Comments
Bruce – Thank you for the post. This is certainly worthy of comment. I’d offer a few things and I know that Scott Murphy at ASTM would be glad to address this as well. EDR approached ASTM about a year ago this month with this concept. In our conversations we discussed how ASTM has been trying to launch a successful online training program for a number of years and has looked to several for profit partnering companies in the past to do just this. It is my read that the platform EDR offers gave ASTM a low risk opportunity to try this out again because we had already created a couple courses that were doing well online. This was a very much shared risk/shared revenue venture. The revenue that ASTM generates from the courses they provide is vital to the sustainment of the overall organization and the compensation for the instructors, and the revenue that EDR generates supports the platform, the software and the delivery. A cornerstone benefit is that the industry has more opportunity to get educated on the protocols, which was the whole objective in the first place. It is my personal belief that everyone benefits from a better educated market.
Today we finished two modules....only 21 left go!
Three weeks and counting to the release of PCA101 in BETA!!
We are now seeking people interested in evalutating the BETA version of this course scheduled for launch on May 3rd.
If you are interested, please send me an email at jhuntress@edrnet.com.
There is no cost, we simply ask that you provide feedback and help us catch issues and potential errors/mistakes with the course.
Stephen, thank you for the post. We are only doing online learning for PCA101. A few things come to mind.
First, we'd very much welcome and appreciate your involvement or feedback in the creation of this course. All are welcome!
Second, we are not disillusioned about what this course will be able to do. In my opinion this course should help firms with about 40% of the overall training their staff will need. Our goal is standardized, baseline, nationwide and widely available (hence online) training. No question firms will need to add a layer on top of this including hands on experience.
Third, we incorporate social (online discussion forums to simulate classroom discussion - asyncronously) and blended learning (self paced coursework along with live webinars) to try and mimic, to the best of our ability, a classroom experience. We did this last year with the EDD101 course which seemed to work pretty well.
Again, we'd welcome your thoughts, feedback and involvement. Just email me at jhuntress@edrnet.com if you'd like to get some more information via email.
Fun to read your experience in the course. You definitely may meet some of the strangest people, and see some of the most bizarre things during a site visit.
Willy,
This time I'll be a little more serious. Here is what I know.
While I have been working on a separate project from PARCEL for the last two years I know that your statement regarding the need to pass a test is false. However, I am not smart enough to engage with you without getting lost in an arguement.
That said, if there are points you'd like to debate about PARCEL, and you have the facts straight, I'm glad to keep the discussion going.From 2001 (the very beginnning) we approached lenders as we saw that the true value of PARCEL was recognized when everyone (both the lender and all their consultants as well as attorneys etc.) is on the same page. Management, efficiency and consistency all become maximized. While there is always the possiblity that people are lying to me, the conversations I've had with those groups that embrace this lead me to believe that it has truly brought all those things to bear.
Given you found that video, I have to assume you have a username and password. Write 5 reports and then let me know what you think. Any you don't have to pass the test first - I promise.
For accurate background, PARCEL was owned by a consulting firm (Jacques Whitford) and because of that we had trouble selling the product. Many other consulting firms did not want to buy from another consulting firm, nor did they feel comfortable with that consulting firm seeing all their projects (despite the institutional firewall we put in place). EDR was and has been a good fit for the product. I can't think of another firm that would have made more sense.
I honestly believe the market is better off with PARCEL in it. It is my view that things should never stay the same, they should change - that is evolution and progress.
If you are a status quo guy, I get it. I'm just not that way.Willy,
Good of you to post - any press is good press as they say! I actually think the worst thing about the "training video" is that we had professionals from north of the border do the voiceover! Pro-cess, Pro-ject....HA! We've had a lot of complaints about that. It was also done back in 2003 and really needs an overhaul. I actually thought we had removed that video - maybe it is time to take it down.
Having been part of the development, here are my 2 cents. It has typically been a misconception that PARCEL takes the thought out of writing ESAs. It is not going to make a bad assessor good. What I believe it does do is take care of the "monkey work" or those portions of the process that are repetitive and time consuming.
There are other things too, but given I gave 6 years of my life to developing the program, and you have been the ONLY person to make a post on commonground (positive or negative) I had to jump at the chance!
I hope you understand :)
Jack
Dianne, great of you to make this post. The moment was worth more than just a minute of recognition and worthy of spreading the good word. Life is pretty simple when we boil it down to the essentials. We all, myself included, could hear and abide by words like Noel's a little more often.
I feel for you Mark. The answer is yes, possibly. Case in point my brother and sister-in-law in Hopkinton had their water table drop by 10's of feet and had to drop their pump another 40 or 50 feet in their well after a new house was put in their subdivision (other well was approximately 120 feet away). The situation is somewhat unique in that they are at the top of a hill, the bedrock is fractured in such a way that an effect is possible and they are down about 500 feet.
We had our pump fry about 7 years ago from a lightning storm. Lightning can also open up fractures and change the chemistry/taste of the water for a period of time or more permanently.
Yes on the warranty for sure - also, in the case of lightning, check on your home owners policy as that covered our pump when we had it replaced.
If you do have a high amount of sediment it does seem to me that could shorten the life your pump (they should last MUCH longer) though I don't know for sure.
In a number of ways I do wish we had a better way of offering cg members more transparency to the Forums of the EDD101 course as they are a rich discussion on the 26+ topics that we ask course participants to comment on.
EPs have a lot to say and many opinions they have formulated over the last 20+ years in the industry.
need to work on a smart way to do this.