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14-th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE E-COMM-LINE 2013, Bucharest, September 24 -25

HERISPHERA EXCELEN INIIATIV N VET

Association for European Cooperation SYNTON

Keywords: Herisphera e-learning, restoration training, center of excellence in VET

The Project comes from the need to diversify in terms of compatibility between Romanian educational process with the
European one in training professionals in the restoration and conservation of cultural monuments, in the context of both lack of
specialists and trainers, marginalization due to domain a long range of time in Romania.
In order to change this situation, the project aims to create a center of excellence in VET Oradea to implement its learning
platform Aquiself, achieved by transferring an innovative platform partner Aquiself French "Les Compagnons du devoir", used
by it in all its centers nationally and internationally.The project also aims to improve cooperation between the field of vocational
training and the labor market by introducing new specializations and recognition of a new standard for occupational, much
needed on the labor market restoration of the heritage of Romania. With the French partner with, the italian Association
Heriscape specialized in professional training in urbanism and architecture heritage available to achieve objectives by
transferring the know-how project, through experience they have in the development of human resources development, through
scope of elite teachers through quality possibilities formation process will know the importance of specialization training of
trainers and professionals. Through involving the Architects Bihor Subsidiary will implement training activities and will make a
better dissemination of the project, and Constantin Brancusi School for Building will provide concrete implementation of
training activities, recognition of skills and introduce a new occupational standard. From this project e-learning platform will be
created and adapted to labor market conditions and the Romanian legislation on training, the Italian partner Association
"Heriscape" concept will adapt their own system platform, focusing on career and technical innovations restoration. We can
mention among the results of: training of trainers in trades and architectural heritage restoration, creation and introduction of a
new occupational standard in the choir, a guide-manual restoration of the facades, the development of a specialization that allows
the creation of specialists in using the system GIS, in the inventory of historic centers, construction of a company that allows
users to access information related to heritage, achieving an online library that allows users to access information related to
heritage, creating a platform adapted to interface the external environment represented by the interested public (specialists in
restoration, business, public authorities, educational institutions, specialized) to form and facilitate access to resources created
through this project.

The Project comes from the need to diversify in terms of compatibility between Romanian
educational process with the European one in training professionals in the restoration and
conservation of cultural monuments, in the context of both lack of specialists and trainers,
marginalization due to domain a long range of time in Romania.
In order to change this situation, the project aims to create a center of excellence in VET
Oradea to implement its learning platform, achieved by transferring an innovative platform
AQUISELF, belonging to French partner, "LES COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR", used
by it in all its centers nationally and internationally. The project also aims to improve
cooperation between the field of vocational training and the labor market by introducing new
specializations and recognition of a new standard for occupational, much needed on the labor
market restoration of the heritage of Romania. With the French partner, with the italian
Association HERISCAPE, specialized in professional training in urbanism and architecture
heritage available to achieve objectives by transferring the know-how project, through
experience they have in the development of human resources development, through scope of
elite teachers through quality possibilities formation process will know the importance of
specialization training of trainers and professionals. Through involving the Architects Bihor
Subsidiary will implement training activities and will make a better dissemination of the project,
and roumanian Constantin Brncui School for Building will provide concrete implementation
of training activities, recognition of skills and introduce a new occupational standard. From this
project e-learning platform will be created and adapted to labor market conditions and the
Romanian legislation on training, the Italian partner Association "HERISCAPE" concept, will
adapt their own system platform, focusing on career and technical innovations restoration. We
can mention among the results of: training of trainers in trades and architectural heritage
restoration, creation and introduction of a new occupational standard in the choir, a guidemanual restoration of the facades, the development of a specialization that allows the creation of
specialists in using the system GIS, in the inventory of historic centers, construction of a
company that allows users to access information related to heritage, achieving an online library
that allows users to access information related to heritage, creating a platform adapted to
interface the external environment represented by the interested public (specialists in restoration,
business, public authorities, educational institutions, specialized) to form and facilitate access to
resources created through this project.

The partners involved in this project are of different nationalities, each contributing with their
expertise and with their country specific.
1. Roumanian Association for European Cooperation SYNTON is the leader of the project
and organize, manage the scientific and logistic organization of the training activities.
2. French Association LES COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR as experts in herritage
ocupations at all levels, shall transfer the inovation - the e-learning AQUISAV (AQUISELF)
system. They will share their experience and know-how of specialised instruction for a specific

