14-th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE E-COMM-LINE 2013, Bucharest, September 24 -25

HERISPHERA EXCELEN INIIATIV N VET

Association for European Cooperation SYNTON

Keywords: Herisphera e-learning, restoration training, center of excellence in VET

The Project comes from the need to diversify in terms of compatibility between Romanian educational process with the

European one in training professionals in the restoration and conservation of cultural monuments, in the context of both lack of

specialists and trainers, marginalization due to domain a long range of time in Romania.

In order to change this situation, the project aims to create a center of excellence in VET Oradea to implement its learning

platform Aquiself, achieved by transferring an innovative platform partner Aquiself French "Les Compagnons du devoir", used

by it in all its centers nationally and internationally.The project also aims to improve cooperation between the field of vocational

training and the labor market by introducing new specializations and recognition of a new standard for occupational, much

needed on the labor market restoration of the heritage of Romania. With the French partner with, the italian Association

Heriscape specialized in professional training in urbanism and architecture heritage available to achieve objectives by

transferring the know-how project, through experience they have in the development of human resources development, through

scope of elite teachers through quality possibilities formation process will know the importance of specialization training of

trainers and professionals. Through involving the Architects Bihor Subsidiary will implement training activities and will make a

better dissemination of the project, and Constantin Brancusi School for Building will provide concrete implementation of

training activities, recognition of skills and introduce a new occupational standard. From this project e-learning platform will be

created and adapted to labor market conditions and the Romanian legislation on training, the Italian partner Association

"Heriscape" concept will adapt their own system platform, focusing on career and technical innovations restoration. We can

mention among the results of: training of trainers in trades and architectural heritage restoration, creation and introduction of a

new occupational standard in the choir, a guide-manual restoration of the facades, the development of a specialization that allows

the creation of specialists in using the system GIS, in the inventory of historic centers, construction of a company that allows

users to access information related to heritage, achieving an online library that allows users to access information related to

heritage, creating a platform adapted to interface the external environment represented by the interested public (specialists in

restoration, business, public authorities, educational institutions, specialized) to form and facilitate access to resources created

through this project.

The Project comes from the need to diversify in terms of compatibility between Romanian

educational process with the European one in training professionals in the restoration and

conservation of cultural monuments, in the context of both lack of specialists and trainers,

marginalization due to domain a long range of time in Romania.

In order to change this situation, the project aims to create a center of excellence in VET

Oradea to implement its learning platform, achieved by transferring an innovative platform

AQUISELF, belonging to French partner, "LES COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR", used

by it in all its centers nationally and internationally. The project also aims to improve

cooperation between the field of vocational training and the labor market by introducing new

specializations and recognition of a new standard for occupational, much needed on the labor

market restoration of the heritage of Romania. With the French partner, with the italian

Association HERISCAPE, specialized in professional training in urbanism and architecture

heritage available to achieve objectives by transferring the know-how project, through

experience they have in the development of human resources development, through scope of

elite teachers through quality possibilities formation process will know the importance of

specialization training of trainers and professionals. Through involving the Architects Bihor

Subsidiary will implement training activities and will make a better dissemination of the project,

and roumanian Constantin Brncui School for Building will provide concrete implementation

of training activities, recognition of skills and introduce a new occupational standard. From this

project e-learning platform will be created and adapted to labor market conditions and the

Romanian legislation on training, the Italian partner Association "HERISCAPE" concept, will

adapt their own system platform, focusing on career and technical innovations restoration. We

can mention among the results of: training of trainers in trades and architectural heritage

restoration, creation and introduction of a new occupational standard in the choir, a guide-

manual restoration of the facades, the development of a specialization that allows the creation of

specialists in using the system GIS, in the inventory of historic centers, construction of a

company that allows users to access information related to heritage, achieving an online library

that allows users to access information related to heritage, creating a platform adapted to

interface the external environment represented by the interested public (specialists in restoration,

business, public authorities, educational institutions, specialized) to form and facilitate access to

resources created through this project.

The partners involved in this project are of different nationalities, each contributing with their

expertise and with their country specific.

1. Roumanian Association for European Cooperation SYNTON is the leader of the project

and organize, manage the scientific and logistic organization of the training activities.

2. French Association LES COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR as experts in herritage

ocupations at all levels, shall transfer the inovation - the e-learning AQUISAV (AQUISELF)

system. They will share their experience and know-how of specialised instruction for a specific

branch of builded heritage. There shall be a sustained effort of technological transpher also for

realization of the guiding manual of restauration of historical monuments. The role of the

associationis to provide the Romanian students material resources and trainers in order to get a

good vocational qualification and competence in the field of construction. They also have

(together with the ather partners),to evaluate the performance of the participants.

