Utah needs plumbers! This isn’t just plumbers saying it either, but we are leading the charge! But the old way of learning used to take way too long. To earn a journeyman license, on top of working a full day for your employer, you’d also have to travel to class, sit under annoying fluorescent lights, and write notes for hours on end. That’s not even getting into lab hours! It was apparent to anyone in the industry that this was way too redundant and kept qualified professionals from advancing fast enough.
Now that requirements are much more reasonable, we’ve tried to make the apprenticeship process as efficient as possible while delivering a top tier education. That is why the UPHCA developed the Apprenticeship Academy and fully embraced e-learning as the next step in educating skilled tradespeople.
Pre-2020, all training and learning in the trades was done in person. There were some pockets of educators that were ahead of the curve and embraced e-learning very early. However, after the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted in-person learning and advanced everyone’s awareness of e-learning, it was impossible to continue training plumbers like the old days. Not only was learning constrained to the classroom, the instructor’s time, the student’s time, and the location, it also used to actually take too many hours. We’re not talking about the actual hours in a classroom or in a lab performing tests. It took too long in that you would have to travel to a classroom. Or you would have to sit in traffic, not working, not learning, but trying to get from one to the other.
On top of the unnecessary number of hours outside of the classroom, it was too easy for textbooks to fall behind current best practices. Or you could miss an instructor’s lecture and miss real-world experience.
Along with a state of the art facility (stay tuned for our tour later) we’ve let you take the classroom with you anywhere. Instead of going to a classroom right after a long shift, you can watch the class from home, or on the go. By making class less of a burden, we’ve increased our class sizes and helped more apprentices achieve journeyman than ever before.
Taking class with you is easy when our classes are live streamed and recorded. Miss an important point the instructor covered? Rewind and watch as often as you need!
On top of classes you can watch from anywhere, we’ve branched into a cutting edge micro-learning platform, Tyfoom. This platform breaks lessons down into short lessons no longer than two minutes. While brand new, we’re excited to see how our students absorb lessons with this app. Learn more about Tyfoom and how the UPHCA Academy is using it for the next generation of plumbers.
While the academy was only launched 14 months ago, we’ve educated hundreds of apprentices and seen dozens already become journeyman plumbers. By making trade school more accessible and learning even easier, we aim to solve the Utah plumber shortage one apprentice at a time. To learn more about the academy visit us or enroll today!