AGRICOM National Workshops Started

Partners from the European AGRICOM project have carried out national workshops in Germany and Greece on February 14th and 15th 2012, respectively. These national workshops, along with the upcoming national workshop in Italy and the Netherlands, support one of the key initial steps of the AGRICOM project, namely the execution of a detailed needs analysis in the agricultural sectors of the partner countries regarding vocational educational training (VET) and competence modelling. “The feedback from the workshop participants, experienced professionals in the respective countries’ agricultural sectors, ensures that the AGRICOM Competence Model will address the real VET needs to be found there,” says Christian Stracke, project coordinator from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and competence expert, “as the development of the AGRICOM Competence Model continues, we will combine their feedback with that of other professionals, in order to establish an effective competence model for the European agricultural sector.”

Project partners AUA (The Agricultural University of Athens) and Agro-Know Technologies organized the Greek national workshop on the premises of AUA in Athens, hosting over 150 participants from the private and public sector. An open discussion was held between various agronomists, including growers and private suppliers of agricultural technology. The diverse composition of the group allowed AUA and Agro-Know to benefit from VET experience in several types of facilities, such as greenhouses and hydroponic farms. The Greek partners also collected questionnaires which further investigated the deficits and needs of current VET systems as well as the participant’s previous experience with competence modelling and the potential seen therein.

The national workshop at the Leibniz-Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops in Großenbeeren, Germany greeted 12 participants, particularly from the horticultural sector. The hosts of the workshop likewise gathered feedback from the participants and intend to incorporate their suggestions into the development of the AGRICOM Competence Model.

Additional national workshops are planned in other partner countries. Project partner SERIFO (Società di Servizi Reali Ricerca e Formazione Settori Agricolo, Agroalimentare, Rurale e Ambientale) plans to organize a national workshop in Italy in order to expand the range of professional experience to be used as a guide for the development of the AGRICOM Competence Model. The workshop will take place at the premises of SERIFO in Napoli the 24th April.

Furthermore, Dutch project partners also plan a workshop organised in a decentralised way through a series of experts’ interviews by the partner Van der Meer & van Tilburg BV (VDM). These two future workshops will further complement the feedback gathered from the project with the professional experiences of two further partner countries, expanding the potential application opportunities for the model.

The main goal of the project AGRICOM is the transfer and adaptation of the WACOM Water Competence Model (WCM) from the Water Sector to the Agricultural Sector.

Further main objectives of AGRICOM are:
1. Identifying and analysing targeted needs and competences that are required by the labour market for specific use cases and jobs from several fields of the agricultural sector
2. Transferring and adapting the generic WACOM competence model towards the AGRICOM competence model (ACM) allowing more agricultural use cases
3. Pilot-testing the ACM to the jobs specialisations related to agricultural uses of water resources (irrigation, hydroponics, etc.)
4. Establishing the AGRICOM online community for communication, moderated discussions and exchange of project results, experiences and expertise on competence modelling for vocational education and training in the agricultural sector,
5. Establishing the AGRICOM web portal and populating it with more agricultural use cases,
6. Enhancing the transparency of the job profiles in the agricultural sector,
7. Supporting the conjunction of vocational education and training with the labour market and jobs specialisations.

The main long-term objective and addressed impact is the introduction of competence modelling to the agricultural sector in order to develop a first Agriculture Competence Model as well as to strengthen the transparency and comparability of VET opportunities through the transfer of WCM and the adaptation of ECVET and EQF.

More information about AGRICOM online:
http://www.agriculture-competence.eu

Contact Person: Cornelia Helmstedt
Organization: University of Duisburg-Essen
Address: Universitaetsstr. 9 (ICB)
45141 Essen, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 (0)201-183-4410
E-Mail: cornelia.helmstedt@icb.uni-due.de

This release was published on openPR.