Although the full details of the new EU Telematic Applications for Education and Training Projects have yet to be released as the EC is still involved with negotiations with the projects, it seems that around thirty projects have been successful and it is understood that most projects will initially run for a two year period covering the cycle from needs analysis to validation, with only a few running for a longer period. There will be fifteen projects focused on experimental services, seven projects focused on developing innovative actions and seven support action projects and two SME specific projects managed by the Education and Training sector.
A number of the experimental service projects will be developed to support co-operation between students, researchers and entrepreneurs/employees of SMEs through utilising multimedia telematics systems. One of these projects involves creating a demonstrator in the fish culture industry enabling collaborative groupwork between students and researchers on the basis of a broadband network. Seven universities will be connected via ATM enabling videoconferences and computer- based conferences in electronic classrooms. At least two SMEs per participating university will be connected to this broadband network via high speed interactive cable TV.
Another Project involving students and tutors in universities and SME aims to develop a system of learning and training which provides high quality interaction between tutors and peer learners and allows for sharing multimedia resources across a developing range of network capabilities (computer conferencing, videoconferencing). Whereas another project aims to exploit multimedia-based education and training in the fields of microelectronics and advanced materials, by using simulations and flexible delivery systems by means of telematics networks
Other projects focus on serving the needs of professionals. One project aims to develop and demonstrate a multimedia computer-based on-line training and support service network initially for telecommunications' engineers, environmental scientists and biomedical engineers.
Another project will aim to create a management information support distributed system to support pan-European study modules at University level and also the European Credit Transfer system. The system will allow communication between institutions for student and staff exchanges, realisation of common projects, access to information, interchange of materials and realisation of multimedia courses. About 60 institutions throughout Europe will take part in the demonstration phase and the system will include multi-language support functions.
One project will establish a distance learning service, including a monitoring system to support education continuity for the travelling population and workers in four countries. It will aim to create a network of 18 centres providing education to the travelling workers and their families, enabling joint courseware production, exchange of materials and teacher training. 432 travellers and tutors will be involved in the initial trial but the potential market is 2.2 million individuals and 46,000 enterprises. Learners will access the education services using mobile digital communications.
One project aims to establish a common European ground for distance learning programmes via the establishment and validation of a European Network of 14 Educational Teleports providing one-stop shopping training service (information, counselling, training materials, etc.) for on-the-job training. Initially 14 courses will be provided over the network.
Whereas another project aims to facilitate easy home access to continuing education and open learning using interactive cable television (CATV). It will establish an open learning system for those who have limited access to education and training and for home learning students and professionals. It will also set up an information infrastructure for co-operation for education suppliers and learners using CATV plus ISDN. The demonstration will cover cities in The Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, UK and Ireland and involve three different kinds of application sites: university campus CATV networks, local CATV networks and regional/national distributed networks.
Another project aims to devise, develop and implement a competence development system in several industry sectors, which can support the performance of individuals undertaking safety-critical tasks (railway, maritime, offshore, gas etc.). A demonstrator based on a network of multimedia telematics services for on-the-job training in several industries will be built. The validation phase of the project will involve 8500 learners in 72 sites based in the maritime, port and rail industries.
Other projects will focus on skills development in the areas of multimedia telematics and on-line publishing. One will establish a European network supporting publishers of interactive learning materials to adapt existing and traditional courses transforming them into multimedia to be offered to a wide range of home learners both using on-line and off-line media. The network will also be used for distance co-operative design and production. Three demonstrators will be implemented: one for publishers and two for home-learners in two regions of France and Germany involving 300 households.
Another will develop and test an authoring system for scientific training to produce, in a co-operative way, computer-based simulation to gradually replace lab practicals, particularly in the field of life sciences and medicine and then to generalise in other sectors. A network of four universities in four countries involving 200 users in each university will be set up.
A third project will involve four cross-border universities working with international Telecom infrastructure providers to provide telematic-based education and training on the use of information technology (self-directed and collaborative learning) for universities and industries by using broadband networks (ATM and interactive cable). The trials will cover 12 distance learning applications and three learner support applications and will be based in three countries.
One project is planned to be particularly focused on children. It will provide access to an international communications network for child-oriented teleservices, particularly for the areas of education, leisure, information and edutainment. A demonstrator will be installed in 14 regions involving schools and local community agencies.
One project will experiment with the use of broadband networks to meet the needs of learners in remote areas by creating a virtual classroom based on existing telecom technologies (WWW, ISDN and Internet). In addition it will carry out experiments with advanced telecom technologies (ATM broadband) which will create the classroom of the future. There are claims that 140,000 distance learning students will potentially be involved including professionals in industry, SMEs, open university staff and students.
