As an emerging technology, RPA and other automation technologies suffer from a familiar challenge: how do people learn about it if there is no established professional training track in higher education? While colleges and universities are beginning to acknowledge the need to train the next generation of business leaders in RPA and intelligent automation, much of the education that takes place is self-directed. Curious people hear about RPA, research the topic and learn what they can from various sources.
Blue Prism, a U.K.-based RPA technology provider that has been involved in several education efforts, has partnered with online learning platform Coursera to make RPA training available to its users. The company is making its Blue Prism Foundation Course available to Coursera learners and plans to eventually offer an industry-recognized certification exam through the platform.
By making its training available on the Coursera platform, Blue Prism hopes to address a tech talent shortage companies have been dealing with for several years that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The Coursera platform will help us enhance our own training and certification program and meet our goal of increasing the RPA talent pool to address the skills gap in RPA and intelligent automation,” said Ana Howes, global head of Education Services for Blue Prism. “We look forward to expanding our footprint in collaboration with Coursera, to meet the needs of the growing RPA learning community.”