Welcome back to Teaching the Unteachables where we dive into teaching and learning
methodologies for professionals like you. This episode brought to you by Bell &
Gossett, a Xylem brand and the Little Red Schoolhouse. Learn more about the Little
Red Schoolhouse at xylem.com. Alright everyone thank you for joining
Did You Know? the Esco HVAC podcast. So today we're spending some time with Bill
Fisher from Bell & Gossett, a Xylem brand. How are you doing sir? I'm doing quite
well. How about yourself? I'm doing great. You know we keep talking about all of
these new opportunities for training and education because every industry is
exploding with technology. There's a man for technology. You know we were talking
about the Little Red Schoolhouse and some of the amazing training that we have at
the Little Red Schoolhouse, but even you are starting to see that explosion of
people looking for training and as educators and trainers sometimes we
can't keep up with all of the demand. Absolutely not and we saw you know really
that the audience was there. We've been offering classes at the Little Red
Schoolhouse just outside of Chicago since 1954, but COVID a few years back
was the first time we had to get creative and say how else can we get this
information out that isn't just webinars or something a little less engaging
right and I think it opened our eyes to the fact that people are always eager to
dive in and access that content on demand. You know we're offering over I
think 15 different week-long classes at the schoolhouse this year, but we know
that's not enough to get out to all the folks in the industry we want to connect
with. We're excited to be offering a lot more on what we're calling the
online Little Red Schoolhouse now and making that platform a lot more
universally available. So let's talk about the Little Red Schoolhouse and
both the physical and the virtual now because a lot of people don't know I
even myself didn't know about the Little Red Schoolhouse until about a year or so
ago and Howard Weiss and I were talking about he's like you've never been to the
Little Red Schoolhouse I was like tell me more about this I was like I have no
idea what like what was the conception of this and how did it all begin? Yeah it
started you know back in the 50s Gil Carlson was a really innovative and
really pioneering engineer when it came to the idea of hydronics and how to
properly engineer systems to take advantage of products that sure
Bell & Gossett makes from a pumping perspective as well as valves and
fittings from other brands like McDonald and Miller but you know trying to
educate the industry about not just how to use those products or what those
features and benefits are the things that we all get I think a little sick of
hearing from a sales pitch right well we care a lot less about that at the
schoolhouse and more if I'm a systems engineer or design engineer even
mechanical contractor trying to figure out how to deliver a really efficient
source of heating or cooling to a new commercial building what's the best way
to design that and you know we found that getting folks in and being able to
have conversations with those design engineers early on and say how would you
best design this system to make it the most efficient you know for your client
at the end of the day and I think that conversations only expanded lately when
we talk about decarbonization so I know there's been a lot of renewed
interest in hydraulics on that front and and certainly we feel like we've been
you know preaching that message for quite a long time and are excited to
keep sharing you know what we've been offering at the schoolhouse with new
generations of engineers to come yeah so we're talking you know 70,000 plus
engineers and contractors and technicians that have came through the
programs over the years to be able to learn how to do things better in the
hydronic side of things and you know there are times where even our
residential contractors you know will get into geothermal we'll get into
circulating of water we'll get into you know hot water heating systems and in
the past that's been somewhat of a niche market for residential and that's
changing and that's going to change I personally think that the movement of
water and glycol and water in residential applications are going to
explode in the next few years because we're going to start moving to
monoblock heat pumps air to water heating and cooling systems that are
going to start replacing our traditional split systems because now we have the
ability to use high-efficiency refrigerants like co2 and r290 purified
propane to build singular monoblock heat pump systems that sit outside of the
structure so it eliminates all of our internal concerns that we have for
flammability of some of these lower GWP refrigerants so I do believe we're going
to see a huge increase in the education demand from the residential and light
commercial sector over these next couple years and that's really you but I'd
completely agree you know whether it was my first trip to the schoolhouse many
years ago now and we often have a mix of students in person it is you know
mechanical contractors as well as field service technicians they are intermingling
with the design engineers that was a really great conversation to hear from
both sides of the coin so to speak hey you know even those folks going out and
issuing a no heat call late at night their most favorite thing to do right
helping them to understand how that system is really all working together
you know as inspiring to see them kind of walk away feeling more empowered to
do better service work out in the field knowing how all the components actually
fit together yeah yeah that's a that's a big deal because when we start talking
about you know circulating water there's other dynamics now we're talking fluid
