In the beginning of November the Dutch educational centre of the paper industry VAPA was invited present her recent project results during a big conference in Brussels celebrating the 15th anniversary of the life long learning program “Leonardo da Vinci ”.
During this conference VAPA presented the multi media educational program called FOCUS. This state of the art e-learning program provides training for machine operators and papermakers. The VAPA project was selected out of hundreds of projects that were realised in European during the past 15 years.

The educational FOCUS program is based on a blended learning system with the possibility for self-study using more than 3000 videoclips and animations. There are more than 40 modules developed in close cooperation with different experts in Europe. Not only from the Netherlands but also from Germany (Papiermacher Zentrum Gernsbach)  and the Austrian education centre (PZ Steyrermühl).

“Seeing is believing”, says  VAPA director Peter Lokhorst. “Everybody knows that reading information  has less impact than if you see, hear and experience something.  That’s why we choose for visualisation!” The whole program involves more than 100 hours of visualised information; video’s, animations, questions, simulations and selftests.
 
VAPA has developped the FOCUS modules for the Paper-, board- and corrugated board industry in 4 languages. At the moment VAPA is working on a Swedish translation together with Greenhouse from Karlstad Sweden. The modules are distributed world wide and at the moment there are 41 users in 11 different countries.

“With this FOCUS program the Paper industry is ahead of most other industries”, mister Lokhorst says. He was asked to present the FOCUS modules for the more than 300 participants of the Leonardo da Vinci conference in Brussels on the 9th of November, being one of the 5 selected projects that were judges as the best in 15 years educational innovation in Europe.

For the paper industry it will very easy in the future to educate their employees in a very flexible way with less traditional classroom training.  The blended learning system is an optimal mix of in-mill group instructions, on the job training and self study.

For more information:
www.focustraining.eu
www.vapa.nl
P. Lokhorst
VAPA, Anklaarse weg 95 Apeldoorn The Netherlands
0031 55 578 69 60