Observal
OBSERVAL is a project funded in the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci European Program, under the leadership of EUCEN. It brings together teams representing the various sectors of education (higher education, vocational education and training, and adult education) from 24 EU countries.
The project’s main objective is to build a regularly updated database on the validation of non-formal and informal learning. The idea is to make available various types of documents for use by all the actors involved (ministry or institutional officials, social partners, companies, practitioners, etc.) and to present these data in formats which facilitate their understanding and comparison. The observatory will be available on Internet as from 2010.
Four categories of documents will be available in the Observatory (mainly in English):
1 Formal information: official texts regulating the implementation of validation in each country, examples of tools used (standards, dossiers, interview grids …) and of reports on results and statistics, etc. These documents will be presented in their original language with a brief comment in English explaining content and key points.
2 An annual state of the play of the implementation of validation of non-formal and informal learning in the country, of ongoing debates and discussions and of interaction of national validation projects with European initiatives.
In English - Annual Report for Switzerland 2008
In French - Rapport annuel pour la Suisse 2008
3 Case studies presenting interesting or innovative initiatives or experiments, or even failures and implementation problems.
BFFA Case Study:
In English - Equivalence assessment for the Federal PET Diploma in Adult Education and Training
In German - Die Gleichwertigkeitsbeurteilung für den eidgenössischen Fachausweis AusbilderIn
Val-Form Case Study:
In English - Case study Val-Form qualification procedure for metalworkers
In French - Etude de cas sur la procédure Val-Form "constructeurs métalliques"$
Interpret Case Study (in cooperation with the ECAP Foundation) – awarded the First Observal Prize in 2009:
In English - Case study Interpret “Community Interpreters”
4 An annotated bibliographical review of the main reports, books, articles or research published each year in a country on the theme of validation of non-formal and informal learning.
To gather and prepare these documents, a project leader has been identified in each country, entrusted with gathering a team made of representatives from different educational sectors. The role of this team will be to help the project leader in identifying documents, practices and trends in this field. Switzerland is participating in the Observal project as a “silent partner”, and the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) has been appointed as project leader.
Data collection, documentary research, interviews (case studies).