EVALUATION DU PROJET EMPLOY au 15-05-97 (environ 15 pages)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 12. Background and objectives of EMPLOY 23. The EMPLOY approach 43.1. The EMPLOY pedagogical approach 43.1.1. The needs of the EMPLOY target population 43.1.2. The EMPLOY curriculum 53.1.3. The role of multimedia in the EMPLOY curriculum 53.1.4. The EMPLOY assessment methodology 63.2. The EMPLOY technical infrastructure 63.2.1. EDUNET 73.2.2. The smart card system 94. Presentation of the pilot sites 114.1. Norfolk College (United Kingdom) 114.2. IB-Bildungszentrum in Stuttgart (Germany 124.3. La Ligue FOL 17 in La Rochelle (France) 124.4. BFI-…O in Linz (Austria) 134.5. National Youth Federation (NYF) in Ireland 135. PartnersÕ profile and contact points Erreur!6. EMPLOY benefits 197. Annex 1 : The EMPLOY curriculum 20Introduction

This deliverable, which aims at promoting the EMPLOY project and presenting it to the general public includes:

• a report on the objectives of the project, its pedagogical and technical approach, a presentation of the five EMPLOY sites and of the partners involved,
• a videocassette on the project, with interviews of EMPLOY trainers and trainees,
• as an example, a booklet presenting EMPLOY courses at BFI, Austria,

An EMPLOY WEB site is also available and provides information on the project in electronic

form at the following address: http://www.arttic.com/projects/employ

The report consists of four parts:

• the first part presents the project background and objectives,
• the second part presents both the pedagogical approach of EMPLOY based on the trainees' needs and the technical infrastructure,
• the third part presents the five EMPLOY pilot sites where the EMPLOY training approach is being conceived and implemented before being extended to other sites,
• the fourth part presents each partner involved in the project and his role. (not included)
• Background and objectives of EMPLOY

The challenge

The high unemployment rate amongst young people leaving school in Europe has become an increasing problem for the European Union, some member states being affected more than others - up to 25% of young people are unemployed in some of them - . The results are in the short term strong social tensions and potential social unrest. In the long term, the risk is the already visible emergence of a new social class of poor.

The opportunities

Multimedia illiteracy is becoming a major risk which might generate even more unemployment. Information and communication technologies are transforming our society. The ability to use those technologies is becoming in many sectors a critical success factor both from a professional and a personal point of view. But even more, mastering them will become vital for social survival. Most young people leaving school have not learnt to use a computer for productive purposes. A new social exclusion risk is showing its face in form of “multimedia illiteracy". More and more have difficulties finding a job when they leave school because their training is not adapted and because they have not learnt to use tools that are commonplace in companies.

However, the time seems to be ripe to address this problem because many factors are going in the right direction:

• an awareness of the problems and challenges has developed on a political level, whether in the member states or at the European level,
• the technology is available and getting cheaper everyday,
• training institutions are under increasing pressure to offer new, more individualised training programmes,
• young teachers are more open to change and keen on using new technologies,
• some young people themselves are attracted by new technologies that can therefore be used to stimulate their motivation to learn more easily than traditional educational methods.

An answer

The EMPLOY project, financed jointly by the Telematics Applications Programme of the European Commission and the different European partners involved, aims at addressing the problem of social integration of unemployed young people in Europe through the use of multimedia in vocational training.

The young people EMPLOY is concerned with are between the age of 16 and 25, very often socially disadvantaged. Some of them have left school early without a formal degree. Others have a training which is inadequate to present market demand.

To help these young people threatened by social marginalisation, EMPLOY offers them the opportunity to:

• learn how to use multimedia tools in a professional setting, like the Internet or multimedia graphics,
• learn with educational multimedia tools like CD-ROMs (off-line solution) or on-line solutions like the distance learning platform EDUNET,

thus enhancing their chances on the job market.

To achieve this:

• a multimedia infrastructure has been set up at five vocational training institutions, each located in a different European country (Austria, France, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom), thus building the core of a European multimedia vocational training network that will be progressively improved and extended;
• multimedia courses adapted to the needs of the different categories of unemployed young people trained on each site have been developed and tested and a catalogue regrouping them will be produced.
• The EMPLOY approach

The EMPLOY project consists of three steps:

1. the first step (year 1) is meant to:

- analyse the unemployed young people's training needs and define the skills they have to acquire in order to improve their situation on the job market, and eventually find a job,

- define the corresponding curriculum using multimedia as a training tool, resource or subject to be studied,

- define the technical infrastructure to support the courses,

- train the trainers,

- test and assess the curriculum and the infrastructure by conducting experimental training sessions; evaluate the added value of training with multimedia versus training with traditional methods;

1. the objective of the second step (year 2) is to improve both the infrastructure and the curriculum, using the lessons learnt during the first phase;
2. the third step (year 3) is a large-scale demonstration of the EMPLOY approach thus tested and refined to other training institutions in Europe.
3. The EMPLOY pedagogical approach

EMPLOY courses concern a wide range of unemployed young people who do not all have the same needs:

• Some of them come from disadvantaged family backgrounds and have severe personal and social handicaps.

