WCA to offer online training courses

The Woodwork Career Alliance (WCA) is producing a program of online training courses for entry-level woodworkers, scheduled to debut this spring.

Greg Larson, the WCA’s vice president and lead developer in the program, says employers are highly interested in such training options due to the current labor shortage, and that these courses are another way they can attract and retain employees.

“The real gist of this is it’s become a crisis with hiring new employees and figuring out how to get them trained. Even bigger organizations don’t necessarily have people on staff who know how to teach, and they have all this knowledge on things they never really thought about how to organize it into a coherent platform. I think a lot of people end up starting at these jobs and they just don’t get properly trained and so they end up getting discouraged and quit. So, we’re hoping this will help,” says Larson.

Content for the courses is being developed by Larson, his colleagues and other industry professionals with extensive experience as woodworking educators. The first two courses are “Wood Theory” and “Math, Measuring and Layout”. Future courses include “Woodworking Fundamentals” and “Milling and Machining”.

“We want to offer basic knowledge that doesn’t get taught on the shop floor. This would be a resource so theoretically you can hire somebody and have them do basic tests while they’re taking an online course,” says Larson.

“We’re not planning to teach everything there is to know about woodworking. It really is designed to bootstrap these new people and get them up to where they can be trained internally on the more advanced stuff.”

There will be a fee for the courses. Larson says the WCA is still working out price structure, but that course costs will probably be on a per module, per employee basis.

The WCA (woodworkcareer.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and administering a unified set of Skill Standards for the wood products industry.  

This article was originally published in the February 2024 issue.