Leaflet for Department of Internationalisation and Innovation at ...

DEPARTMENT OF INNOVATION
AND INTERNATIONALISATION
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ODENSE TEKNISKE SKOLE

© Odense Technical College 2005
Text: Peter Birch, Journalistkontoret Fyn
Translation: Dorte Lauridsen
Layout: LAMA grafik
Photos: Fotograferne Mikkel og Thomas
Print: Clausen Offset
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Solveig Kingo and
Pia Christensen,
administrative staff
DEPARTMENT OF INNOVATION
AND INTERNATIONALISATION
Innovation and internationalisation are concepts
pervading the entire international world of education.
In Europe the Bologna and Copenhagen declarations
describe the objectives of the development of
vocational and higher education programmes for
the next few years to come. The objective is to make
European countries describe their educational systems
for the purpose of transparency of actual competences
for candidates with a given education. The education
programmes should not be harmonised, but they must
be recognisable and comparable in order to facilitate
the opportunities of the countries and populations for
development and cooperation across borders.
The Department of Innovation and Internationalisation
has as its special task to ensure that the
international perspective is deeply rooted in all educational
programmes at OTS. Furthermore it is the
task of the department to bring OTS into a position
in which the special knowledge and expertise which
have been accumulated in this institution over the
years will not only benefit the students, but also
support the economic and social developments at
regional, national and international levels.
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OTS has come far in the realisation of the objectives
from Bologna and Copenhagen. Today all the
educational steps and levels have been described
according to European standards, ECTS, so that it is
now quite easy to compare our education programmes
with programmes in other countries in which
the ECTS-system has been implemented. For the
same reason all acts and curricula are available on
the school homepage in English as well as in Danish.
Every year a great number of students from many
of the countries which have adopted the declarations
arrive at OTS to take part of their education,
and vice versa, OTS helps many young people from
Odense to go abroad to give their education an
international stamp. OTS recognises the qualifications
and examinations which the foreign students
bring with them from their native countries as long
as they fulfil the admission requirements in terms
of content needed to attend classes. In addition to
students from Europe, OTS has students from several
countries worldwide, e.g. from the USA, China,
Nepal among various others. A natural consequence
of this international educational aspect is that
English has been the language of tuition in higher
education programmes since 2002.
In 2003 OTS had 610 employees, of which 374 were
employed in teaching, 137 were employed in administration
and management, while 68 did operational and maintenance
work.

OTS offers short-cycle higher education
programmes in the following fields:
• Multimedia Designer
• Production Engineer
• IT and Electronics Engineer
• Building Technician
• Electrician
Furthermore the school offers a programme
in Constructing Architecture at
medium cycle level.
Ole Bech Kristensen, Senior Consultant
In 2003 OTS had 3,857 fulltime equivalent students
distributed on:
2,351 in vocational education and training
445 in the higher technical
examination programme
734 in higher education
327 in adult and continuing education
OTS offers technical education programmes and
programmes in trade skills at several levels from the
upper secondary level over vocational and college
levels to adult education. Besides the school offers a
number of higher technical education programmes,
and in the spring of 2003 the school was awarded
the university charter by the European Commission,
so that OTS is now a university in the EU sense of
the word. This means that in future the school is
able to apply for funds from the European Commission
for projects which support the internationalisation
of higher education programmes. In return the
school is committed to presenting a European Policy
Statement for further development of the international
element in the education programmes.
Innovation and internationalisation are about
other things, however, than simply following up on
and implementing international agreements. An
important element in the strategic work of OTS is to
build up and participate in a widespread and interlacing
ramification of co-operative networks with various
aims. Among other things OTS cooperates with
several schools worldwide with a view to mutual
professional, educational and strategic development.
And here in Denmark the school participates in a
number of national and regional networks with a
view to enhancing the regional economic development.
In connection with international co-operative
partners, the school has taken part in developing
similar regional partnerships, among other things in
Eastern Europe and China.
This very dynamic educational environment
makes great demands on both teachers and the rest
of the staff. That is why the OTS Department for
Innovation and Internationalisation has initiated a
comprehensive programme of competence development,
in which during working hours the school
staff get the opportunity to attend continuing adult
education within a wide range of competences. For
the managers it is the aim of the school that they
must all have completed a short-cycle programme as
a minimum, and that the management group must
have completed theirs at the Diploma level.
The Department for Innovation and Internationalisation
has built a strong network of cooperative
partners covering most of the world. Since 1990
the department has participated in a wide range of
international projects for among others Danida (a
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Danish foreign aid organisation), the Asian Development
Bank, the EU and the Danish government, and
the department has provided experts for international
projects under the management of other organisations.
The staff in the Department of Innovation
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and Internationalisation have all taken adult education
programmes under the ESF-initiative ATTAK, and what is
more: three of the employees have taken supplementary
education at foreign universities.