They need to acquire basic skills such as literacy, numeracy, basic computer and social skills. One of the important issues is to help them build up their self-esteem and self-confidence in order to show them that they are able to reach learning goals and, ultimately, find a job;

• Others are school leavers, without any formal vocational qualifications;

They need to bridge the gaps in their basic knowledge of arithmetics, spelling and grammar, and acquire basic professional skills like office and computer-based multimedia skills and knowledge of foreign languages, especially English.

• Others still, have qualifications that are not adequate to the job market or that they cannot use because of health reasons and therefore have to be retrained.

They need to acquire advanced professional skills like advanced multimedia office skills for example or other specific skills.

All the trainees also have to acquire job search techniques adapted to their level.

The EMPLOY curriculum

The EMPLOY curriculum takes into account the needs of the three categories of unemployed young people mentioned above in a flexible way

Nevertheless, all trainees whatever their level, are introduced to the basics of multimedia like how to use the Internet. They also learn how to do multimedia presentations, use multimedia tools in an office environment and use CD-ROMs for learning a variety of subjects like mathematics, logical reasoning or grammar.

There is also an emphasis on developing their communication skills, whether it be interpersonal or team work skills (see detailed overview of curriculum in annex).

The role of multimedia in the EMPLOY curriculum

Multimedia is used in EMPLOY:

• as a way of stimulating the trainees' interest in learning and building up their self-confidence:

Training with multimedia offers a learning-by-doing and learning-by-playing approach which is perceived as being “more fun” than traditional teaching methods. It therefore helps disadvantaged young people focus their attention for longer periods of time and thus achieve assigned learning goals more easily. This helps them regain self-confidence and creates a “spiral of success”;

• as a way of providing individualised learning tools:

Trainees can learn things at their own pace, unobserved by others, with a tutor's help.

• as a way of developing the trainees' professional assets:

Multimedia related know-how adds a real value to a job candidacy. Trainees can show their ability to use multimedia tools efficiently:

- they can use the most frequently used softwares - Word, Excel, Powerpoint...-

- they can create multimedia presentations - their letter of application and curriculum vitae is a proof of that -,

- they can develop Web pages for the company they work for.

The EMPLOY assessment methodology

Three aspects have to be assessed in EMPLOY:

• the course content:

To assess course content and improve it on an on-going basis, meetings are held regularly between trainers and trainees. Also, questionnaires are filled out by the trainees and analysed. External observers are involved in the evaluation process to ensure its independence.

• the competencies acquired by the trainees:

For each EMPLOY module, competencies required at the beginning of the module and acquired at the end have been defined and performance criteria developed to be able to assess the acquisition by the trainees of the competencies thus defined.

A common competency grid has been developed that allows the comparison between the different countries.

To carry out this assessment, various methods are used: they include interviews, formal exams or evaluation of samples of work done.

• the general impact of the training:

To assess the overall impact of the training, a follow-up is organised by sending questionnaires to the former trainees and interviewing some of them.

The aim of this evaluation is to assess the changes that have happened in the former trainees' life: how many of them have found a job, what kind of job, and what was the influence of multimedia training on the changes observed.

The EMPLOY technical infrastructure

Each site is equipped with the following technical infrastructure supporting the EMPLOY multimedia courses:

• A central server, running the EDUNET application providing the monitoring of the training and distance learning facilities, tools not available on the individual workstations and connection to the other sites,
• Individual multimedia workstations, i.e. PC Pentium with at least 16 Mbytes RAM, 500 Mbytes hard disk, quad speed CD ROM, a Sound Blaster compatible card and a 15” colour screen; each of the workstations will be equipped with a smart card reader,
• Additional hardware installed either on a central server or the workstations depending on their use and installation: videoconferencing system, ISDN connection(s), camera, printers, etc.
• An Ethernet network to interconnect all these workstations.

Telecommunication between the different sites are handled through ISDN connections. Internet is also used to exchange mail and information.

Basic software used on all sites includes WINDOWS NT, multimedia software and telecommunication software.

The EDUNET server will provide distance learning facilities on all the sites. The access to Web servers and especially EDUNET will be controlled by a smart card system..

EDUNET

EDUNET is the server which enables EMPLOY trainees to access distance learning services through multimedia PCs or workstations linked to the Internet (or an Intranet) via a standard telephone line for basic services or an ISDN high delivery line for more comprehensive services.