branch of builded heritage. There shall be a sustained effort of technological transpher also for
realization of the guiding manual of restauration of historical monuments. The role of the
associationis to provide the Romanian students material resources and trainers in order to get a
good vocational qualification and competence in the field of construction. They also have
(together with the ather partners),to evaluate the performance of the participants.
3. Italian Association HERISCAPE is a small association constituted by expert professionals
who have been working for many years in the fields of urban planning and design, architecture
and cultural heritage and landscape conservation, rehabilitation and valorization.
HERISCAPE propose to organise and manage the scientific organisation of the training
activities and to contribute to the other activities of dissemination and awareness activities.
4. ORDER OF THE ARCHITECTS TERRITORIAL BRANCH BIHOR provides human
resource required for the smooth design of the project. Ensure the organization and information
needed to organize a virtual library in AQUISAV (AQUISELF) platform. Participate with
HERISCAPE and SYNTON association to the achievement of course supports Inventory of
Cultural Heritage for e-learning training. Participate with HERISCAPE and LES
COMPAGNONS DU DEVOIR Association to the realization of the manual - FACADES
RESTORATION METHODS GUIDE. The ARCHITECTS ORDER - branch Bihor, spacialised
in urban and heritage architecture shall transfere their know how and assure the high qualified
teachers to form the training trainer stuff. ARCHITECTS ORDER shall participate together with
HERISCAPE and SYNTON association to realise the suport of courses of Cultural Herritage
Inventory for the e-learning training.
5. Roumanian technical college "CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI" from Oradea. The role of the
school in this project is to select the fourteen students from the second and third level of
qualifications and train them in order to meet the French partner. This project team consists of
the project manager, the financial advisor and the teachers who are training the students involved
in the project. This team is engaged in reaching the objectives of the project. The teachers are
organizing practical courses for the students involved in the project in order to improve their
skills. Ensure with the French partner supporting training course in e-learning system at the level
of restorer painting-decorator and bricklayer jobs. It provides spaces and laboratories for courses
held in the project. Provides human resource for proper development project.
The most interesting applications of this project were those related to the implementation of
training course: Inventory of urban and architectural heritage: methodologies and tools from
survey to GIS by HERISCAPE.
Thus, analyzing critically the current situation in the field of urban conservation, it was decided
that the architectural and urban heritage inventory has to be a priority theme in this project.
Nowadays in Romania, the historical centers inventory is created with obsolete methods and
based on subjective and not clear criteria, which do not take into consideration current and
updated methodological guidelines and recommendations. In the majority of European countries,

GIS inventory of buildings and open spaces in protected areas is the base to draft a conservation
plan and to set an appropriate management of historic buildings.
The Training activities combines three ways of learning:
1) theoretical, with face to face lectures;
2) e-learning taking place in parallel with
3) field survey and investigation, digitizing data collected by working team and individual work
to implement knowledge gained in class and e-learning.
All the training activities are organized and managed by one of the partner of the project: the
association HERISCAPE - Heritage and Landscape Training and Consulting (Bologna, Italy).
Moreover HERISCAPE contributes to the field of consulting organization at the level of VET
excellence center (also selecting the book to enrich the e-library provided from the project) and
participate at the elaboration of the guide-manual "Best practices in performance work of
conservation, restoration and maintenance of the facades of heritage buildings".
This report concerns the first part of training activities (course:Inventory of urban and
architectural heritage: methodologies and tools from survey to GIS), developed by
HERISCAPE, which drew up the didactic plans for the different modules, including practical
and e-learning activities, found international teachers expert on the project topics and prepared
study materials and documents.
The training course provides an integrated approach to understand, classify and inventory
architectural and urban heritage. The identification and analysis of cultural places and their
historic fabric, the determination of its significance and value for its best conservation,
rehabilitation and management implies a specific preparation in history, theory, documentation,
technology and planning.
The course intends to provide the participants an integrated approach able to help them in their
daily activities of planning strategies and practices for heritage inventory and its conservation.
The practical work is that trainers work in teams, each team has to collect data at least of 10
buildings of an block surrounded by streets. All the buildings of the inventory belong to the
protected area of Oradea and Arad. For setting up and filling the necessary documentation and
preliminary analysis, as indicated on the course, the trainers will prepare a short report
accompanying files and GIS database, which will be useful for the final presentation to evaluate
the practical work.
Practical exercises are supported by e-learning platform, followed by the teachers, that
delivers documents useful to apply the course theoretical aspects and translate them into practice.
The e-learning is also necessary to help and guide the GIS transposition phase of the information
contained in the inventory. The platform also acts as an interface between students and
consultants who taught the course: trainers are available throughout this period to provide any
clarification and further explanation about the performance of exercise practical. E-learning
platform is going to be operational during all the practical work.
Then follows the presentation, discussion and evaluation of teams practical works. The
discussion will be based on presentations of representatives of each team.

