European Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 32, No.

6, December 2007, 675685

Competence-based blended learning in building automation: towards a EU curriculum in Domotica

L. SOMMARUGA* and E. DE ANGELIS
SUPSI-DTI Galleria 2 - 6928 Manno (CH) 2000, 61040 Mondavio (PS) Italy training
(Received 17 October 2006; In nal form 31 May 2007) A competence-based approach was applied to a blended learning on line distance training in the Euroinno EU project aimed at vocational training in building automation. The current paper describes the experience gathered during the learning process and the denition of the curriculum. A number of issues emerged during the sessions concerning regional differences among the various European partners involved in the learning. Refusal to accept e-learning approaches has been considerable among teachers and students in piloting building automation courses, and mainly related to four factors in the tradition of adult education: curriculum tradition, oral tradition, lack of condence in technical solutions to educational matters and lack of experience with the media. Keywords: Competence, blended learning; Competence graph; Resistance factors; Curriculum; Building automation; Domotica

1.

Introduction

A Leonardo EU project, named Euroinno (Euroinno 2006), was running from October 2003 to September 2006, involving around 20 partners from various European regions. One of its main goals was the denition of a European curriculum for building automation (BA), also referred to as Domotica, from the Latin Domus (house) and automatic. To this end, a number of multinational training projects were initially planned. Partners from at least two different countries operated joint training projects in line with a syllabus based on factors organized according to the competences and activities previously elicited by the Euroinno competence editor. In particular, Italy (Training 2000, Ance Abruzzo, Confartigianato Pesaro, Unirest), Northern Ireland (East Tyrone College) and Switzerland (SUPSI-DTI) formed one group (IT-UK-CH). Since the initial analysis phase of the project, the eld of Domotica appeared to require, from a technological point of view, the integration of different aspects from different countries and constant updating on the new products and technologies that are available. Among the

*Corresponding author. Email: lorenzo.sommaruga@Supsi.ch

European Journal of Engineering Education ISSN 0304-3797 print/ISSN 1469-5898 online 2007 SEFI http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/03043790701520693

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main aspects are diverse installation procedures, differences in regulations and standards, etc. Therefore the denition of a BA curriculum emerged to be a complex process encompassing a set of activities and tasks that presented variations from country to country, and would have certainly impacted on the subsequent training. In fact, similar issues have already been discussed in Heitmann (2005), where the vision of Employability through Innovative Curricula aiming to contribute to the establishment of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by addressing harmonization, compatibility and comparability is aligned with our Domotic Engineer prole. During the rst phase of the project data were derived from questionnaires; later, they were collected by competence analysis via the Euroinno editor (see Euroinno Final Project deliverable November 2006). The editor functions for visualizing competences and activities in the form of graphs speeded up the process of combining commonalities and levelling regional differences among the various EU countries, contributing to the organization of a more homogeneous training syllabus. In particular, three partners in the training sub-group (ITUKCH) made a thorough analysis of the actors, competences, and activities (gure 1) involved in BA. Once the training structure has been dened, on the basis of the actorscompetences activities identied, we moved to a real training experience in the eld, which is described below after a short introduction of the learning tools used. In the second phase, training was carried out in order to provide direct experience of teaching and learning the subject matter of BA. E-learning has recently been widely adopted by academic institutions for training courses and for teaching their curricula (Sharpe et al. 2006). Blended learning (Bonk and Graham 2006), in particular, has been considered both for its versatility and because it achieves better

Figure 1. A competence graphs of IT-UK-CH group for building automation modelled in Argo UML tool showing actors (centre), competences (left) and activities (right).

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results than e-learning does on its own. In our project, the blended learning approach was accomplished by distance learning with remote fruition of courses via video conferencing and an e-learning platform, completed by face to face training. Any problems stemming from students and teachers/experts located in different parts of Europe were resolved by their joint presence in the virtual shared space of the live video conference. A number of issues relating to the training organization emerged concerning logistics, language, management and technical matters (mainly the video conference connection). Nevertheless, this did not prevent training experiments, which tested the BA curriculum, from being carried out. This paper summarizes the learning process experience and the issues for the denition of the curriculum during the Euroinno project, describing benets and drawbacks of the on-line distance training.

2.