EDUNET aims at making some of the EMPLOY courses accessible to trainees who have difficulty in attending the courses on the main sites, either because they live too far away or for other reasons.

From a technical point of view, the EDUNET server is made of:

• a structure of files integrated in an HTTP server for the storing of pedagogical contents,
• a structure of data integrated in a relational data base server for indexation and access to pedagogical resources.

Users can access EDUNET through a standard multimedia PC equipped with a modem or an ISDN card using a browser such as Navigator from Netscape or Explorer from Microsoft.

The EDUNET platform will be hosted by each partner's own server or by the server of his/her Internet provider.

EDUNET is composed of three different services covering the whole spectrum of the distance learning process and addressing the needs of the different players involved in it:

the administrative service,

the tutoring service,

the training service.

1. The administrative service for the EMPLOY administrator

This is the first step of the distance learning process; it is the service where the EMPLOY administrator enters information concerning the users and the pedagogical contents in the databases.

Functionalities :

• enrolment, information on users
• indexation, recording of pedagogical contents
• course organisation
• invoicing

1. The tutoring service for the EMPLOY trainers/tutors

This service is about the pedagogical administration of the distance learning sessions. EMPLOY tutors are in charge of organising the distance learning sessions by putting at the disposal of the trainees the different tools they will need as well as a personalised timetable for each of them.

Functionalities :

• creation and reservation of the users' timetables
• pedagogical follow-up of the users
• assistance to the users, facilitation of newsgroups
• creation of tests in relation to pedagogical contents

1. The training service for EMPLOY trainees

This service deals with the training itself. It will be available after the administrative and tutoring services are in place.

Once he/she has selected his/her course subject, the EMPLOY trainee will be able to take an orientation test to help him/her find courses best suited to his/her needs and/or level according to the resources available on the server. He/she will also be given some advice on the most appropriate curriculum he/she might follow. This test will give a first assessment of the trainees' needs as well as an estimate of the cost of the course. A tutor will be available to help the trainee along the process.

Functionalities :

• lessons (downloading or tele-execution)
• questions (exercises), automatic assessment
• e-mail, videoconferencing,
• newsgroups, conferences
• administrative information (courses, timetable)
• The smart card system

The access to the EMPLOY infrastructure is ensured by smart cards meant to:

• identify the trainees through a portable personal device,
• secure the access to WEB servers, especially EDUNET, thus allowing to control the use of available training courses and to implement a pre-paid system for managing the user-rights.

The EMPLOY smart card system is based on the use of the "ImagineCard" concept, which is an integrated solution for securing access to Internet services through a strong user authentication. Implementing GPK2000 cards, performing public key cryptographic algorithms, ImagineCard consists in a turn key solution on the client (end-user) side, an authentication library on the server side and a complete module to personalise the end-users' smart cards. It combines different components:

• APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for smart card-enabled user authentication,
• smart cards and card readers,
• PC and server software modules.

In EMPLOY, each site provides the trainee with a personalised smart card. He/she plugs his /her card in the reader connected to his/her PC, in which a special Netscape - compliant software plug-in has been installed, in order to convert a standard Web browser into a smart card - enabled digital information user.

Each time he/she accesses the protected service, irrespective of the site from which he/ she is connected, the trainee is requested to enter a PIN code. If the PIN is correct, the authentication protocol is automatically performed by the card and the connection to the EDUNET server is authorised.

This system has the following advantages:

• the user is identified as an EMPLOY trainee,
• the access to Internet is strictly limited to "EMPLOY “labellized" contents, validated by each EMPLOY site,
• the trainee can access, through open (Internet) network the data and programmes made available by any EMPLOY site.

The EMPLOY smart card will be progressively enriched with updated versions (more application memory, bigger authentication algorithms) in order to add new functions.

Presentation of the pilot sites

The EMPLOY approach is being conceived and tested in five pilot sites, each of them with their specificities, before being extended to other sites and, may be, other target populations. These sites are located in vocational training centres in five different European countries. Here is an overview of the five sites:

Norfolk College (United Kingdom)

Norfolk College's activities are centered on the region of Norfolk. For several years now, one of the centres of interest of the College has been multimedia and large sums have been invested in course development using IT as a training tool.

EMPLOY courses currently concern two types of unemployed young people and are included in two kinds of curricula at both ends of the spectrum:

• a “Skills bridging course” meant for young people who have learning difficulties and/or are disadvantaged socially. The general objectives of the session are to acquire the necessary basic and social skills to join further vocational main stream courses or seek employment via further on-the-job training in a supported work placement.

