Search for European Projects

DISTOOLWELD - Transfer of a distance learning tool

The European welding fabrication industry has just over 1.9 million employees directly or indirectly linked with welding. Welding is the most important fabrication technique used in manufacturing. A failure in a weld can lead to disastrous consequences (e.g. piper alpha platform, rail accidents). The effort to assure that welding is performed with proper quality is clear from the amount of Standards that exist in the field which include standards for certification of welding professionals (welders EN 287 and coordinators ISO 14731). Welding has seen the number of youngster embracing the profession decrease in the last decade. Retraining of professionals in this area has also been decreasing. This tendency is thought to be due to the association of “dirty, dangerous, dusty” with welding technology. The international community is nowadays developing a marketing campaign to change this view (ASW video “Welding is so hot it is cool”; EWF slogan “Welding cool, clean and clever”) to attract and increase the interest of youngsters for professions in welding. Estimates from the International Institute of Welding indicate that the number of applicants for training and qualification would increase if the training sessions would not require extensive "in room" courses. Distance learning is one of the ways to reach those who can not attend to traditional classroom courses. It is our objective to make available a useful training tool to go to meet the learners' needs. This project will get hold of the experience and knowledge gained by the German member of EWF that has implemented distance learning courses and developed appealing user friendly materials. This proposal is going to take advantage of an interactive DVD for Welding Engineer training courses and transfer it to other 4 countries: RO, IT, PT and PL, so they can also benefit from that knowledge.The consortium is constituted by the welding institutes of these countries, which have strong knowledge and expertise in training and qualification at a sector-based level. However, there are differences in educational/training realities and needs. As so, SLV will transfer their experience in developing and using training materials to the other consortium members, which will be responsible for adapting and translating the original DVD. EWF will act as Project Coordinator, since it has considerable experience in managing this sort of action but, most importantly, its Training and Qualification network covering 29 member countries will be essential in the implementation and dissemination of DISTOOLWELD results.This project aims at supporting the translation and implementation of training material for distance learning for the training of International Welding Engineers according to the EWF system qualification of Welding Coordinators (referred in ISO EN 14731 and ISO 3834).
Up2Europe Ads

Coordinator

Details

5 Partners Participants