I-CAR: Industry Training on the Rise

PALM SPRINGS, Calif., Jan. 24, 2013—As the need for continued education in the collision industry continues to rise, repairers are taking advantage of new avenues to seek training.

That was the message delivered by I-CAR president John Van Alstyne in his address at the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) Thursday morning.

Speaking at CIC’s annual planning meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., Van Alstyne announced that I-CAR delivered 13,828 training courses to repairers in 2012. That’s a nearly 1,500 increase from 2011, and nearly double I-CAR’s total just four years ago (7,390 courses were offered in 2009).

And while the overall number of courses continues to rise each year, the ways in which repairers seek this training has changed as well.

In 2009, 98 percent of I-CAR’s training consisted of in-person, live courses; the other 2 percent were online.

In 2012, online training accounted for 36 percent of all I-CAR courses with live training taking up just 61 percent. In comparison, only 9 percent of all training was online in 2011.

“There are lots of options” today for repairers, Van Alstyne told the crowd. I-CAR has seen “quite the transformation in our delivery methods over the years.”

Van Alstyne credited the overall increase in demand to I-CAR’s more diversified offerings. With more people wanting training, the organization simply needed to adopt new methods of bringing it to them.

That initiated the adoption of virtual, live training, where repairers can get lectures and interact with instructors online.

“We are still very committed to our live offerings,” Van Alstyne stressed. “Online just gives us another opportunity to meet the demands of today’s industry.”