Blended learning tools

After having claried the necessary competences involved in BA, we dened competences and activities for all the different roles of a potential domotic engineer and organized specic piloting courses. This training was carried out using a blended learning on-line distance approach, and was mainly based on two tools: an e-learning platform, here referred to as the SUPSI e-courses platform (2006) and a videoconferencing hardware/software tool, the e-conferencing portal provided by SWITCH (Swiss Education and Research Network) (2006). Previous works describe the student support for active learning, where review meetings via videoconference enhance the delivery and outcomes of the training (Shekar 2007). The e-courses platform is a website that provides support for didactic material to students and exchange between teachers via the moodle (http://moodle.org/) open source e-learning platform software. Both training projects (run 1 and run 2) organized within Euroinno have been dened and managed as on-line courses within the platform. This approach gives the tutors the opportunity to insert and edit didactic material, such as slides, presentations, technical support manuals, photos and images of BA installations and student training, including any extra documents that might be useful for each training session. In addition, the platform offers students traditional e-learning functionalities for distance learning, which were particularly appropriate for the Saturday morning training sessions for asynchronous activities supported by the tutors from home. The SWITCH e-conferencing portal is a network of e-conferencing support shared among academic institutions in Switzerland. SWITCH supports e-conferences and virtual collaboration for educational purposes in Switzerland at no charge to all Swiss Universities. In this project we have exploited the stable IP-video conferencing service, based on central infrastructures for multi-point conferencing among the training project partners. Slower connections via lower quality ISDN were also tested but were not considered adequate for authentic remote student teachinglearning, because they were impacting on the delity dimension of the learners interactions (Bonk and Graham 2006). Collaboration tools, such as Breeze (http://econf.switch.ch/econfportal/www-aai/breeze/), complemented audio and video communication by adding real-time application sharing, instant messaging, virtual presentations, document exchange and the recording of sessions (gure 2), and contributed to the virtual distributed presence. The above tools allowed a real-time teaching experience to take place between a variety of partners in different regions of the EU Italy, Northern Ireland, UK and Switzerland.

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Figure 2. Recording of a session in the breeze environment showing slides presentation, video (top-left), chat and other functionalities.

Various hardware infrastructures are available on the market for supporting video conferencing. The ones used for this training at SUPSI was by Polycom (http://www.polycom.com/).

3. Training in BA: the ITUKCH Euroinno training project Practical experience would seem to indicate that blended learning can bridge the gap between pedagogy and technology. Our experience derived from the Euroinno training projects shows us that the gap is not a peculiarity of the training carried out in Italy, but a common European problem. We will therefore focus on how blended learning has combined new and traditional learning approaches including ICT within the Euroinno project. 3.1 Organization and Procedure 3.1.1 Training project 1: open distance learning on SUPSI platform the rst bridge. The Italian curriculum was developed for training project 1 (TP1), from MaySeptember 2005, and involved about 10 Italian students with work experience in electrical installationsqualied installers. The training was carried out as blended learning with face to face lessons completed by individual work on-line via the e-courses platform (see gure 3). The organization of the training was subject based, according to a traditional pedagogical model (see annexes), in contrast to the subsequent training project 2, described below, which was competence based. This evolution, from a curriculum development design point of view, can also be seen similar to the relation between input- (subject based) and output- (competence based) oriented curricula, as previously detailed in Rompelman and De Graaff (2006). Power Point presentations, relevant material, such as documentation or installation photos, and real projects in BA were uploaded onto the platform and systematically organized into various parts. Communication was supported via forum and email for the elaboration of

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Figure 3. Training project 1 model.

technical projects assigned to students. Tutoring on-line was provided at a distance. Final projects were discussed and presented during face-to-face sessions. 3.1.2 Training project 2: video conferencing the second bridge. The same Italian students from training project 1 were also enrolled in training project 2. A coordination group was established in December 2005 by Ireland, Italy, Switzerland and Germany (SUPSI, East Tyrone College, Training 2000, SIEMENS) to design a common set of competences in BA (operation spaces and action bundles) with the use of the competence editor, which were then translated into teaching and training events. The limited success achieved by training project 1 was improved upon by revising the training model (see gure 4) to incorporate live video conference sessions and the other collaboration tools. The blended learning was designed with a collaborative learning approach of 50% face to face lessons and video conferences, and 50% e-learning. A total amount of 40 hours of training

Figure 4. The e-courses platform for the Euroinno training project 2: an actor-competences-activities based organization of the training.

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was offered to students via 5 videoconference sessions directed by SUPSI (CH), involving Italy and the UK from the end of May to the middle July 2006. This training was developed further, thanks to a syllabus dened using the competence editor analysis, and is described in more detail in the next section.

