On 20– 24 October, 2014 the courses modules developers training “Train the Trainer” took place in Wiesbaden, Germany.The German Federal Criminal Police(BKA) hosted the training. 24 participants from Sweden, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Poland and Germany joined this event. The main goal of the training was to provide courses modules development rules to the partners.
Anders Carlsson, the General Project Manager, Coordinator of Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), acquainted participants with the going progress of the ENGENSEC implementation and planned next steps.Camilla Eriksson, the BTH economical department representative, explained the project financial rules for new participants and current state of project budget.
The “Train the Trainer course” was developed during EU project ISEC 2007 and ISEC 2010 by Heiko Held and Anders Carlsson. The purpose is to educate university teachers and police instructors how to manage course development over distances and to create course module materials to mitigate language and cultural differences.
Training days were full with different kinds of sessions for participants. Heiko Held, the BKA representative, was in charge of the following training sessions: trainer guide, intercultural projects and competence, project management, train the trainer, learning methods.The participants learnt the peculiarities of the course module development process, became aware of cultural differences and had sessions on identification and development of plans supporting the course module developments. All participants had possibilities to improve the way they communicate information with the audience participating in selected practice exercises.
During the training the participants were occasionally divided into eight groups according to the list of courses modules. Each group was working under the course module description, draft of the curriculum, ideas about the trainer guide and training materials. Each group presented the results of the work in joint sessions.
The partners were given the recommendation that course development should be completed to 1st, April.The preliminary course module development plan has the next steps:
– distance planning of group roles and assignments;
– first workshop;
– 5-6 weeks of course development;
– second workshop;
– final polishing.
The table of course module content should include the following items: purpose, relevance, structure, scheduling tasks and subtasks, time plan, resources issues, potential overlapping with other courses, portability issues, reuse of results, glossary. Each course team has to have deliverance approved before next step of course development.
Iryna Sokolianska, specialist of distance education and member of the Evaluation Committee, trained the participants to use the “AdobeConnect” application for meeting and teaching. Participants have also learnt the recommendations of how to develop more effective webinar meetings and educations.
Rune Gustavsson, the head of Evaluation Committee, told about the evaluation criteria and deliverables for course modules materials. Modules materials will be checked on completeness, relevance, workability, portability, correctness of the translation in English. All deliverables will be assessed on completeness and relevance of content, resources, portability to different environments, glossary.Anders Carlsson explained the deffirence between bachelor degree and master degree courses: curriculum, pre-knowledge, outcomes and assessment methods.
Tomasz Surmacz, the Wroclav University of Technology representative, shared his experience of using the “Redmine”, an open source project management web application. The subject of using different supporting programs for course development was discussed by the training participants.
Leo Truksans, coordinator of University of Latvia, provided information about the process of the ReSeLa (Remote Security Laboratory) development, interface of system, using of virtual machines routers, switches inside ReSeLa and answered all the questions.
As a training result the participants have been introduced to new useful knowledge about the courses modules developments and had also been shown and trained in models and methods to jointly in teams create courses modules materials. Not the least, they have learned how to cooperate in international projects such as ENGENSEC.