Theoretical course was designed in three modules with three different themes, as follows:
Module 1 Inventory for urban conservation, rehabilitation and management
Module 2 Inventory for architectural conservation, rehabilitation and
management
Module 3 GIS: a tool for integrated architectural and urban inventory

Platform description - Account for the Innovation Transfer


Following the experience change performed considering the innovation transfer (the technical
part peculiar to the IT) with the French partners of SYNTON European Cooperation
Association, we decided to improve the e-learning platform which we implemented.
After analyzing together the platform developed by the French partners and carried out within
an ample project, we took over the course marking and their structure depending on the main in
which the may be grouped.
Dividing the courses on categories is required for all Herisphera e-learning platform users. The
standard predetermined category of the e-learning platform is called Miscellaneous, but it is
possible to rename it. A course creator, manager or administrator may include all courses within
one of the existing categories. Thus, the teachers and the students may easily find the available
courses, provided they are structured following the categories.
For the areas where the number of courses will be larger, their subgroups will be introduced
for an easier and more structured navigation.
The students marking is possible through the addition of an activity to one of the created
courses. The teacher will suggest a topic or a subject for the exam and will set the term to turn
over the thesis or the date of the exam. The students will obtain their marks according to certain
files uploaded by them, which may be in Excel, Word or PDF, and the teachers will give marks
and observations based on their thesis, similarly to the existing system of the French partners.
For the innovation transfer, we have made a separate domain, where the general and peculiar
objectives of each course are separately shown, their constituents and purposefulness and the
knowledge level required to achieve the said objectives. Through this domain, every student may
self-evaluate the knowledge and skills. It represents a complex system requiring a lot of
information and its adaptation to the built IT system.
Account for the Execution of Herisphera E-learning Platform
For an optimal operation of E-learning platform, the main server installation was required. All
information regarding the platform running the system, the home page, as well as the file system
has been stored on the server in Data Center. Moreover, it was required the installation of its own
server for backup, where periodically the platform information will be saved.

Following the purchase of herisphera.ro domain, we approached the next step consisting of the
design of the web pages. For the presentation page of the site we installed CMS (Content
Management System) Wordpress. Web software Wordpress was personalized and developed in
compliance with the provided requirements.
The required plug-ins were installed for the development of Online Library where the user may
create and add Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint documents, videos and zip archives according to
the desired category.
On the main page messages and news are listed which the site administrator will be able to
show to all Herisphera visitors. Listing the news will be performed by using CMS Wordpress
through a created blog. The messages and the news may be listed according to the desired
category and with no exhaustive knowledge in using the computer. The visitors of Herisphera
will benefit from the opportunity to communicate between them and change professional
opinions on the Forum.
Moodle e-learning platform provides a socializing and communicational dynamic environment,
courses and evaluation within the electronic system, as well as the students opportunity to learn
together. The e-learning platform is based on resources and activities. The main resource consists
of the course, which may be defined through lessons and weekly activities. The e-learning
platform brings several advantages to a company provided that the resources and the activities in
the application are managed appropriately by a trainer: the user may have access to the platform
from the office or from home. Thus, every person will create his/her learning rhythm. An elearning solution should be looked upon as a personalized application for every client separately,
in line with the companies size, the activity field and the staff training requirements.
After setting the needed requirements to install Moodle 2.0 platform, we moved to its
personalization by setting and developing an adequate topic. We created a special menu
dedicated to the site administrator to have an easier access to the relevant functionalities in the
platform: course adding/editing, roles assignment, add new user, associates system roles
(manager and course creator) and view the users list.
Currently, herisphera.ro is available in two languages (English and Romanian). The English
package is included within the standard version of the platform, and the Romanian package has
been installed, adapted and developed by the Romanian users.
For Herisphera e-learning platform benefit from a high interactivity between its users, we
integrated Facebook and Twitter to provide the socializing platoforms (social media).
The following activities will be carried out in the project its the Training of trainer course at
the level of restorer painter-decorator jobs.
Professional forming in the GIS urban patrimony inventorying activity (only e-learning hours
and practice) will continue.
Throughout the project will be conducted the Guide - manual "Best practices performance
work of conservation, restoration of the facades of heritage buildings", and olso the acquisition
of the books for on-line library.

Conclusions:
The project aims to contribute to the development and upgrading of professional training at all
levels, through the introduction and increased use of information technology in teaching and
learning in continuing vocational training system and specialization.
The introduction of e-learning teaching techniques aims to encourage innovative teaching and
learning and stimulating creativity among trainers and trainees, providing a framework for
collaborative development of this multinational project, which would allow the actors involved
in the training system to participate effectively in development of information society and
economy bazed on knowledge.
Specific objectives are the transfer of innovation through the implementation of AQUISAV
(AQUISELF) platform in Romania, creating a center of excellence in VET in Oradea and
improving cooperation between the vocational training field and work by introducing new
specializations and recognition of a new occupational standard required market restoration work
in the field of heritage in Romania.

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