TTRAIN project presented at Annual Conference of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association – Online Learning Platform being developed
How can tourism employees be effectively supported in their daily job? Which materials are useful for employees in tourism companies who provide on-the-job training to colleagues? These questions have been at the heart of the TTRAIN project, which was presented on 15 March 2017 at the Annual Conference of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association SAF, in Reykjavik.
TTRAIN partners – University of Bifroest (Iceland, coordinator), BEST (Austria), SAF (Iceland), University of Kajaani (Finland), CESIE (Italy) – introduced different aspects of the project to over 100 representatives of tourism companies, such as the methods and contents of the pilot training courses. Further, they highlighted the value of the transnational cooperation between their organisations: in the Gap Analysis at the beginning of the project, partners learned about the different state of the tourism sector in their countries and collected best practice examples for tourism training. The transnational exchange contributed significantly to the elaboration of innovative training methods and materials.
Two participants of the pilot training course in Iceland also shared their personal experience, underlining particularly the usefulness of the practical methods for work-based training: these, they said, have boosted their confidence to design in-house training and develop actively competences and skills of their employees.
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Development of the TTRAIN online platform
Following the conference, TTRAIN partners discussed about the adaptation of the curriculum, its methods and materials to the online portal. CESIE has developed the basic concept of the TTRAIN Learning Platform and collected materials from all project partners in the past months. On the portal, the contents will be presented in a user-friendly way, so that both VET trainers in tourism-related areas and employees in different tourism businesses can benefit from it. There will be four main sections, which will introduce into the competence areas and will contain various examples for training methods and materials from the partner countries. The four competence areas are:
- Social and Communication Skills
- Training Skills
- Adaptability and Problem Solving
- Organisation and Continuous Learning
In each field, there will be self-assessment questionnaires, which will provide tips how to improve the respective skills. For tourism trainers, there will be instructions and tips for the organisation of work-based training sessions and sample practical exercises that employees can undertake directly in their companies.
The Online Portal will be finalized and become public in May/June 2017; it will be accessible from the project’s website. Keep tuned about the Online Portal – follow us on Facebook and Twitter! To obtain more information, please contact Dorothea Urban.