Abstract:

The European Commission has recently approved an innovative project that is going to develop and establish a regional network, a vocational education and training centers in Romania, by transferring knowledge, good practices and state of the art advanced video communication solutions from Norway. The results will improve the inter-institutional partnership between existing vocational training centers and a regional university in Targu-Mures, by stimulating and improving the quality, accessibility and supply of vocational education and training services for further development of human resources. The objective is to renovate the teaching infrastructure used by specialists in vocational education, and improve vocational training quality by making it more adaptable to the Romanian labor market. The later includes dissemination of a new model for organizing and delivering professional vocational training comprising of competence transfer, competence export, network building, and schools association development within a regional development perspective. The training delivery utilizes state of the art ICT solutions and video services.

The paper will give an overview of the ongoing research and development work, done in partnership with Sør-Trøndelag University College in Trondheim, Norway, and in particular address experiences that may be transferred to other European countries. This includes for instance:
• Specification of state of the art digital classroom infrastructure, the required knowledge transfer and the practical organization of training delivery.
• Design and establishment of a state of the art vocational training ICT and video infrastructure based up on good practices from Scandinavia.
• Effective development and deployment of large scale instructor training through a dedicated "Train-the-trainer" program.
• Experiences obtained through delivery of vocational training courses that utilize blended learning methods mixing (i) on-site training, (ii) inclusion of learning management systems, (iii) deployment of streaming video solutions, and (iv) effective use of videoconferencing into distance learning environments.
• Evaluation of training methods and technical solutions for easy transfer of results and achievements.
• Dissemination of project results for effective transfer of know how to a pan European audience.

The article will present and transfer experiences targeting selection of technical solutions that are adapted to available bandwidth, and establish training solutions that are accommodated to the telecommunication costs. The training solutions identify good practices that underpin the capacity for innovation, as well as expansion of capacity, in vocational training.

The participating training organizations and industrial companies may utilize the new training environment to offer and receive a broad range of specialized courses, including transnational exchange of competence transfer. Our experiences indicate that the network is enhancing attractiveness of, access to, and participation in vocational education and training. This requires successful implementation of modern e-learning services and video infrastructure.

Keywords:

Videoconferencing, videostreaming, vocational education and training, blended learning.