Textile Manufacturing Basics is the product of a unique industry partnership between the Textiles Human Resources Council, Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC), and one of Canada’s leading textile firms, Hafner Inc., Granby, QC. The courseware is a crucial element of a national strategic initiative to strengthen the Canadian textile industry and promote global competitiveness. Its goal is to raise core competency knowledge and skills in an industry under pressure from globalization and rapid technological change. Launched in mid-2001, the product has already found wide acceptance by textile companies, their suppliers, and related industries, not only in Canada, but also worldwide.

Learning Designs created the instructional design and conducted a Quality Assurance program. The Learning Designs team, led by Dr. Lynette Gillis, maintained ongoing consultation with the learners, supervisors, and industry experts at all critical stages. This QA program included content and design-integrity validation by over 30 Canadian textile manufacturing companies, unions, and educational institutions. Remarks Dr. Gillis, “I believe the Conference Board’s decision rewards the commitment by all partners—the Textiles Human Resources Council, HRDC, Hafner, industry, and labour—to maintaining the highest standards of quality throughout all phases of courseware development.”

Textile Manufacturing Basics is now used throughout Canada by textile firms, industry suppliers, downstream users of textiles, as well as retailers and educational institutions. The courseware has also become an international success and is currently sold in 26 countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

This award marks the second consecutive year that the Conference Board has honored the Textiles Human Resources Council for its innovative training strategies and its successes in improving the performance and competitiveness of the Canadian textiles industry and its 60,000 employees. Since 1998, Learning Designs Online has been the Council’s prime eLearning strategy and design partner, working to help the Ottawa-based organization meet its industry training goals by leveraging new learning technologies.

Learning Designs Online extends congratulations to Hafner Inc., the Textiles Human Resources Council, Human Resources Development Canada, and all companies, unions and institutions that contributed to Textile Manufacturing Basics. The award will be showcased at the Partners 2002 — Linking Education and Innovation Symposium and Showcase, to be held May 5-7, 2002, in Calgary, Alberta.

Contact:
Dr. Lynette Gillis or Allan Bailey
Learning Designs Online Inc.
1510 Jalna Avenue, Mississauga, ON
Canada L5J 1S5

Tel. (905) 823-3367
Fax (905) 923-1675

Email:
lgillis@learning-designs.com or
abailey@learning-designs.com

Learning Designs Online is a recognized eLearning industry leader of instructional design, quality assurance, and learning measurement and evaluation. For two decades, the company has designed, developed and validated custom courseware—high-quality print, eLearning, CBT and classroom—for clients in the corporate, university and government sectors. Under the leadership of Dr. Gillis, LDO has excelled in the development and implementation of quality evaluation systems and quality standards for corporate training. Dr. Gillis is author of Quality Standards for Evaluating Multimedia and Online Training (McGraw Hill 2001).

LDO provides evaluation and benchmarking services to help corporations maximize their training ROI. These services also help firms select or develop best-in-class courseware and learning interventions. Learning Designs is responsible for all courseware quality for world’s largest IT certification training and examination program. LDO is authorized quality assurance evaluator for all certification-training materials for the extensive CompTIA IT examination system. (CompTIA is the IT industry association and the world’s leading IT certification body.) Learning Designs also provides strategic consulting to help industry, government and education develop and implement quality-based, enterprise eLearning solutions.