom experience is unaffected, but meeting their teacher online rather than in person could make it easier for them to attend classes regularly, irrespective of where their professional duties may take them. As of next academic year we intend to offer In Company courses in three different formats: face-to-face, online and bimodal. We are also available to create tailor-made courses to suit the needs of our clients and our experience over the last few months has given us lots of new ideas.


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