New Consortium Member UNITUS Joins AGRICOM

The AGRICOM consortium has announced that the University of Tuscia (UNITUS) based in Viterbo, Italy has joined the AGRICOM consortium. The university will be represented by Guiseppe Colla from the Department of Science and Technology for Agriculture, Forestry, Nature, and Energy (DAFNE). Their experience with Italian agriculture and food production, as well as forestry and energy efforts, will prove invaluable to the AGRICOM consortium, as UNITUS will coordinate the Italian portion of AGRICOM pilot-testing phase. The evaluation, validation, and optimization of the AGRICOM Competence Model (ACM) in the Italian national context thus falls under their responsibilities within the consortium. Their efforts will complement the on-going pilot-testing in the other national contexts in the AGRICOM consortium, namely Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands. Together their results will serve to support AGRICOM’s general European utility through demonstrating a variety of national implementations and applications.

“We are thrilled to welcome UNITUS as a new member of the AGRICOM Consortium,” says Prof. (KR) Christian M. Stracke, coordinator of the AGRICOM project from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and international ISO Convener for learning quality. “Their participation greatly strengthens our efforts, especially regarding the future viability of the ACM for Europe as a whole. We look forward to working with UNITUS and benefitting from their experience in the Italian agricultural sector.”

The full first version of the ACM was developed by the end of the first project year and is now undergoing extensive testing in the AGRICOM partner countries. This testing is complemented by both a continuous dialogue with CEN and ISO standardisation committees as well as an on-going and open discussion in the AGRICOM online community at http://voa3r.cc.uah.es/index.php/groups/viewgroup/25-AGRICOM, supporting the ACM’s conformance to established European and international quality standards as well as its influence in the future design of said standards. To learn about the newest updates regarding the AGRICOM project, please visit the project website at www.agriculture-competence.eu/, like the AGRICOM Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Agricom-Project/285137711540920 and follow the AGRICOM Twitter account at https://twitter.com/AGRICOM_Project.

About the European project AGRICOM:

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.

Contact: 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.