eCOTOOL Winter School Begins and Successful Consultation with the European Commission

Feb. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- The eCOTOOL winter school “Designing and Exploiting Certified Competence-based VET Curricula in Agriculture, Food & Environment” at the Technological Educational Institution of Athens (TEIA) in Greece has begun, and the members of the eCOTOOL consortium are have finished preparations for the students who will take part. The course will span five days from the 28th of February to the 5th of March and is focused on teachers, managers, and administrative school staff in the fields of agriculture, food and environment from all EU member states. “Interested individuals who attend the eCOTOOL winter school will profit from the interim results of both eCOTOOL and its sister project WACOM even before they end,” says Christian M. Stracke, standardisation and competence specialist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany as well as coordinator of eCOTOOL and WACOM.

The programme will train attendees in the construction and exploitation of competence-based curricula in the fields of agriculture, food and environment, including the consideration and use of competence models, a key concern of the eCOTOOL project itself. This will be accomplished through presentations and hands-on workshops for the development of vocational education and training (VET) programmes as well as through the analysis of various case studies investigating the design of various methods and systems. Additionally, European instruments such as the European Qualification Framework (EQF), the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) and the Europass Certificate Supplement (CS) will be explored and the potential impact of their integration into education and training programmes will be investigated.

The eCOTOOL consortium also met with the European Commission last month for consultation regarding the interim results of the project and the continuing alignment of progress made thus far and to maximize the benefit of the project results for the efforts of harmonisation between existing EU instruments, such as the EQF, ECVET and Europass CS. The European Commission, being very interested in the establishment of a standardized structure and methodology for the competence descriptions within these instruments, provided the eCOTOOL consortium with very helpful feedback for the future of the project. The guidance of the European Commission is integral to the success of the “eco-tools”, the web-based tools designed as a pilot to enable the interoperability of the Europass CS and other European instruments related to skills and competences.

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The long-term objective is the development of a European skills and competence model that can be integrated in the existing European policies (namely Europass, EQF, EQAVET, ECTS, and ECVET) and adapted to all branches. All European policies are still lacking a standardized common skills and competence model. Therefore eCOTOOL is developing the Europass CS eco‐tools that are a brand new solution not yet available in the whole of Europe nor in any of the LLP countries.

The overall objective of eCOTOOL is to improve the development, exchange, and maintenance of VET certificates and their accessibility and transparency by harmonizing Europass with other European instruments (EQF, ECVET) and e‐competences. This will increase the European mobility and transparency of VET systems.

For more information, visit: http://www.ecompetence.eu/