3. Italian Association HERISCAPE is a small association constituted by expert professionals

who have been working for many years in the fields of urban planning and design, architecture

and cultural heritage and landscape conservation, rehabilitation and valorization.

HERISCAPE propose to organise and manage the scientific organisation of the training

activities and to contribute to the other activities of dissemination and awareness activities.

4. ORDER OF THE ARCHITECTS TERRITORIAL BRANCH BIHOR provides human

resource required for the smooth design of the project. Ensure the organization and information

needed to organize a virtual library in AQUISAV (AQUISELF) platform. Participate with

HERISCAPE and SYNTON association to the achievement of course supports Inventory of

Cultural Heritage for e-learning training. Participate with HERISCAPE and LES

COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR Association to the realization of the manual - FACADES

RESTORATION METHODS GUIDE. The ARCHITECTS ORDER - branch Bihor, spacialised

in urban and heritage architecture shall transfere their know how and assure the high qualified

teachers to form the training trainer stuff. ARCHITECTS ORDER shall participate together with

HERISCAPE and SYNTON association to realise the suport of courses of Cultural Herritage

Inventory for the e-learning training.

5. Roumanian technical college "CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI" from Oradea. The role of the

school in this project is to select the fourteen students from the second and third level of

qualifications and train them in order to meet the French partner. This project team consists of

the project manager, the financial advisor and the teachers who are training the students involved

in the project. This team is engaged in reaching the objectives of the project. The teachers are

organizing practical courses for the students involved in the project in order to improve their

skills. Ensure with the French partner supporting training course in e-learning system at the level

of restorer painting-decorator and bricklayer jobs. It provides spaces and laboratories for courses

held in the project. Provides human resource for proper development project.

The most interesting applications of this project were those related to the implementation of

training course: Inventory of urban and architectural heritage: methodologies and tools from

survey to GIS by HERISCAPE.

Thus, analyzing critically the current situation in the field of urban conservation, it was decided

that the architectural and urban heritage inventory has to be a priority theme in this project.

Nowadays in Romania, the historical centers inventory is created with obsolete methods and

based on subjective and not clear criteria, which do not take into consideration current and

updated methodological guidelines and recommendations. In the majority of European countries,

GIS inventory of buildings and open spaces in protected areas is the base to draft a conservation

plan and to set an appropriate management of historic buildings.

The Training activities combines three ways of learning:

1) theoretical, with face to face lectures;

2) e-learning taking place in parallel with

3) field survey and investigation, digitizing data collected by working team and individual work

to implement knowledge gained in class and e-learning.

All the training activities are organized and managed by one of the partner of the project: the

association HERISCAPE - Heritage and Landscape Training and Consulting (Bologna, Italy).

Moreover HERISCAPE contributes to the field of consulting organization at the level of VET

excellence center (also selecting the book to enrich the e-library provided from the project) and

participate at the elaboration of the guide-manual "Best practices in performance work of

conservation, restoration and maintenance of the facades of heritage buildings".

This report concerns the first part of training activities (course:Inventory of urban and

architectural heritage: methodologies and tools from survey to GIS), developed by

HERISCAPE, which drew up the didactic plans for the different modules, including practical

and e-learning activities, found international teachers expert on the project topics and prepared

study materials and documents.

The training course provides an integrated approach to understand, classify and inventory

architectural and urban heritage. The identification and analysis of cultural places and their

historic fabric, the determination of its significance and value for its best conservation,

rehabilitation and management implies a specific preparation in history, theory, documentation,

technology and planning.

The course intends to provide the participants an integrated approach able to help them in their

daily activities of planning strategies and practices for heritage inventory and its conservation.

The practical work is that trainers work in teams, each team has to collect data at least of 10

buildings of an block surrounded by streets. All the buildings of the inventory belong to the

protected area of Oradea and Arad. For setting up and filling the necessary documentation and

preliminary analysis, as indicated on the course, the trainers will prepare a short report

accompanying files and GIS database, which will be useful for the final presentation to evaluate

the practical work.

Practical exercises are supported by e-learning platform, followed by the teachers, that

delivers documents useful to apply the course theoretical aspects and translate them into practice.

The e-learning is also necessary to help and guide the GIS transposition phase of the information

contained in the inventory. The platform also acts as an interface between students and

consultants who taught the course: trainers are available throughout this period to provide any

clarification and further explanation about the performance of exercise practical. E-learning

platform is going to be operational during all the practical work.

Then follows the presentation, discussion and evaluation of teams practical works. The

discussion will be based on presentations of representatives of each team.