3.2 Execution of training project 2 The teaching was organized into various sessions according to the specic subjects relating to each actor. Face-to-face sessions and on-line sessions were considered to optimize issues of time and location. A typical face to face session was delivered via a 45 hour video conference divided into distinct parts, including: a seminar presentation, local discussion, and a nal common discussion. The seminars were assigned to experts in the eld, who were asked to prepare all the didactic material necessary for a live presentation by each actor and learning the related competences and activities. During the Friday afternoon session, the presentations were broadcast via the SWITCH e-conferencing platform to the remote sites where students were joined in a video conferencing classroom. Each subject presentation was supposed to last about 3045 min, which was then followed by a question-and-answer session, i.e. the local discussion of 15 30 min. When necessary, more than one actor was presented and discussed locally, and all the partners in the video conference shared comments and debated issues at the end. Following the last of the presentations, a nal discussion summarized and concluded the training session and the next events were planned. In addition to virtual face to face learning via video-conferencing, a more practical Saturday morning session followed Fridays theoretical introductions. In this session, tutors and experts provided distance learning support to the students who, thanks to the material available on the e-courses platform and tutor guidance, were able to expand their knowledge concerning the actors (see gure 4) Training project 2 was organized according to this model, where didactic material and learning interaction were supported by e-courses and e-conferencing platforms, as illustrated in gure 5. There were 71 operation spaces, and 66 action bundles, after merging from the countries involved, for the 11 actors, namely: Installer, Sales Agent, System Integrator Junior, System Integrator Senior, Programmer, Maintenance and Back-up Engineer, Operational Supervisor, Tracer, Planner, Estimator, Commissioner. Part of the international curriculum was presented and discussed during visual conferencing with standard PowerPoint presentations. The trainers task was to create distance learning modules for each actor. They also had

Figure 5. Training project 2 model.

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to respond and communicate with the student group. All participants, but especially the trainers, had to be familiar with the difference between the oral and the written medium. Within the group, we witnessed personality clashes relating to personal behaviour, technology and acceptance. 3.3 Learned lessons: clashes and compromises between technology and pedagogy

In this section we summarize what emerged from the training experience carried out jointly within the Euroinno project by the ITUKCH group. In general, training providers are resistant to the adoption of e-learning systems for training, but we also know that the gradual integration of ICT in blended learning forms slowly changes attitudes towards e-learning. Blended learning can overcome avoidance of and negative attitudes to the integration of ICT in educational institutions. Blended learning can also be a way of developing and expanding the role of e-Learning in lifelong learning. In a previous Grundtvig 1 project (ODLexpert/IAML3 2005), focusing on introducing appropriate methodologies for Long Life Learning, blended learning has also been recommended as a solution in adult education institutions. The experiences gained from this project together with SUPSI expertise and support in e-learning have helped in the attempt to integrate ICT in other institutions. In the following part of this section, the resistances encountered during our two training projects conrm what have already be stated in Koen Depryck (2005). 3.3.1 Four resistance factors. Refusal to accept e-learning approaches has been considerable amongst teachers and students in piloting BA courses. This could be related to four main factors in the tradition of adult education: (a) (b) (c) (d) the curriculum tradition; the oral tradition; lack of condence in technical solutions to educational matters; lack of experience with the media.

(a) The curriculum tradition The curriculum teaching tradition is built on the idea of linearity. Progression in learning is based on study syllabuses, assignments and answers. The students (electricians and planners) are expected to work through a certain pre-dened and pre-designed syllabus, to complete certain pre-arranged assignments and to pass tests. A buzzword for such a traditional scheme could be the just-in-case curriculum the content is something which is good to know, just in case one might need it. In one example of this type of learning, learners follow the curriculum as part of their professional tradition; they learn something that they, as representatives of their profession (electricians, architects, engineers, planners) are supposed to know, just in case they need it. Distance learning as planned in training project 2 (SUPSI platform and visual conference between partners in the sub-project) is deemed to be better at supporting a more direct learning need a just in time approach which is not very easily combined with an academic understanding of learning. The new possibility in e-learning is that you learn what you need, when you need it. The problem is that in general the curriculum does not change when a provider offers ordinary education as on line distance learning. The objectives and assessment are the same.