Henrik Hjorth, Senior Consultant
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS
OF DEVELOPMENT
OTS considers it important that the development
projects taking place at school at any time are
always linked with the international development in
the same fields. There is no reason that OTS should
learn by the same experience already hard-earned
by others, and besides the school attaches great
importance to its own development being based on
the latest knowledge available in the fields where
the school desires to develop. It is crucial that the
school develops in a direction and in a way which
constantly ensures that the content and methods of
its programmes correspond to the trends in focus
internationally.
It is vital for OTS not be an isolated island which
solely trains students for the local labour market.
We want to be at the cutting edge of development
and take part in leaving our stamp on the content
of the programmes, on the educational and didactic
methods and on the use of new technology in the
programmes, also internationally. The Department
of Innovation and Internationalisation has built a
strong network of cooperative partners covering
most of the world. Since 1990 the department has
participated in a wide range of international projects
for among others Danida (a Danish foreign aid
organisation), the Asian Development Bank, the EU
and the Danish government, and the department
has provided experts for international projects under
the management of other organisations.
Currently the school is participating in the use of
portfolio as a test and evaluation method, and in
the development of a European library for teaching
material, teaching methods and tools for the purpose
of e-learning and IT-supported teaching.
Pellea – a development project about portfolio
as an evaluation method
Since 2001 the department has had close cooperation
with technical universities in Romania, Holland
and Sweden on research into the access of the
European population to use the internet and computer
technology in relation to education and work.
In the beginning the cooperation was focussed on
opportunities and barriers regarding the objective
of making the European pc driver’s licence break
through in the native countries of the four schools
and in Europe as a whole. In that connection the
schools made a comparative study of the citizens’
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Torben Lindegaard Hansen, Senior Consultant
opportunities of using IT in various European countries.
These results are now available in a research
report on the internet.
One of the most important themes of this project
dealt with the use of IT as a tool for tests and evaluation
of qualifications and educational programmes.
We found that there was a tendency – particularly
in the IT programmes – to use automated on-line
tests in which mainly multiple choice systems are
used. That was considered highly problematic by the
cooperative schools as these tests rarely measure the
total amount of knowledge and skills which are supposed
to be the result of an education programme.
For that reason the four schools have now started
extensive cooperation with two schools in Lithuania
and a school in Italy about a development project
under the EU’s Socrates and Grundtvig programmes,
whose objectives are to find alternative test and evaluation
methods in IT education programmes, which
can give a more detailed impression of the student’s
total set of qualifications: Pellea, Portfolio Evaluation
in Life Long Learning Improving Employability of
Adult Learners.
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As the title of the project indicates, the cooperating
schools have taken an interest in the so-called
Portfolio Method, in which artificial, lab-like
methods are refrained from when testing, and
instead the focus is on a continuous description of
the knowledge and the skills that the student has
acquired during a given education programme.
Contrary to multiple-choice tests, the preparation of
portfolios provides both teachers and students with
more comprehensive knowledge of the progress
of the student and thus significantly improves the
opportunities of planning the individual educational
programmes according to the students’ actual
needs. An added advantage of the portfolio system
is incidentally that it provides better basis for interviews
with potential employers in a possible future
job search situation than simply placing a number of
marks in a multiple-choice system.
The Pellea project includes a survey of how and
to what extent portfolios are currently used in
European education systems. Besides, the project
includes the development of a prototype of a system
electronically designing and updating each student’s
portfolio. At the end of the project there will be a
complete and tested manual for teachers as well as
The cooperative partners og the PELEA project are:
• Odense Technical College (OTS), Denmark
• Atrium Research & Innoatie B.V., Holland
• Fundatja Universitarã AISTEDA, Romania
• Folkeuniversitetet (Kursverksamheten vid Lunds
Universitet), Sweden
• Klaipedos Universiteto Kvalifikacijos kelimo institutes,
Lithuania
• Vytauto Didziojo Universitetas, Lithuania
• Gruppo CSCS, Italy

