Bring together a number of well-tested tools and solutions for competence development. Adapt them to nearby conditions. Package them in a modern and easy-to-use e-platform. That’s the recipe for Greenbox, developed under the leadership of The Packaging Greenhouse.
Greenbox is an interactive tool for competence development in the pulp and paper industry consisting of three main components: a tool for competence analysis, interactive training material and updating of text books. Greenbox will reinforce knowledge transfer and lifelong learning with the aim of helping companies and individuals to develop and grow. A total of 14 organisations from five different countries are participating in the development of Greenbox. One of them is Citec Information, specialists in technical information and documentation.
“We will be providing teacher and participant instructions for the various Greenbox modules. We aim to make them simple to use and easy to understand. This will help participants to focus solely on the content, and not bother about how the tool works,” says Nina Kilbrink, at Citec Information in Karlstad, Sweden.
Citec Information is a market leader in the Nordic region and has over 400 employees, of whom around 50 are based in Sweden.
“Greenbox will bea good reference project for us. It gives us an opportunity to show that our skills are well suited to the pulp and paper industry,” says Nina.
Doctoral degree in technology education research Nina Kilbrink’s interest in technology education research was awoken after she studied Swedish and German at Karlstad University. Nina wanted to learn more about computers so she took a course in informatics. This resulted in her teaching prospective teachers in informatics and she got involved in developing course material for training teachers in informatics.
The subject of her doctoral thesis was how children program robots and she was recently installed as doctor in technology education research at Karlstad University, a post she combines with her work for Citec Information.
Coordinating competence analyses and training material Greenbox will include a competence analysis tool that will enable machine operators and others to test their knowledge levels. The analysis can be linked to various competence profiles to identify the areas of knowledge that require development and the training sections that meet those specific requirements.
“One of the challenges will be to write instructions that appeal to beginners, specialists and different learning profiles while ensuring that the material works both for distance learning and teacher-lead learning. Greenbox includes both text and film, so the prospects look good,” says Nina.
Nina expects to complete the first 20 Greenbox modules in May. During the autumn mill personnel and students at Karlstad Technology Center will test these modules. Nina will be on hand to see what changes need to be made.
“I hope that the pilot tests show that we have succeeded in our aim of putting the user first. Helping people to use the material correctly is a recipe for success as well as giving Greenbox its competitive edge, whether you are using manuals for teaching or technical equipment,” says Nina. Greenbox has been funded with support from the European Commission.
