AGRICOM Project Successfully Started!

Feb. 8, 2012 - PRLog -- The European AGRICOM (Transfer of Water Competence Model to AGRIcultural COMpetences) project consortium held its kick-off meeting from the 14th to the 16th of November, 2011 in Essen Germany. “Through the first meeting of the AGRICOM project, a shared vision among all partners was reached,” says Prof. (KR) Christian M. Stracke, coordinator of the AGRICOM project from the University of Duisburg-Essen as well as competence and VET expert. “Our cooperative efforts will advance the development of competence modelling in Europe through its application to one of the most important European vocational areas – the agricultural sector.” The AGRICOM consortium consists of seven different partners from four different countries – Germany, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands – active in various fields, including competence modelling, vocational education and training, quality management, and eLearning.

The basis of AGRICOM is the WACOM Competence Model (WCM), a key product of the previous European project WACOM (WAter COmpetence Model Transfer). The WCM was created as a tool to assist the identification of the vocational and educational needs of learners and employees in the European water sector. In doing so, the WCM focused on improving the transparency and comparability of VET opportunities in Europe. Now AGRICOM, making use of the valuable experience gathered through the pilot-testing of the WCM, intends to transfer the model in order to create the first competence model for the agricultural sector, the ACM. In order to ensure the usefulness and applicability of the ACM, the AGRICOM consortium will maintain close contact with experts and policy makers in the European agricultural sector through a series of national workshops to be held in each of the partner countries. A full first version of the ACM itself will be completed by the end of the first year of the project, allowing for the remainder of the project duration for further optimisation, once again in close connection with the related experts and officials in the European VET and agricultural sector.

In addition to the input of national experts, the ACM will also be developed through the feedback of both European (CEN) and international (ISO) standardisation committees, made possible by the consortium member’s close relationship with the bodies. This feedback will help to make the ACM sustainable as well as applicable to its future transfer into other sectors, thus contributing to European competence modelling in the long-term.
The official website of the AGRICOM project is under construction, but will be available soon at http://www.agriculture-competence.eu

The AGRICOM consortium members are:

•   The University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) - Project Coordinator
•   Leibniz-Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (Germany)
•   International Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture Training (Netherlands)
•   Van der Meer & van Tilburg BV (Netherlands)
•   Agro-Know Technologies (Greece)
•   The Agricultural University of Athens (Greece)
•   Se.Ri.Fo. srl – Società di Servizi Reali Ricerca e Formazione – Settori Agricolo, Agroalimentare, Rurale e Ambientale (Italy)

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The department of Information Systems for Production and Operations Management at the University of Duisburg-Essen is involved in the R&D of the following fields:

E-Learning
Knowledge Management
Decision Support Systems
Skill/Competence Management