This course is meant to improve the trainees' key skills of communication, numeracy and information technology, develop social skills and, at the same time, provide them with a taster of different practical skills like brickwork, cookery or arts and crafts.

• an “Intensive Secretarial Course” meant for post A-Level students who despite already having a range of qualifications, are unemployed because of their lack of computer skills.

As part of the programme trainees are not only improving their multimedia skills but also their language skills in French by using the CD-ROMs provided by MEDIACONCEPT, which will give them the opportunity to widen their horizons and seek employment throughout Europe.

Starting September 1997, EMPLOY courses will be extended to other types of unemployed young people and a variety of curricula such as:

• “Practical business skills” meant for poor achievers and /or socially disadvantaged youth with career intentions in office work,
• Modern apprentices - Administration.

Both courses will include IT instruction in order to teach trainees modern office skills like fax, e-mail, videoconferencing etc.

• “General Caterers”: this course will have IT instruction and theory input will be covered by CD-ROMs.
• IB-Bildungszentrum in Stuttgart (Germany

The IB-Bildungszentrum Stuttgart (Vocational Training Centre) belongs to the Internationaler Bund, Freier Träger der Jugend-, Sozial- und Bildungsarbeit e.V., an independent, non-profit organisation situated in Frankfurt/Main that specialises in vocational training, youth and social work in Germany. The IB-Bildungszentrum Stuttgart established in 1973 offers various programs in the field of education and vocational training. It aims to promote the vocational performance of young people and adults and to qualify them for a continuously changing labour market. The main areas of work include vocational training, private and further education, and supplementary programs that accompany training, retraining, and part-time qualification measures. IB-Stuttgart works in close cooperation with governmental departments and committees, the labour office, chambers of commerce, health and social service institutions as well as prominent partners in industry, trade and services.

Due to a changing labour market and advances in technology IB-Bildungszentrum Stuttgart faces new challenges in education. Consequently, Multimedia has become a significant component of training and retraining in order to prepare individuals for the way of the future. The EMPLOY curriculum at IB-Bildungszentrum Stuttgart currently addresses construction and technical draftsmen/women who are already computer literate but with inadequate professional training. The training includes four main units:

• Basics of multimedia,
• Multimedia Presentation,
• Multimedia Office Communication and
• Learning with multimedia.

The training modules provide the trainees with additional qualifications to supplement the regular training and thus improve their employment opportunities on the labour market.

La Ligue FOL 17 in La Rochelle (France)

Created in 1866 in France, LFEEP is a federation of 38000 associations concerned with education, training, culture, sport and environment. Mmedialog, the training centre of La Ligue's federation in La Rochelle, is a newly created multimedia training centre which opened in 1996 and is hosting EMPLOY courses.

THE EMPLOY curriculum concerns unemployed young people who are mostly early school-leavers, most of them with social problems. The training session includes on-the-job training periods in companies and training modules on the site.

The general objective of the session is to help participants recover their self-esteem in order to be able to set up and implement their professional project and find a job. Training modules include instruction on how to use computers and multimedia.

BFI-ÖO in Linz (Austria)

The Berufsförderunginstitut Oberösterreich is specialised in vocational training and rehabilitation in Upper Austria. One of the goals of BFI-ÖO is to develop the use of multimedia in vocational training. It is closely associated with the Ars Electronica Centre, a permanent high-tech demonstration centre, which actually hosts some of the EMPLOY training sessions, in the “classroom of the future”, a classroom equipped with the latest multimedia tools.

EMPLOY trainees are either school-leavers with difficulties on the job market or physically handicapped young people who need retraining.

The EMPLOY curriculum includes the following modules:

Module 1: Internet (Information retrieval on the Web, introduction to HTML)

Module 2: English 4 U (refreshing English for multimedia usage)

Module 3: Multimedia JOB application (making a short animated CV and a multimedia presentation)

Module 4: Multimedia Office Communication (modern office technology)

Module 5: Multimedia SCHOOL (CD-ROMs to learn German, Maths, English and logical reasoning)

National Youth Federation (NYF) in Ireland

The NYF is a federation of 19 autonomous regional youth services based outside the Dublin area. The EMPLOY pilot multimedia site is based within the national offices of the organisation in Dublin and linked to satellite sites: one in another centre in Dublin (Pleasant Street), another one in Naas and a third one in Drogheda.

The EMPLOY modules are meant for young unattached people who left school early with little or no qualifications and limited levels of concentration. The primary aim of the courses is therefore to use multimedia content to drive their need to learn new technological skills and improve their self-confidence. There is a strong emphasis on learning through play and exploration. The modules include:

• Multimedia workshops for music and graphics creation
• Office communication
• Internet (navigation, e-mail, creating a Web page)

1. Multimedia presentations