Another project will develop and validate a telepresence classroom that is both pedagogically and financially efficient. The demonstration will include a learning centre suitable for a learner group, a workstation suitable for an individual learner, a centre for communication for a group of teachers/tutors and a centre for broader teleclassroom distribution. The infrastructure to be used is based on ISDN, ATM and satellite TV (analogue and digital).
An educational "tele-presence" environment based on a trans-European infrastructure of integrated ISDN and satellite-based applications will be established with another project. Target groups will include large institutions as well as SMEs and the demonstration, involving 1000 hours of training with 1500 users, will take place in 9 countries.
One proposed project aims to provide telematics-based solutions with lower training costs by sharing resources for companies in the car industry. End-users of the learning applications will be highly skilled professionals as well as technicians in the maintenance sector. It will create a demonstration based on ISDN and ATM networks linking competence centres to make on-the-job training available to large companies and SME supplier companies.
It is planned that another project will develop a European teacher's training system incorporating telematics, in a cost effective way, for continuous education of teachers in the use of educational technology. It will establish a network of six interconnected national sites which will train 600 teachers in the six participating countries in the use of technology-based learning.
In order to optimise the creation and maintenance of educational materials used in universities and adult education centres and provide access communication and collaboration features for trainers, researchers, faculty members and students, one project will create an interconnection of "knowledge pools" through an experimental TM network.
Another project plans to develop and maintain a service for the design and production of learning environments based on simulations for "autonomous discovery learning" in the area of middle vocational training.
It is understood that a number of Support Actions for the whole of the Telematics Applications Programme will be managed by the Education and Training Sector. One project will establish a permanent concertation framework for the whole community of the projects, based on the practices of the projects and on the experience of all the users and suppliers. Through a process that will be entirely user driven, the project will launch an Electronic Forum to aggregate the interests of the projects in the context of the information society. This aggregation will involve 3 stages: (i) analysis of the needs and strategies, barriers and problems encountered by the projects; (ii) validation of RTD expectations by recognised actors from the marketplace and society (users and suppliers); (iii) recommendations todecision makers in order to facilitate the exploitation of RTD results in the information society.
Another project will focus on the development and delivery of interactive training courses for trade unions across EU through dedicated World Wide Web services.
One project will promote the developments of new markets and business opportunities for telematics products and/or services in Latin America. The project will be oriented towards the Education and Training sector and, to some extent, to the Healthcare sector as well. It will be done through the organisation of two major events: "Amerihealth'97" and "Educamerica'97" both in June or July 97 in which telematics applications representatives will be invited. It will be complemented by the two surveys outlining the business opportunities for European Health and Education and Training telematics products in Latin America.
Another project aims to develop, organise and run a regular training programme in telematics for the CIS countries at the national and regional levels focusing on telematics for Education and Training and Environment. The second objective of the project is to promote the telematics applications and to demonstrate their interest for the CIS countries. This will be done through the organisation of several events and conferences combined with demonstrations of telematics applications, three regional consensus workshops including debates on technological, economic and social issues related to telematics, two cascade conferences devoted to technological presentations by EU commercial companies and service providers and a monthly telematics technological seminar at the Russian Space Science Internet Centre (Moscow).
One Project will focus on the design, development and delivery of training courses to teacher trainers (primary & secondary education) and libraries on multimedia telematics in order to stimulate awareness and use of telematics. Three delivery sites will be local communities, e.g. universities, schools, centres and homes.
This project will provide training for regional SMEs in the use of telematics (for financial management, communication and marketing services). There will also be awareness-raising activities through the demonstration of services (telework; telepublishing; telemedicine; intelligent networks, etc.); training in specific telematic applications; business-play training course and extension of the training to public administrations and other SMEs.
This project will carry out seven pilot experiments: to validate telematic regional and local networks of intermediate organisations and small and medium sized Organisations (SMOs) and to disseminate multiple teleservices such as: access to educational publishers; just-in-time flexible learning; teleworking and telemanagement through distributed one-stop-shops for professionals; remote access to administrations; teleservices for farmers through management centres; telebusiness for remote areas and urban areas. The seven pilots will be developed within a common technical environment (teleservices laboratory and virtual one-stop- shop).
Although many of the other projects will involve small and medium enterprises, there are two SME-specific Projects being managed by the Education and Training Sector.
This project will provide on-demand flexible telematics-based training services to SMEs and higher education institutions. This will involve the establishment of five local training centres in five countries in order to offer multimedia training using the existing European telematics infrastructure enhanced by satellite links to connect from remote areas. The course content will include: business management for SMEs, computer graphics, CAD, logistics, tele-communications, telemarketing and total quality management.
The objective of this project is to develop, test and validate interactive multimedia information and communication systems including on-the-job training programmes and provide access via networks to training centres, thereby creating a telematics network for SMEs and community groups in order to promote remote access to information and training for SME's found, particularly in rural areas. The first level validation will be with the 14 participating SMEs, this will be broadened to include community groups, local authorities and regional development authorities.