Abstract:

The growing need for home care services for people with loss of autonomy and chronically ill patients outside of collective structures presents significant challenges, particularly in rural areas where the training offer is scarce and not adapted to the demand. The ACSADOM project, emerging from a collaboration between industry and research institutions, aims to develop an innovative training engineering approach to contribute to addressing medical desertification by promoting home care services in rural areas.

University-Industry collaboration:
The project is carried out by a team composed of two education and training research laboratories in the Occitanie region, located in France, and a training and consulting organization specializing in home care and medical-technical services. This partnership combines complementary expertise in evaluation, digital applications in education and training, norms and representations, and professionalization of all actors in the medico-technical sector.
Theoretical framework: The project's theoretical foundation is based on empowerment evaluation in education and training ([1], [2]), drawing from research on adult learning ([3], [4]), curriculum evaluation [5], and ecological studies [6]. This approach emphasizes enhancing individuals' capacities and evolving programs or institutions by providing stakeholders with tools to assess and improve their activities or projects.

Methodology:
The ACSADOM project combines quantitative analysis (questionnaire and data processing) with qualitative (focus group) analysis focusing on the actions, intentions, and interpretations of actors involved in digital training experiences and the informational contexts in which these experiences occur. This iterative approach aims to capture the reality and meaning of the experiences to develop a training proposal and deploy the associated system.

Project phases:
The ACSADOM project has successfully completed its initial investigation phase, yielding valuable data for adapting training programs and enhancing trainers' skills through a field survey among home care training candidates. The project now enters its second phase, focusing on designing training proposals. However, the implementation of such an approach may face challenges, which will be addressed in future project phases.

References:
[1] Fetterman, DM. "Empowerment Evaluation." Evaluation Practice, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1-15, 1994.
[2] Wandersman, A, Snell-Johns, J, Lentz, BE, et al. "The Principles of Empowerment Evaluation." In: Fetterman, DM, et al., eds. Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-assessment and Accountability, pp. 39-54. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2005.
[3] Mezirow, J. "Perspective transformation." Adult Education, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 100–109, 1978.
[4] Mezirow, J. "Transformative learning theory." In: Mezirow, J, Taylor, EW, eds. Transformative Learning in Practice: Insights from Community, Workshop, and Workplace Settings. Jossey-Bass; 2009.
[5] McCutcheon, G. "What in the world is curriculum theory?" Theory Into Practice. Curriculum Theory, vol. 21, pp. 18-22, 1982.
[6] Hamilton, MA. "An ecological approach to curriculum evaluation." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 263-273, 1983.

Keywords:

Home care, rural areas, University-Industry collaboration, digital training, collaborative learning.