Through a partnership from different European locations, this project will enhance and improve the quality of European biodiversity monitoring by sharing good practice and facilitating and capturing (into new e-learning content) a cascade of learning from older experienced workers to younger workers with no vocational qualifications. European biodiversity monitoring is a cornerstone for understanding the results of attempts to redress the potential negative effects of climate change. The project addresses the current European gap in these skills as experienced by the environmental conservation sector. By involving key stakeholder organisastions from three EU member states the Partnership will share perspectives on, and produce a pilot for, e-learning content to deliver sound ecological field skills. In addition, mobility visits will benefit individual development by exchanging subject, cultural and linguistic activities.

The project had 5 objectives. These were:

1. to identify a specific set of ‘competencies’ and ‘knowledge’ for field skills for biodiversity monitoring,
2. to develop a pilot e-learning module to support the above and strengthen mutual learning,
3. to disseminate the e-learning content and seek feedback from a wider user-community,
4. to prepare a Development of Innovation Leonardo grant application for February and finally
5. to share subject, cultural and linguistic experiences.

All have been successfully achieved.

To a great extent all our proposed activities were achieved:

• We established a Steering Group with had face-to-face and virtual meetings.
• We conducted mobility visits to each others’ countries to progress the project.
• We collectively worked on translations for learning materials and establishing web areas for learning content.
• We continually evaluated the project and disseminated our results.

Working in a European partnership has been of considerable benefit for many reasons. The ability to visit and experience like-minded organizations and people in other EU countries as well as engage older workers in sharing their knowledge and skills has made a significant impact on all participants. During all visits ‘morale’ was always high with everyone (visitors and hosts) enjoying their experiences. All participants, across all countries, have reported a widening of their personal perspective as they have visited and experienced other organizations in different European countries, not only in the context of biodiversity monitoring and vocational learning but also with regard to linguistic and cultural perspectives. This project has put adult learning and biodiversity monitoring into a European context for all participants, making them aware of the way that different countries respond to vocational education and also that in one country a species may exhibit a particular ecology with which they are familiar while in another country it may exhibit a significantly different ecology, with which they were far less familier. Similarly, in one country a species may be regarded as in decline while in another it’s numbers may be stable. Moreover, both organizations and participants have benefited from the exchange of views on vocational training and it’s delivery and perceived value as well as a rich cultural and linguistic exchange.

We have disseminated our results by pushing e-mail alerts (100+) through our own organization and the network of organizations to which we are connected. These alerts provided specific information about the project and directed network members to our project web area and learning materials. We asked for extended feedback on our learning content and received a number (16) of replies which were used in evaluation the project. Feedback comments included ‘clear and structured explanations of all aspects’ and ‘subtitles worked well’. When commenting on the learning aspects as a result of being asked about the ‘best part’ of watching the videos one learner said ‘Learning about the owl’s biology, habitats and their adaptations. Learning the reasons for the decline numbers. Good, clear structure. Good presenter.’ and another said ‘Excellent information put over. Clear and succinct presentation’. Specific feedback from LANTRA Sector Skills Council said ‘excellent topic coverage and “industry” credibility (partership with [Barn Owl] Trust)’.

In the feedback request we distributed as part of our dissemination we asked for 3 words that described their initial impression of the learning materials. These words were then used to produce a Wordle (world cloud – www.wordle.net) visual presentation which increased the physical size of words in relation to the number of times they are repeated. The results can be seen on our website here:

 

The four most comment words were; Informative, Interesting, Professional and Excellent.

Overall we judged the learning materials to have been well received with strong positive indications that organizations and learners see a clear need for these and further learning materials on the many different aspects of biodiversity monitoring in an European context. It is apparent form our findings that there is another substantive project which might follow form our work.

We were also able to make a number of oral presentations (6) about the project throughout its time at network meetings in the UK and have just been asked to give a presentation at a conference in Portugal in December 2011 on biodiversity monitoring and vocational learning.

At the final partnership meeting we organised a presentation at our local primary school at which our partners spoke about their native wildlife and how they, as individuals, came into nature conservation and biodiversity management. These presentations raised awareness of our project and the we did gain publicity via the local newspaper.