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This minimizes the trainers opportunities or willingness to re-think his or her way of planning and carrying out the learning event. In the case of training in BA, we have developed a curriculum which accommodates exibility in content and pedagogic tools depending on the context of each participating country in the Euroinno sub-project group. (b) The oral tradition Part of our pedagogical tradition is that learning is facilitated by dialogue and discussion. Therefore trainers have been used to direct oral communication. This communication has the character of just in time communication; it is sensitive and open to direct challenges and dialogues, including body-language. Some trainers doubt that digital communication can be as successful as oral, and they are inexperienced in nding digital ways to inform, provoke and challenge the student by other means. Another aspect is that distance learning requires a great deal of just in casecommunication within the e-learning materials and written communication for the trainer to be able to guide the student through different educational materials. These new challenges call for dramatic changes in both trainersand learnerswriting and comprehension competences. It also calls for new competences when you have to plan learning processes and events for participants you have seen only rarely during the (face to face) training programme. To switch from an oral tradition to a written one is not that easy, although it would seem to be a simple task. The key word here is training and training is needed for both students and teachers. The literacy level required is much higher in e-learning than in traditional education; you need a thorough understanding of what you are reading, and good writing competences to respond in an appropriate way. One important point is that the internet offers new means of communication that reduce the amount of material needed to be read. (c) Lack of condence in technical solutions for training Many quite experienced trainers are not condent that this technology will ever succeed. This is probably due to earlier negative experiences or limited knowledge of the real potential and functionalities of the technology. Computers are not the rst techno-x in the world of education. The main problem with developing online distance learning is the creation of the proper interaction between two groups i.e. experts in technology and experts in didactics and methodology. Blended learning is a way to introduce learners and trainers to the new medium and its potentiality. In the course of piloting, we have been able to investigate to what extent this medium can replace or support more traditional means of education. (e) Lack of experience with the medium Developing e-learning in adult education entailed acknowledging that multimedia is only rarely used by providers. Therefore, trainers and supporting staff had to be encouraged to integrate ICT in training (SUPSI e-learning platform and videoconference system), which implied hidden costs to do with learning how to use and exploit the media support for the training. As a result of this training experience, we have realized that students should be encouraged to skill-up in the use of ICT. It is extremely valuable to show them how other people have integrated ICT into their everyday lives. For our institution, introducing the videoconference

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system and the e-learning platform has been a positive experience and a good way to incorporate e-learning into traditional training. Learners need very precise instructions and assignments, although they try to avoid responding to each other, they are very active to share information and cooperate on common tasks. It is easy to have group discussions on the basis of assignments but it is difcult to create the same discussions in the visual conferences, which we think is due to their poor command of English as the main language for communication in the project, and a mutual lack of condence. We see this development of training in Euroinno as a positive initiative. It is a catalyst for both the delivery of other e-learning courses within the providers organizations and a more convenient use of ICT as an integral part of training. 3.4 Remarks on the learning process

This competence based blended learning experience was carried out within the context of the denition of an EU BA curriculum, which was one of the main objectives of the Euroinno project. Therefore, a systematic evaluation of the learning process was not considered a priority. However a number of important remarks concerning the learning process emerged. The blended learning approach to teaching was based on user interaction via videoconferencing and e-learning platforms. The utility of these technological supports was twofold: on the tutor/expert/teacher side and on the student/learner side. In fact, video-conferencing permitted live personal communication with the learners and the other experts in different regions of Europe at a reasonable price (no travelling costs), while the e-courses platform provided a valuable means of sharing the didactic material and asynchronous interactions between the training participants, with no time restrictions. This widespread availability of learning resources is an important factor for training professional people, who are usually busy during working hours and have to set aside extra time (e.g. during the evenings or at weekends) to study. Here, we should underline the IT technology gap of some students, which led to difculties and delays in the use of/access to resources. Concerning integrating actors within the curriculum, an initial signicant observation was made by an expert who participated in the second run of the training: . . . the organization of building automation issues according to the actorsview was a very useful way of understanding his own (company) activity. This approach focused on the competences and activities of each actor, identifying the key tasks and concepts to be learnt by the BA student. This competence based organization of the subject matter was reected in the didactic material prepared for the seminars and taught to students. In this way, the learning process was optimized so as to pass on the main competences and activities to the future building automation engineer, concentrating the training on particular roles, viz those which are most important in the marketing, design and development of BA.

4.

Conclusions and future works

Blended learning will certainly be an integral part of training in BA (Building Automation) in the years to come. In fact, we have realized that many competences in BA which today are acquired via face to face training can be taught entirely on-line. Moreover, from our experience to date, some contents are more suitable for on line distance learning than others, and some ways of working with the media are more suitable than others.

