Web Development Essentials as a Focus for Employee Development

ARC Inc. was one of the first companies in Japan to adopt Web Development Essentials (WDE), a certificate program recently introduced by Linux Professional Institute, using the program to prepare employees for day-to-day web development. We talked to Tomohiro Murayama, manager of the Innovation Department at ARC Inc., to find out why they focus on WDE, how they integrate it into their operations, and what results they expect from its use.

What made you decide to have WDE installed and acquired?

Many small and medium-sized Japanese companies train their engineers mainly through on-the-job training (OJT) for new employees and mid-career hires. Although OJT is an effective training program that helps employees gain practical skills in the technologies used in the field, OJT is not suitable for systematic learning. This problem can be solved if the employer has a system in place for systematic learning. But the reality is that in many cases, organizations cannot afford the training costs and other burdens required for such in-depth education, making it difficult to create opportunities for systematic learning.

Instead, the best way to learn systematically is to acquire qualifications. If engineers have to patch together a collection of unrelated certifications, the process is time-consuming and financially burdensome.

LPI’s WDE certificate allows students to systematically learn the basic knowledge required for front-end and back-end development, including HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js, SQL, etc., in a single certification. By studying for WDE, the student can learn in a short time all the basic development knowledge needed to start work on their organization’s web needs. ARC saw this comprehensive approach as the biggest advantage of the WDE program: It met the company’s desire to provide the necessary learning in a short period of time.

What training methods do you use?

The training method is 100% online. One of the reasons for staying online is that the instructor was in the Kansai region and the participants were far away in the Kanto and Tohoku regions.

What are the expected benefits of obtaining a WDE?

The training course for WDE acquisition has the advantage of providing systematic learning of the basic knowledge and technologies related to front-end development in a short period of time. These technologies are valuable not only for students who want to become front-end engineers, but also for those who want to become back-end engineers, infrastructure engineers, and other IT engineers . As with Linux Essentials, we hope that WDE will become the de facto standard for people seeking careers in the relevant fields.

How do you feel about the training as an instructor?

WDE was the first training program introduced at ARC, and the instructors were inexperienced in delivering online lectures. Compared to face-to-face training, online training has the unique problem that it is difficult to see the reactions of participants and to gauge their level of proficiency, and some instructors struggled with this. However, the instructors worked together to provide feedback on how to improve the training.

The training was conducted using our own textbooks and materials, and the content of the training was easy for the participants to understand, although the curriculum was designed to include a lot of exercises because WDE covers so many technologies. The training was conducted by instructors who acquired the skills through their daily experience in the field, and they actually obtained their WDEs when they conducted the training. The instructors have also experienced the importance of learning basic content systematically through WDE, so it has actually helped the instructors deepen their understanding of the field.

What is the response and reputation of the students?

Although the study subject itself, WDE, is at a rudimentary level, the overall impression was that it was “difficult,” which is a reasonable level of difficulty for an IT novice. The difficulty was due to the amount of specialized knowledge that had to be memorized and the large number of technical terms that were difficult to remember, and we expect this impression to be the same for all certification exams. However, more than half of the participants indicated that the content of the training itself was easy to understand, and their level of proficiency and understanding increased as a result of the training. The survey results indicate that the level of difficulty suddenly increased when we reached the segment on Javascript, and many participants struggled with this part of the training.

What are your expectations for LPI?

The WDE is of moderate difficulty and learning content. I believe it is an excellent certificate for beginning development engineers. I hope that it will gain recognition and becomes the de facto standard certificate.

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