dynamics that we need to understand not just air dynamics absolutely yeah and
yeah there's a lot of things that Balangosta offers to make that easier
even for the non-engineer tools that many folks it's so funny to me have told
me you know mention certain things about my job day to day but if I mentioned
the Balangosta system sizer which is a physical kind of rule of thumb
calculator of hey how big should your piping be depending on how many BTUs
you're looking to bring through it's funny to me how many people I've met
from different firms engineering and otherwise you say oh the system sizer
sure yeah that's that's a tool that ever those rules of thumb for that non-engineer
are a really big part of our curriculum you know and again whether it's in
person at the schoolhouse which we've talked about more but we're really
excited when have even watched some new interactive and e-learning modules on the
online Little Red Schoolhouse in recent months to make access to that education
easier you know more on demand and even as a place for folks to feel like they
can get comfortable with those topics whether they're able to come to the
schoolhouse in Chicago or not yeah we see that as a huge asset for our
educational programs you know I can see sending an educator right over to the
Little Red Schoolhouse to learn the hands-on but we can't send every
student into a program but what we can do when we're talking about hydronics
and we're talking about heating systems in the classroom we can now have a
well-prepared educator that can go by the way you all have homework tonight
you're gonna go do this e-learning course so that you can get comfortable
with this topic and then tomorrow in class we're all gonna sit down and I'm
gonna do a deeper dive of what all this means and what it looks like and so now
we're using two-fold opportunities for education that intimate deep hands-on
experience that an educator truly needs then we also have the interactive side
that is not just prep but it could also be assignments for school I mean we can
utilize this as homework opportunities and assignments you know our programs
are having more of a demand on the content that needs to be taught but the
programs aren't getting longer and so the educators are typically faced with
well what do I remove from my curriculum so that I can add this and we go whoa
whoa whoa no that that's not the goal the goal here is to actually have some
assignments that they can do at home our students are going to be at home on
their phones for six to eight hours a night a day really oh absolutely and
it's it is so true and we see it on the data side in terms of what makes really
impactful and effective online training you know as I said in those early days
of code everyone I think dumped on me hey let's have a lot of webinars bandwagon
and there is a burnout that you can get there there's a lack of engagement
required from the learner and personally as a someone who's learned a lot about
this this industry and other parts of what's I'll does in the last ten years
of my career I don't know that that's really the most effective way to learn
remotely no I think it's a very expedient way and thus why it became
kind of more popular but my background ultimately is then educational design
and curriculum design so we're trying to bring those best practices from the
training industry back and reinvigorate that in the schoolhouse side make sure
we're using thoughtful and structural design principles to make the training
shorter easier to consume easier to walk away with something really actionable
right away instead of saying I sat through that webinar but I'm not really
sure what I learned I heard a lot but I didn't receive and retain a lot yeah and
it's difficult I mean I face that every week on our live show I'll try to bring
different educators and do topics and I keep asking all right we got to do more
than PowerPoint presentations can I come to your facility can we shoot some video
can I do some actual hands-on demonstration are things that I can do
in here so that we can even use some of that content later to pull into either
learning modules as little bits and pieces of that hands-on so in today's
educational realm it's not as black and white and linear as it once was a decade
or two ago it's no I see that being a challenge somewhat for the industry in
some ways because those who have been through those types of programs before
feel that it is the only way to learn hey this is what I had to do 30 years ago
you've got to get down in the trenches and sit through six weeks of lectures
again until you're even ready to hear about the next stage and I don't think
that's gonna be an appealing way to draw in new people to the industry and it's
not gonna engage with today's younger audience no absolutely not I do a class
on the five generations of learners where I go over starting with alpha and
going through you know the five generations you know alpha is the Y X
and I'll even sometimes get into our boomers and a little bit deeper into
traditionalists but talking about how evolution of education has been in the
last 60 70 years a lot of people don't realize that in the 1990s most of our K
through 12 programs went from a linear design into a modular based design so
that students can do them in pieces and they can do a component in the classroom
they can do a component at home they can do virtual classes they can do
augmented reality classes and they are all a part of a curriculum and so when
Kovac happened that changed everyone everyone had to go what do we do now is
anyone doing anything and we'd actually already gotten there in many other
curriculums but a lot of the trades hadn't made that shift yet and now that
we have had that experience we have manufacturers like asylum through