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ICT opens up new possibilities in didactic thinking. While classroom teaching is a kind of mass-education designed for the average student, ICT opens up a real differentiation in content and working methods. Educational events can be organized in ways that appeal to individual needs and learning styles. But using these facilities requires new competences for both teachers and students. Trainers and students need to know more about the medium itself and need more experience to be able to reect on the possibilities available within a didactic context. Trainers need to know how to challenge the student via the Internet, how to respond to individuals and groups and how to facilitate internet discussions. The students themselves need to know more about studying on line at distance. They need help in learning how to work with the medium, how to communicate, how to cooperate with their peers. They need help in learning how to analyse what their objectives are and what expectations to apply to their participation and results. For this purpose, we can separate the humanisticrelational and technologicaloperational competences: Humanisticrelational competences: In order to gain this type of competence, the traditional face to face method is better and requires time which is determined by the participants entry level; Technologicaloperational competences: These competences can be gained via a blended methodology of face to face lessons (for presentation of the basics, for practice and nal discussions and evaluation), self-study and the use of internet-based technologies. Innovative technologies can be applied very well to the phases of BA. For operational practice, it is essential to be on the site experiencing the problems and related solutions with respect to the timing of construction. A small step has been accomplished by this work towards the denition of a curriculum in BA at European level. More work is still needed in order to complete the analysis and the testing of the right set of competences in Domotics, and in particular certication issues were already under study in Euroinno considering the new Europass model.

References
Bonk, C.J. and Graham, C.R., The Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs, 2006 (John Wiley and Sons: San Francisco). Euroinno EU Leonardo project, 2006. Available online at http://www.euroinno.net (accessed December 2006). Euroinno, The competence eld an area for data gathering and knowledge transfer, Final Project deliverable. Euroinno Brochure, University of Rostock, Germany, November 2006. Heitmann, G., Challenges of engineering education and curriculum development in the context of the Bologna process. Eur. J. Engng Edu., 2005, 30, 447458. Koen Depryck, Getting started with ODL. Garant Uitgevers N V, 2005. Available online at http://www.odlexpert.net/ getstart/. ODL Introducing Appropriate Methodologies for LLL n. 100258-CP-1-2002-1-GRUNDTVIG-G1. Available online at: www.odlexpert.net. ODLexpert/IAML3 project, Socrates Grundtvig 1, EU Education and Culture, n. 00258-CP-1-2002-1-BEGRUNDTVIG-G1, 2005. Rompelman, O. and De Graaff, E., The engineering education: curriculum development from a designers point of view. Eur. J. Engng Edu., 31, 215226. Sharpe, R., Beneld, G., Roberts, G. and Francis, R., The undergraduate experience of blended e-learning: a review of UK literature and practice. Available online from http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/research/Sharpe_Beneld_ Roberts_Francis.pdf, December 2006. Shekar Aruna, Active learning and reection in product development engineering education. Eur. J. Engng Edu., 2007, 32, 125133. SUPSI e-courses platform, 2006. Available online at: http://www.corsi.elearninglab.org/. SWITCH Swiss Education and Research Network, 2006. Available online at: http://econf.switch.ch/econfportal/ www/news/.

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About the authors Lorenzo Sommaruga graduated in Computer Science at the University of Milano (Italy, 1989) and received a PhD in Psychology from Nottingham University (UK, 1993) in studies about Distributed Articial Intelligence. He worked for four years as lecturer and researcher at University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) and then in an Italian Government funded research project on e-learning. He is currently a lecturer and researcher within the Innovation Technologies Department at the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). He has taught and disseminated XML technology since 1998 and actively applies it to different domains from e-learning to content management. He is involved in various research and applied research projects. His main interests and research areas concern the XML technology and new web standards, the Semantic Web, elearning systems and standards, knowledge representation, AI and agents, and innovative information and communication technologies. He is the author of more than 30 international publications on journals, conferences and books in these areas. Elmo De Angelis graduated in Computer Engineering at the University of Bologna (Italy 1977). He worked for ve years for Nortel Canada - Digital Switching Division and ten years for Ontario Hydro - Darlington Nuclear programme, control system department responsible for Software development and quality procedures. He is currently the director of a vocational education and training centre which participates in research programmes at European level mainly on innovation in adult education and training, new occupation proles and development of new curricula. His main interests and research areas concern technology transfer for small and medium enterprises and innovation in adult education life-long learning.