Development of Learning Platform

The Intellectual Output 3 will be dedicated to the development of the project’s learning tool that will support all the other IO’s and will constitute the base of learning for the target group of the project, the VET educators and the VET learners. The lead partner for this output will be Mixt Source Management, and the foreseen time period for its development, including the testing will be from M8 to M20.

The main features of the platform fill be:

  • Section for the Needs Mapping of the VET – in which the document developed in IO1 will be presented in all languages of the partnership and English;
  • Courses section in which the Part 1 of the 3 courses developed in IO2, together with their Trainer’s Kits. The courses will all include an evaluation section which will be integrated with the Open Badges developed in O3/A4;
  • A registration section which the users will declare their VET status (VET/nonVET, VET learner/educator) and nationality;
  • Based on the declarations made at registration, certain sections of the learning platform will be available to them. VET educators will have access to the entire course+Trainer’s Kit containing explanations and indications for facilitating the training process while VET learners will have only access to the first and second part of the courses without the trainer’s kit. Each participant will have access to materials and menus in their own language as well as in English;
  • Each course section will be optimized for online presentation/usage and will have two evaluation sections, one for each part, in which the pupils will be able to test their skills. If the outcome is negative, they will have the repeat the module before going on the next one. All learners graduating from the first part of the courses will qualify to access the second part of the course at the start moment of the C2 training session. By that time, the selection process will have been over and the selected participants for the C2 will have already arrived at the training location;
  • The platform will integrate a set of Open Badges granted through an open badge provider in order to award the completion of the courses within the project. The Open Badges represent a visual way of recognizing the achievement of a skill, representing, due to the fact that it is awarded by a third party, a more credible picture than a résumé which is a self assessment. Also, they can be presented in multiple combinations, creating a constantly evolving picture of a person’s learning journey. For the Rural+ project, the Open Badges presented will detail the skills and abilities which will be gained by the participants in the platform at the end of a course. Both the graphical layout and the competence certification inserted in the badges will be developed with the support and input of all partners in order to thoroughly reflect all nationality requirements, At the completion of a course, the participant will receive the badge automatically and will be able to insert it in any online electronic support system (like Linkedin, Facebook, etc.);
  • This platform will contain also social modules through a forum for instance to reinforce the transnational collaboration between learners, students or people involved in the VET industry. The final objective of this OER is to create a highly interactive online platform where VET learners and educators will be trained in accordance with their needs;
  • Also, the platform will contain a series of questionnaires for the participants which will not have an impact on the project but will help the partners identify additional situations confronted by the VET in the labor market. The same questionnaire will be inserted on the project website;
  • The e-Learning platform solution will be easy to compress/deploy on any cloud premises. This will allow us to test the platform both on internal circuit servers as well as in on-line mode and also, in case of server failures, it will allow us to recuperate the data quickly on any cloud services.