Final Review of Learning Layers – Part One: The Event and the Arrangements
This week we had in our program the concluding event of our EU-funded Learning Layers (LL) project – the Final Review. Normally such an event is organised at the premises of the respective Directorate General of the European Commission – in our case the DG Research which is located in Luxembourg. However, after our Year 2 Review Meeting the said building has been demolished and the DG Research has moved to temporary building. Therefore, also the review meetings have bee organised in such a building or elsewhere. This gave us the rise to propose that our final review would be organised at the premises of one of our application partner organisations – to give the Project Officer and the review panel a chance to get a more lively picture of the impact of our work. This proposal was accepted and we had a brief discussion on the remaining options. In general, the construction sector training centre Bau-ABC Rostrup would have liked to host such an event, but it was not possible, because in January their meeting rooms are fully booked for continuing vocational training courses. Therefore, our best option was to organise the event primarily at the Norddeutsches Zentrum für Nachhaltiges Bauen ((NZNB) – North-German Centre for Ecological Construction Work in Verden, near Bremen). Below I try to give a picture of the arrangements and the agenda of Review Meeting and how we made use of the spaces provided by the NZNB to present our work in a more dynamic and dialogue-oriented way.
Making appropriate use of the spaces of the NZNB
We came to the conclusion that we should organise the first day of the review meeting around two ‘exhibition spaces’ that portray our two sectoral pilots. In addition, we would present the work of the host organisation. Therefore, we located our activities into a workshop hall (“Panzerhalle”) and into the meeting rooms above the clay and strawbale construction hall. There we had a large meeting room, part of which we then used for the two exhibition spaces. Having structured the main part of the agenda for these internal exhibitions and supporting presentations, we arranged that during the lunch break the review panel could have a chance to visit briefly the permanent exhibition of NZNB on ecological construction work in their main building. Also, we wanted to give them a brief presentation on the clay and strawbale building techniques and the courses organised in the workshop building.
Presenting our work with visual images, tool demonstrations and coniverations
For the exhibition spaces of the two sectoral pilots we had some common content and then somewhat different settings:
a) As the common content we had a Mini-Poster Wall that presented all the Learning Toolbox (LTB) stacks that had been prepared for piloting or demonstration purposes.
b) For the Healthcare exhibition space we had following contents and activities that were offered for free explorations:
- Posters that had been used at Online Educa Berlin (2015) to present the tools piloted in the Healthcare sector;
- Posters that had been used at AMEE 2015 conference to demonstrate the usability of Learning Toolbox in Healthcare Education and in related conferences;
- Games table to demonstrate further uses of the tools of the Healthcare sector in their original and spin-off contexts.
c) For the Construction exhibition space we had the following contents and spots that were offered as ‘guided tour’:
- Poster wall that portrayed the mutual realations of Learning Layers pilots activities with 9+1 posters (and an additional poster for the spin-off project DigiProB in Continuing Vocational Training.
- Spin-out table to present the (emerging) start-up companies that will take over the responsibility of some LL tools after the funding period (Learning Toolbox, AchSo, ZoP-tool).
- Exploitation table for presenting follow-up projects (including LTB-pilots in Germany, Estonia, Spain, UK).
Giving visibility to our application partners and to the use of LTB
One of our major points was to engage our application partners in the ‘exhibition spaces’ and in the supporting presentation sessions. For this purpose we had made arrangements to Thomas Isselhard from the network for ecological construction worj (Netzwerk Nachhaltiges Bauen) to present his ways for using Learning Toolbox in construction work. Likewise, we had invites two full-time trainers (Lehrwerkmeister) from Bau-ABC to present their initiatives for using LTB and their experiences on using it in apprentice training.
During the two preparatory days we inserted most of the content to the Learning Toolbox to make the two ‘exhibition areas accessible via LTB-stacks.
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I think this is enough of the advance planning and of the preparatory measures that we took during the two preparatory days (Monday and Tuesday) this week. It is worthwhile to note that we had arranged the accommodation of our guests in Bremen (and transports between Verden and Bremen) so that the guests could also explore Bremen in the evenings. On the final day of the event we had relocated the meeting to Bremen to make the travel arrangements easier. So, this was a brief overview on our preparations. In my three following blogs I will give more information on our presentations and on the discussions.
More blogs to come …