Theoretical course was designed in three modules with three different themes, as follows:

Module 1 Inventory for urban conservation, rehabilitation and management

Module 2 Inventory for architectural conservation, rehabilitation and

management

Module 3 GIS: a tool for integrated architectural and urban inventory

Platform description - Account for the Innovation Transfer

Following the experience change performed considering the innovation transfer (the technical

part peculiar to the IT) with the French partners of SYNTON European Cooperation

Association, we decided to improve the e-learning platform which we implemented.

After analyzing together the platform developed by the French partners and carried out within

an ample project, we took over the course marking and their structure depending on the main in

which the may be grouped.

Dividing the courses on categories is required for all Herisphera e-learning platform users. The

standard predetermined category of the e-learning platform is called Miscellaneous, but it is

possible to rename it. A course creator, manager or administrator may include all courses within

one of the existing categories. Thus, the teachers and the students may easily find the available

courses, provided they are structured following the categories.

For the areas where the number of courses will be larger, their subgroups will be introduced

for an easier and more structured navigation.

The students marking is possible through the addition of an activity to one of the created

courses. The teacher will suggest a topic or a subject for the exam and will set the term to turn

over the thesis or the date of the exam. The students will obtain their marks according to certain

files uploaded by them, which may be in Excel, Word or PDF, and the teachers will give marks

and observations based on their thesis, similarly to the existing system of the French partners.

For the innovation transfer, we have made a separate domain, where the general and peculiar

objectives of each course are separately shown, their constituents and purposefulness and the

knowledge level required to achieve the said objectives. Through this domain, every student may

self-evaluate the knowledge and skills. It represents a complex system requiring a lot of

information and its adaptation to the built IT system.

Account for the Execution of Herisphera E-learning Platform

For an optimal operation of E-learning platform, the main server installation was required. All

information regarding the platform running the system, the home page, as well as the file system

has been stored on the server in Data Center. Moreover, it was required the installation of its own

server for backup, where periodically the platform information will be saved.

Following the purchase of herisphera.ro domain, we approached the next step consisting of the

design of the web pages. For the presentation page of the site we installed CMS (Content

Management System) Wordpress. Web software Wordpress was personalized and developed in

compliance with the provided requirements.

The required plug-ins were installed for the development of Online Library where the user may

create and add Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint documents, videos and zip archives according to

the desired category.

On the main page messages and news are listed which the site administrator will be able to

show to all Herisphera visitors. Listing the news will be performed by using CMS Wordpress

through a created blog. The messages and the news may be listed according to the desired

category and with no exhaustive knowledge in using the computer. The visitors of Herisphera

will benefit from the opportunity to communicate between them and change professional

opinions on the Forum.

Moodle e-learning platform provides a socializing and communicational dynamic environment,

courses and evaluation within the electronic system, as well as the students opportunity to learn

together. The e-learning platform is based on resources and activities. The main resource consists

of the course, which may be defined through lessons and weekly activities. The e-learning

platform brings several advantages to a company provided that the resources and the activities in

the application are managed appropriately by a trainer: the user may have access to the platform

from the office or from home. Thus, every person will create his/her learning rhythm. An e-

learning solution should be looked upon as a personalized application for every client separately,

in line with the companies size, the activity field and the staff training requirements.

After setting the needed requirements to install Moodle 2.0 platform, we moved to its

personalization by setting and developing an adequate topic. We created a special menu

dedicated to the site administrator to have an easier access to the relevant functionalities in the

platform: course adding/editing, roles assignment, add new user, associates system roles

(manager and course creator) and view the users list.

Currently, herisphera.ro is available in two languages (English and Romanian). The English

package is included within the standard version of the platform, and the Romanian package has

been installed, adapted and developed by the Romanian users.

For Herisphera e-learning platform benefit from a high interactivity between its users, we

integrated Facebook and Twitter to provide the socializing platoforms (social media).

The following activities will be carried out in the project its the Training of trainer course at

the level of restorer painter-decorator jobs.

Professional forming in the GIS urban patrimony inventorying activity (only e-learning hours

and practice) will continue.

Throughout the project will be conducted the Guide - manual "Best practices performance

work of conservation, restoration of the facades of heritage buildings", and olso the acquisition

of the books for on-line library.

Conclusions:

The project aims to contribute to the development and upgrading of professional training at all

levels, through the introduction and increased use of information technology in teaching and

learning in continuing vocational training system and specialization.

The introduction of e-learning teaching techniques aims to encourage innovative teaching and

learning and stimulating creativity among trainers and trainees, providing a framework for

collaborative development of this multinational project, which would allow the actors involved

in the training system to participate effectively in development of information society and

economy bazed on knowledge.

Specific objectives are the transfer of innovation through the implementation of AQUISAV

(AQUISELF) platform in Romania, creating a center of excellence in VET in Oradea and

improving cooperation between the vocational training field and work by introducing new

specializations and recognition of a new occupational standard required market restoration work

in the field of heritage in Romania.