LEARNINGTEX PROJECT. OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF AN INNOVATIVE MASSIVE ONLINE OPEN COURSE ON ADVANCED TEXTILE QUALITY CONTROL

According the European Commission report titled “Work-Based Learning (WBL) in Europe-Practices and Policy Pointers” 5.6 million young people in the European Union suffer the consequences of unemployment, and 36% of employers' report that they struggle to find new recruits with the skills they need. So, in today’s world it is urgent to identify, adapt and adopt practices which can reduce this skills gap. Specifically this lack of knowledge is very notable in the textile sector and WBL programs seem to be a potential solution to this problem. In countries like Austria, Denmark and Germany, WBL predominates reaching more than 30% of students, while in textile sector especially in Spain and Portugal demands more qualified workers, having difficulties to find them in the marked because of the lack of skills caused by non-effective WBL programs. It is expected that LEARNINGTEX, will contribute to export the WBL system in Austria to Portugal and Spain. The participation of different countries in this project, also makes easy to boost the results around Europe.

First of all, an evaluation of the textile sector in each country has been performed based on teaching teams of each partner institutions own training experiences and on the definition of previous improvement plans in other companies. The main aspects identified that companies demand, are woven fabrics and new quality control processes. It is well known that Europe’s textile companies can only compete in the world market with high quality and design products against low cost and poor quality products manufactured in emerging countries out of Europe.

LEARNINGTEX project will contribute through a textile Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) based on a WBL methodology, improving labour hiring in the textile sector, especially in countries with low employment rates as Portugal and Spain; providing companies with high skilled workers to compete against third countries. LEARNINGTEX will develop a course based on Open Educational Resources (OER) about advanced technologies for textile quality control, for textile outdated employees and also for unexperienced workers who have just finished their studies. The course will explain the fabrication process of woven fabrics, the machinery used and how to apply new technologies such as artificial vision to improve quality control processes and reduce costs. The course will consist of two units strongly oriented to the textile sector focused on woven fabrics, and other two oriented to artificial vision as a quality control techniques for defect detection in woven fabrics. At the end of the project a pilot in Portugal and Spain with visits to the facilities of the textile sector consortium partners will be done.

Hence LEARNINGTEX will use modern learning systems and methodologies that support and promote the lifelong learning and the acquisition of knowledge and skills to enhance the companies’ competitiveness and reduce unemployment rates. The project supports the creation of an information society, by training and exchanging knowledge in Europe.

The project covers various fields of education such as, university, higher education, vocational and educational training, and company workers, because the teaching methodology uses innovative information and communication technologies. This project will also contributes to trained workers generating added value in the European textile industry. LEARNINGTEX is funded with support from the European Commission.