This paper has been presented during ICNEE conferences in Lucerne - http://www.icnee.ch.

DECTUG - WHAT IS ALL ABOUT

The Distance Education Centre at Gdansk University of Technology (DECTUG) is a special unit dedicated to the development and delivery of courses offered in ODL mode. It was established by the Rector of the University on 30th April 1997 and with Phare funds support (more information about Phare Multi-country Programme for Distance Education can be found in Grabowska (a 2000)). The main objective of the Distance Education Centre is to give the possibility to students and staff of the University to access through the Internet study materials, correspondence lessons, scripts and communication environments. DECTUG is also responsible for developing distance education course modules and adaptation of existing European Union distance education course modules suitable for local delivery. Courses are described by Grabowska (1999). The courses delivered by DECTUG are mainly Internet based. Course materials are published on the Web and students and tutors communicate by e-mails or through newsgroups. Students come both from inside and outside University. This includes students from partner institutions and independent people willing to take part in some courses. Most of DECTUG staff consists of people that are contracted for specific tasks, they are not full time employees. Their responsibilities cover mainly management and technical support. Course preparation and tutoring is done by subject experts hired only for the duration of the given course.

DECTUG IN LEONARDO DA VINCI PROGRAM (1998 - 2004)

Since 1998 DECTUG has been involved in five Leonardo da Vinci projects:

1. Leonardo da Vinci Programme - TeleCAD TELEworkers training for CAD systems users (1999-2001)
2. Leonardo da Vinci Programme - MDEC Multimedia Distance English Course (1999-2001)
3. Leonardo da Vinci Programme - AYTEM Accompanying a Young Teachers into Educational Market by Distance Course Mode (1999-2001)
4. Leonardo da Vinci Programme - LinguaWeb LinguaWeb for Small and Media Enterprises (1999 - 2001)
5. Leonardo da Vinci Programme - EMDEL European Model for Distance Education and Learning (2001-2004)

TeleCAD - Teleworkers Training for CAD Systems Users project consisted of:

• developing dedicated platform in the Internet for project developers (for management purpose, exchanging ideas, developing the project contents, monitoring the results),
• developing training methodology for teleworkers working with CAD systems on a basis of experiences of partners involved in the project and results of research in this field,
• developing dedicated platform in the Internet for teleworkers,
• developing electronic-based teaching materials (CD-ROM),
• developing the special guides for tutors and learners in English and in national languages,
• delivery of example courses for teleworkers working with CAD systems for different target groups (university students in Poland, post secondary students in Italy, young workers in Finland and Greece).

• Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
• ARGO s.r.l. Formare I'Europa, Italy
• IDEC, Greece
• ZEUS, Greece
• Pekkala Software Oy, Finland
• Young Digital Poland, Poland

Fig. 1. TeleCAD main page.

MDEC- MULTIMEDIA DISTANCE ENGLISH COURSES

MDEC - Multimedia Distance English Courses for Polish Users in Legal, Banking and Finance, Science and Technology, and Safety Training Sectors with Elements of European Union Regulations and Standards was aimed to fostering the development of methods of self-training at the workplace, and open and distance learning and training, in particular to facilitate access to continuing vocational training. The supporting activities were oriented at developing linguistic skills as part of vocational training. These courses were planned to be used for teaching students at universities, in continuing education institutions and should have been disseminated into other groups of users. The project was based on advanced ICT technology (WWW, e-mail, multimedia).

The following institutions were involved in the project development:

• Poznan University of Technology, Poland
• University of Wolverhampton, UK
• Institute of Communication and Information Technologies, Poland
• Gdansk University of Technology, Poland

• Software system for Distance Education
• Educational package for English learning

• General English
• Legal English
• Banking English
• Internet Technology
• Science and Technology
• Occupational Safety

AYTEM - ACCOMPANYING A YOUNG TEACHER INTO EDUCATIONAL MARKET BY DISTANCE COURSE MODE

The project was aimed to provide young and old teachers with training, allowing them to improve their methods based on new ideas and experiences of colleagues from different parts of their countries and the world. The project was planned to provide a course materials for teachers and a platform the course delivery. Tutors training in partner countries was also one of the project objectives. There were 10 partners organisations from 6 countries involved in the project development:

• Kaunas University of Technology - Lithuania
• Vytautas Magnus University - Lithuania
• Panevezys Regional Teachers Education Centre - Lithuania
• Mazeikiai Education Centre - Lithuania
• Ministry of Education and Science - Lithuania
• University of Oulu - Finland
• Nordic Folk Academy - Sweden
• Odense Technical College - Denmark
• Gdansk University of Technology - Poland
• Jozsef Attila University - Hungary

LINGUAWEB - LINGUAWEB FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

The project was aimed to foster co-operation between small and medium businesses based in different regions of Europe. This could have been achieved by providing the interested companies with information about the local culture, society and language.

