WLP Project Development

During the work of the WLP project it has become very clear that the national partners ohave different preconditions to promote partnership-based cooperation in their national contexts. This has become manifest with the analyses based on the LPA instrument and with the related conclusions. This has also become manifest with the discussion on the possibilities to link the development and piloting with WLP Web to the working agenda of different partners. At this stage of development I would draw emphasise  that the work programme of the WLP project does require some degree of piloting. However, this does not mean that the WLP project should adopt a "one size fits all" or "one format fits all" approach. Neither should the work that has been done for preparation of the KLearn and WLP Web bseen as something that is exclusively related to work with web applications. My view is that we should not put anyone into a position to choose between "All" (full-scale piloting with web) and  "Nothing" (complete separation from the developmental work that is paving the way to WLP Web).

To me the challenge for the WLP project is to work on several fronts in order to find specfic answers to the following common questions:
1) How can we improve the general readiness of training providers and partner enterprises to develop partnership-based cooperation arrangements and construct related learning designs and support measures?
2) How can the we develop practical support facilities for individual learners (and groups of learners) and their supervisors that make transparent the learning gains in such collaborative learning (and the role of the supporting tools)?
3) How can we link the development of web-based facilities to ongoing sectoral or regional partnership-creation processes that open new opportunities for piloting with web-supported learning designs?

To me it appears that some of the national partners need to concetrate primarily on the first question. Therefore, the measures to be taken can be characterised as "pre-piloting agenda". From the operational point of view these partners can provide deeper analyses on the societal, sectoral and regional boundary conditions that either promote or reduce the readiness to partnership cooperation. Parallel to this they can try to present newer impulses (that emerge from the work of the other partners) as tentative inputs to discussion and examine whether it is possible to improve the readiness towards partnership-based cooperation with insights into parallel cases.

As specific cases for "pre-piloting agendas" I would see the cases of Estonia and France. As specific measures that could be taken I would suggest the following ones:
a) In Estonia the main activity is the designed workshop that has been postponed to Autumn. In the preparatory phase it is possible to prepare demonstration material based on the work in other countries (and based on complementary inputs to the WLP Web resource ares). With the support of this preparatory material it is possible to construct facilitation tools that would link the examples to questions that can be proposed for the regional training providers and partner enterprises.
b) In France the main activity could be a working visit to the Endress & Hauser company (including interviews and possible group discussions). The main aim of these interviews would be to get a deeper understanding on the working patterns in the partnership-based training and learning programme.  The corollary aim could be to get situated video-shots or podcasts that demostrate the partnership cooperation in action. (The latter aspect would require additional resources and involvement of supporting people).

I hope that these few lines give some ideas how the work in the next phase. I will try to attach a draft for a "facilitation tool" for a pre-pilotin workshop in the next possible moment.

I think this is enough for the moment. I am looking forward to your reactions and your views how to develop the work further.

Pekka Kämäräinen