Engineering companies have for a long time been taking a more active role in the engineering education process. In addition to the theory that is taught in engineering schools, these companies are supplementing theory with often times more practical knowledge that employers are looking for from engineering graduates.

One company with a well-known reputation for active involvement with engineering education is Siemens. (I wrote about an apprenticeship program the company implemented in North Carolina earlier this year.)

Recently Siemens PLM Software announced a new Learning Advantage offering for students to help better prepare them for jobs in today’s competitive manufacturing industry.

Siemens is providing the global academic community with on-line access to a library of product lifecycle management (PLM) software training courses. The offering lets students augment classroom learning with anytime access to training in Siemens’ PLM portfolio through the same courses used by manufacturing companies worldwide to train their employees.

An individual subscription to the entire library of more than 1,000 self-paced courses is being made available to technical high schools, colleges and universities for less than the cost of an average single textbook. Siemens’ PLM software is currently in use in more than 11,000 academic institutions around the world.

“There is simply not enough time in our curriculum to cover every aspect of the soft-ware,” said Nate Hartman, assistant department head and associate professor, Department of Computer Graphics, Purdue University. “The projects we ask students to perform in NX and Teamcenter require them to dig a bit deeper than the concepts we demonstrate to them. So Learning Advantage helps us supplement what we demonstrate to the students in class and also helps us keep our faculty’s skills sharp.”

Siemens’ Learning Advantage lets teachers and students supplement their classroom and lab experience by providing hands-on, web-based interactive learning on the same software technology used by manufacturers around the world. Self-assessment tools let students measure and validate application knowledge as well as track and record their progress throughout each course. This helps them fortify their engineering skills and enhance their resumes for potential job opportunities.

Learning Advantage academic subscriptions are available with courses in English, German, Chinese and Japanese. More information is available here.