The project implemented and validated a LinguaWeb Service providing information about local/regional language variants and authentic samples, authentic multimedia documents from local/regional business, society and culture-related communication contexts, demonstration modules for business, society and culture-embedded language learning extensions. In the lifetime of the project, it was assumed that development and evaluation of a prototype in 4 languages (English, German, Irish and Polish) involving "chamber of commerce" type institutions in Germany, Ireland and Poland should have been done.

The following organisations were involved in the project:

• Ebehard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
• LINK Institut für Linguistik ind Interkulterelle Kommunikation, Germany
• CTS Cormorant Telematic Systems, Ireland
• Distance Education Centre at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland

Fig. 2. LinguaWeb main page.

EMDEL - EUROPEAN MODEL FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION AND LEARNING

The main goal of the project EMDEL is the realisation of an European Teletraining System which, from what already has been produced, could immediately start a process of co-operation at the level of production and organisation of distance training services. Besides it should bring to the reduction of costs, the harmonisation of local systems and the rapid increase of the offer of formative courses.

The main objectives of the project are following:

• Production of an on-line Catalogue "Showcase of Distance Learning Modules" which will contain a list and a description of the products partners' interesting at transnational level, collected in their "Diatheque" by the partners. The creation of the Catalogue will give both the trainers and the managers of Distance learning systems, the possibility to know what is the offer on the market regarding distance learning modules and their ways of utilisation.
• Production and share of a basic software programme for the assessment of customer satisfaction and quality of the products
• Exchange of the best products realised by the partners. For their utilisation, we intend to make first the selection and then the post production (translation, adaptation and diffusion) of at least 10 Distance Learning Modules.
• Virtual mobility through on-line utilisation of Distance Learning Modules installed on the servers of the partners' net mainly by allowing the utilisation of distance training products in original language to a person living in a partner country without an action of post production and by having at one's disposal services of support and accompanying both locally and on line (in the original language) thanks to the presence of tutors operating in local systems.
• Dissemination, through the presentation of a model of realisation, of an European Teletraining Network to demonstrate the concrete possibilities of construction, starting from an existent distance training system based locally but with transnational connections. The dissemination also aims at extending the number of agencies of distance training which want to co-operate for the maintenance of the catalogue and for the increase of the exchange of products.

SUMMARY

The most successful project and finally the course which is online and still undergoing is TeleCAD. The pilot course was considered to analyse the performance of the example DE course delivered by DECTUG. In the first pilot course, in order to train the local tutors, 16 people from Greece (5), Finland (2), Italy (2) and Poland (7) took part. The course lasted from October 2000 to June 2001. The final evaluation was done by marking individuals and collecting the questionnaire results. It should have been stressed that only 30% of the participants were successful and were given the TeleCAD certificate.

During the discussion with the project partners the following findings were gathered:

• For some of the participants English language was a barrier in the learning process.
• The participants from partners' organisations did not have enough basic ICT skills and they were not motivated enough to play the tutors' role in the future.
• Web Based Training (WBT) environment requires reliable Internet connection. While it is possible the Intranet solution is recommended.
• The pilot course tutors who are responsible for the introduction to WBT environment should have been aware about facilitating actions which are crucial for the whole learning process performance.

Table 1. TeleCAD environment usage

REFERENCES

1. GRABOWSKA, ANNA (1999). DECTUG - Example DE projects online. 2nd International Conference on New Learning Technologies. Berne. Switzerland, 30-31 August 1999. In FLUCKINGER, F. & BRAUN, T. & NINCK, A. (eds.): 175-182.
2. GRABOWSKA, ANNA (a 2000) Building Open Distance Learning Networks in Central and Eastern Europe. Intertech 2000. The Sixth Interamerican Conference on Engineering and Technology Education. Cincinnati. USA, 13-16 June 2000. University of Cincinnati (eds.) CD-ROM.
3. GRABOWSKA, ANNA (b 2000). New learning environment at the traditional university in Poland. IFIP 16th World Computer Congress 2000. Conference on Educational Uses of Information and Communication Technology. Beijing. China, 21-25 August 2000. DAVID BENZIE, D. & PASSE, D. (eds.): 231-233.
4. GRABOWSKA, ANNA & KŁOSOWSKI, PAWEŁ (2001). Teaching Teleworking and AutoCAD - TeleCAD case study. 2nd Worldwide ECCE Symposium. Information and Communication Technology in the Practice of Building and Civil Engineering. Helsinki. Finland, 6-8 June 2001. Association of Finnish Civil Engineers RIL (eds.): 111-116.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Dr Anna Grabowska is a head of Distance Education Centre at Gdansk University of Technology. She has been a member of the Virtual Education editorial board since the number 12.

More information about the author can be found at the URL: http://www.dec.pg.gda.pl/~blanka/DECperson.html.

E-mail: blanka@pg.gda.pl.