Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)

Electronic network set up

ELKOnet links inter-company vocational training facilities in the electrical engineering and information technology fields

Christine Noske

The Program to Support Skill Centres (in German)  that is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Training and overseen by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") is yielding its first fruits: The ELKOnet training network has been set up, making it the program's first funding project to be completed after three years' funding. The etz Stuttgart, bfe Oldenburg and BZL Lauterbach  are inter-company vocational training facilities with a focus on the electrical engineering and information technology fields. Prior to this project these three training centres operated independently of one another. In this project however they teamed up in the ELKOnet electrical skills network to establish standards for initial, continuing and further vocational training in the electrical engineering and information technology fields. In order to disseminate these standards, the three partners created the ELKOnet platform on which they jointly offer their services.

Training personnel and companies that provide in-house training are under considerable pressure to make changes in response to recent revisions in the training requirements for occupations in the electrical trades and the development of new training concepts. As a consequence, there is an enormous need for advisory services and the exemplary implementation of new training concepts that are activity-oriented and geared to customer orders.

With their offerings, the ELKOnet partners not only want to support players in the vocational training field but also help familiarize the electrical trades with technical innovations. This is accomplished by demonstrating new technologies and processes on very modern equipment in Stuttgart, Oldenburg and Lauterbach and deploying trained staff who offer advice, identify training deficits, and develop and conduct suitable continuing training courses.

Providing training, formal certification and advisory services is nothing new for a training facility. What is novel in the case of ELKOnet is the new role of the training provider. In the past, inter-company training facilities could respond to a generally calculable demand for initial and continuing vocational training. Faced with a decline in capacity utilization, they now have to publicize their offerings and find new "customers" themselves. In the future, inter-company training facilities will increasingly have to be active in their own particular field of technology, follow new technological developments, identify support measures necessary for disseminating these developments in the skilled trades and then develop and conduct suitable initial, continuing and further training courses.

Given that economic and social conditions are continually changing and that lifelong learning has become a necessity, training facilities will not be faced with unused capacity - even when there is a decline in the number of young people in the general population - when they recognize and master this task.

The funding plan for the "Development of Inter-Company Vocational Training Facilities into Skill Centres" that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research launched in May 2001 targets the continued development of suitable inter-company vocational training facilities into modern training service providers and supports their restructuring process by providing - for the first time ever - funding for their personnel and material costs.

Training facilities must fulfil a number of prerequisites if they are to be successful in this new role over the long term. These requirements include the systematic acquisition of competency, a division of labour between several excellent partners in a field within a network and the use of proven management techniques.

The results of the ELKOnet project demonstrate in exemplary fashion the services a skills network offers its customers and how it is possible to continue offering these services through an operating company.

The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") has wrapped up the ELKOnet project. An initial evaluation reveals that the required company structures (project management, monitoring, personnel development, quality assurance) have been set up. This has established the conditions necessary for ensuring that, in the future as well, ELKOnet partners will still be able to respond to changing conditions - as "learning organizations" - and develop training courses that are tailored to the needs of the market and can serve as business models.

The ELKOnet partners' job involves more than this however. In light of today's knowledge explosion, it is possible to keep technical skills up to date only by collaborating and networking with other partners (universities, research institutes, manufacturers, other education providers) with a view to tapping further knowledge reservoirs.

Their job will also continue to include the development and ongoing updating of courses and learning units - using a division of labour between the partners. This will require an enormous amount of coordination in the future as well. Maintaining jointly developed and agreed quality standards and progressively fine-tuning them will also remain on the agenda. These standards are a prerequisite for the acceptance and exchange of services between the partners.

The three training facilities will have to manage these tasks in the future with their own personnel and their new structures. Funding for personnel and material costs - which helped kick-start personnel, content and organizational changes and their implementation in the first three years - has ended.

The new network's viability and attractiveness are evidenced by the fact that the Bildungszentrum Elektrotechnik der Landesinnung der Elektrohandwerke Hamburg, (Electrical Engineering Training Centre of the Hamburg State Guild for the Electrical Trades), the Schulungsstätte des Elektrohandwerks der Innung für Elektro- und Informationstechnik Nürnberg-Fürth (Training Centre for the Electrical Trades of the Nuremberg-Fürth Guide for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) and the Elektrobildungs- und Technologiezentrum e.V. Dresden (Dresden Electrical Engineering Training and Technology Centre) have already signed agreements incorporating them into ELKOnet. When the Bildungszentrum Elektro-Technik der Elektro-Innung München (Electrical Engineering Training Centre of the Munich Electrical Engineering Guild) joins the network as planned, all seven of Germany's specialized training centres for the electrical trades will be united in one association and can make a contribution to the ongoing improvement of initial, continuing and further training in the electrical engineering and information technology fields.

With the successful completion of the funding project that set it up, the ELKOnet electronic skills network is now entitled to use the designation "Skill Centre under the Federal Ministry of Education and Research's Support Program" and the corresponding logo.

Funding for the ELKOnet project was provided not only by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research but also by the states Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Lower Saxony and the EU.

 Germany's specialized training centres for the electrical trades:

• etz Stuttgart
• bfe Oldenburg
• BZL Lauterbach
• Bildungszentrum Elektrotechnik der Landesinnung der Elektrohandwerke Hamburg
  Electrical Engineering Training Centre of the Hamburg State Guild for the Electrical Trades)
• Schulungsstätte des Elektrohandwerks der Innung für Elektro- und Informationstechnik Nürnberg-Fürth
  (Training Centre for the Electrical Trades of the Nuremberg-Fürth Guide for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology)
• Elektrobildungs- und Technologiezentrum e.V. Dresden
  (Dresden Electrical Engineering Training and Technology Centre)
• Bildungszentrum Elektro-Technik der Elektro-Innung München (Electrical Engineering Training Centre of the Munich Electrical Engineering Guild)