Socotec relies on the interactive PowerVote voting system for the implementation of its teaching methods
To provide training courses best suited to the real needs of its trainees, the Socotec Group chose to use the interactive PowerVote voting system.

Specialized in inspection, consulting and training for risk control with regard to quality, safety, health and the environment, the Socotec Group acquired the interactive PowerVote voting solution for its certification and accreditation training courses. Today, over 3,000 people are trained each year with the PowerVote system.

Redefining an educational itinerary thanks to PowerVote

The Socotec Group’s initial goal consisted of optimizing the educational impact of its retraining courses on electrical certification.

Faced with a heterogeneous public with disparate skills and knowledge, the idea was to underline the need to up-date the trainees’ familiarity and understanding of the various products concerned.

The goal: find the best means to rapidly determine the trainees’ gaps in knowledge and implement a programme suited to these retraining sessions.

“PowerVote allows us to evaluate, via a quiz, the trainees’ skills and knowledge. Based on this evaluation, we can then implement an educational itinerary best suited to their needs,” underlines Jean-François Gayot, Director of Training for the Socotec Group.

“The initial training course lasts three to four days, as opposed to the retraining session, which lasts only one day. Therefore, this allows us to return to various subjects and, by precisely measuring the trainees’ educational needs, PowerVote enables us to optimize the content of this single-day session.”

PowerVote boosts the Socotec Group’s training courses

Today, the Socotec Group uses PowerVote for three types of training: electrical certification, the training of asbestos inspectors, and, recently, for a course on raising awareness of the health risks in buildings with regard to lead, asbestos, Legionella, etc.

These training courses are meant for all persons active in the fields of electrical installation, maintenance and equipment construction.

“We have used the PowerVote system since October 2002. It allows us to measure knowledge acquisition at the beginning and the end of the training course via a quiz,” states Jean-François Gayot.

“What is interesting with PowerVote, is the real-time aspect of the system: after asking three or four questions, we analyze the answers together with the trainees, and following this analysis, we ask for their feedback on the content of the answers. In this manner, we can play around, get moving again, and return to particular questions and answers. This dynamism is very motivating, as much for the instructors as for the trainees, while the paper-based questionnaires that we used before PowerVote made the training static.”
Finally, the training course’s dynamism and playfulness aids knowledge acquisition and allows the learners to become actively involved in their own training.

About the Socotec Group

In 1953, Socotec took over the building inspection activities of Bureau Sécuritas, itself founded in 1929. In the 1980s, having consolidated its positions in the constuction sector, Socotec decided to diversify its activities. In this manner, in parallel to the development of consulting missions in organization and quality management, professional training grew into an activity in its own right. Initially centered on the technical construction skills that had made its reputation, Socotec’s training offer rapidly expanded to include the various other domains that today figure in its catalogue. The use of modern educational tools such as PowerVote is one of the goals for continual improvement of the Socotec Training Department.