bell and gossip looking at their products going well why don't we just
redeliver our content in a different way so they can be received by other
learners and that's exactly what you're doing yeah absolutely and you know a lot
of the content that we do have available today is also available for CEU
continuing education unit hours so those modules are pretty clearly identified
there's a simple filter to say hey show me what's CEU eligible on the site yeah
you can see the number of hours you're gonna get from the program and it's
really seamless tool once you work through either interactive or webinar
based content we are gonna ask a little more of you and make sure you were you
know taking something away from it so it will be a quiz aspect and then a
certificate that you can take and download as well so let's talk about
some of the classes that are offered physically at the little red school
house and some of the classes that are offered virtually on the online virtual
yeah absolutely so in person at the schoolhouse we offer four to five
standard classes today you can read about those in a lot more detail at our
website that's bellgossip.com or if you go to xylem.com and choose bell
and gossip from our brands there's a full tab dedicated to education and
training where you can see our course curriculum our materials and access over
to the online little red schoolhouse that we've been chatting about today some
of the core classes we offer and especially for that non-engineer we
offer a class every quarter called modern hydronic basics and it is designed
to introduce the fundamental principles of a hydronic system design what are the
pieces you need to consider how to all of these elements or components you know
factor in what are some of the basic fluid dynamics to keep in mind like
friction loss hey I'm gonna be pumping all of this fluid water glycol mixture
through a pretty robust system do I have a strong enough pump to really do that
how do I even pick a pump that will do that correctly rather than just picking
whatever was on the shelf at my distributor right so that'll be I think
for anyone regardless of your level of experience such a great class to start
with and we have a lot of equivalents to that class available on the online
little red schoolhouse as well whether it's centrifugal pump fundamentals hey
how do these pumps even actually work yeah I think so many of us are used to
seeing pumps in you know everyday things like my pets water fountain that you
don't even stop to think you know how those are actually engineered or
designed and it's been fascinating to me to see you know when run well how
long that equipment can last and when well maintained right it's such a aspect
of sustainability that we don't talk about a lot in in product design right
of but I know on a personal level I've had to replace my outdoor HVAC condenser
quite a number of times that I know my friends who have more of a heat bait
heat pump based system I've gotten on it by in a lot less maintenance yeah so
it's truly understanding the products that we're installing yeah fundamentally
yeah truly and we also see that there are classes on a traveling classroom
program or you're doing remote classrooms I assume with distributors
and with educational facilities tell me a little bit more about that yeah
absolutely so we are traveling little red schoolhouse is a great partnership
that we have with our rep partners all across the US try to offer at least 10
to 12 of the seminars regionally you know so even those who aren't able to
visit the schoolhouse have that opportunity to hear us come and speak
that's usually a more condensed or shorter session it might cover the same
modern hydronic principles but we also cover classes on design and application
of commercial heating systems of large chilled water systems and really what
makes sense regionally you know we're gonna be talking a lot more about steam
system design in the Northeast compared to you know the southwest for example
though there's still steam that you're gonna find out there whether it's
hospital complex or you know something else it's it's always funny to me you
know that that being such an old technology still how important it is for
so many industries as well yeah that's so true and a lot of our educators when
they're coming into a program they may be asked to introduce these design
principles into the classroom and they may have never encountered them in the
field and so that's the importance of knowing where the resources are knowing
how to connect to the right training facilities and opportunities that's why
I wanted to have this discussion so as an educator we encourage you to reach
out learn more about the little red schoolhouse learn about the hands-on
opportunities learn about the virtual opportunities that you can utilize in
the classroom as well and so once again Bill where we're gonna find more
information about the little red schoolhouse sure head on over to
bellgossett.com or xylem.com and choose Bell and Gossett from our brands tab and
on your education and training you'll find a whole host of resources whether
it's signing up for our in-person class registering for the online little red
schoolhouse or even accessing our really rich library of technical manuals that
have a lot of those rules of thumb great resources there as well just to take
back to your organizations or as you said potentially pulled into some other
curriculums as well excellent Bill Fisher from Bell and Gossett as island
brand I appreciate you hanging out with us today and giving us some further
educational resources yeah happy to do it and hope to host you up at Morton
Grove in the schoolhouse one day soon I am looking forward to a road trip on
that one okay thank you sir thank you