You can follow the development of the Pellea-project by clicking
on www.pellea.org. Other projects that OTS has participated in
can be seen at www.ii.ots.dk
The cooperative partners of the Replika project are:
• Technical University of Liberec, the Czech Republic
• Odense Technichal College, Denmark
• Fundación Universidag-Empresa Región de Murcia, Spain
• Doncaster College, England
• Engineering Employers’ Federation Sheffield, England
• Leeds Metropolitan University, England
• The Charlesworth Group, England
• University of Huddersfield, England
• University of Hull, England
The project is managed by the University of Hull, England
national decision-makers for the implementation
of portfolio evaluation in the national education
systems.
The knowledge that the projects have provided
is available on the internet as part of the effort attached
to the European development programmes,
so that the knowledge and experience accumulated
in the projects are made available and are used by
other schools and educational institutions in the participants’
own countries and in Europe as a whole.
The Replika project
After radically changing people’s way of communicating,
the net is now changing people’s way of
learning. The internet offers so far undreamt-of possibilities
of reusing and sharing educational material
and teaching methods across borders and between
different institutions. The net provides teachers with
entirely new ways of introducing their subjects,
and pupils and students have gradually developed
completely new ways of gathering knowledge and
training skills.
This realization provides the basis for another
trans-national development project which OTS/the
Department of Internationalisation and Innovation
participates in and which is carried out in cooperation
with ten education institutions in four countries
and managed from Trans Heurope in Huddersfield,
England.
Replika is an acronym for European Repository for
Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Acquisition. It
is a three-year project under the EU’s Leonardo programme,
which deals partly with the development
of e-learning concepts and tools pertaining to these,
and partly with new teaching methods and improvement
of the teaching quality. The project thus has
both technical and educational aspects.
The technical aspects include the formation of a
joint European repository in which it is possible to
save and collect teaching material and in which it is
possible, by means of a specially designed tool, to
work out or adapt the material so that it fully complies
with the needs that the user may have. In the
project period the plan is to develop up to twelve
different sets of teaching material for e-learning
within the various vocational education programmes.
With the twelve modules and modes of adaptation
available, it will be possible for the participa-
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ting schools to offer e-learning for a very wide range
of education programmes, subjects and levels.
Technically speaking, the teaching methods
developed for the project have been devised according
to the same philosophy as when computer
specialists talk about object-oriented programming.
The concept is called RLO, Reusable Learning Object,
because it is based on the use of units which can be
reused in various contexts. Each element is provided
with a code so that the controlling system, the
Learning Content Management System, (LCMS),
can collect, save and possibly change each element
when it is needed.
For the developer, i.e. the teacher, the system has
the advantage that, once he has developed an element
in his teaching material, he will always be able
to reuse it in other connections, in other education
programmes or for other assignments. Besides it is
an advantage that each single user may at any time
search the database for elements which others may
have developed, so that you do not have to invent
things yourself each time you need new material.
For the educational institution it is an advantage
that there is a relatively easy and painless way of
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developing and distributing new teaching material,
thereby reducing the costs for it. Furthermore, it is
fairly cheap and simple to transfer RLO’s to other
LCMS’es.
For the student the system offers individually
adapted learning methods and a number of ways to
follow to achieve the wanted qualifications. You will
be able to plan your learning on the basis of what
you need to learn instead of slavishly being forced
to follow a previously planned progression. Besides
it is possible to choose different learning methods
depending on the student’s preferences for learning
styles, and there will always be a number of tasks to
choose from and the right amount of information
– exactly when it is needed.
As regards the content, the project will provide
training in the use of electronic aids in the education
of a number of teachers in each of the countries
involved, who will then, in the long run, constitute
a group of frontrunners in the further development
of e-learning in the participating countries and
in Europe as a whole. By means of the modules
developed the teachers can get started using e-
learning in their daily teaching, and by means of the

The outcome of the project will be
• The digital storage of teaching material for
e-learning in vocational education
• Up to 12 modules for e-learning in vocational
education, which are available on-line in the
digital repository
• Choice of e-learning in vocational education, at
least for the native countries of the educational
institutions
• A comprehensive education and development
programme for teachers and other staff
• A completely developed system for support of
students working with e-leaning
• A guarantee that the teaching material developed
is kept within the limits of the demands
made for teaching material in the native countries
of the participating schools
accompanying tool of development, the teachers
will gain experience in adapting existing teaching
material to the very purposes needed in their education
institution or in their regional area. By means of
this development tool, each teacher will be able to
develop his own e-learning material, which he can
store for everybody to use in the shared drive from
which he formerly collected his own material.
The main purpose of thus sharing material and
tools of development through joint repository is naturally
that each of the participating institutions sees
a great deal of advantages in collecting and storing
teaching material of a high quality in a central place
in which it is available to the benefit of all participants
of the community. Each institution has ideas
and methods which may benefit the others so that
pupils and students get the best education possible
in all of the participating educational institutions.
education of Chinese officials, the coordination of
higher education in Denmark and the USA, teaching
company consultants in Azerbaijan, Russia and the
former Yugoslavia. Besides, the school has participated
in environmental projects in Romania and
Serbia/Montenegro.
Projects outside the EU
Outside the EU, OTS/the Department of Internationalisation
has participated in numerous projects in
China, the USA, Central Asia and in the Balkans.
Among other things, the activities have included the
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ABOUT MOBILITY
The globalisation of the economy and the ensuing
globalisation of the labour market make some
demands on the young people who are going to act
under these circumstances in future. Everybody has
climbed on to the international bandwagon and to
everybody it is of vital importance that we can see
ourselves as part of the international community.
Therefore it is very important that already now we
leave a strong international stamp on the educational
programmes – no matter whether we are
dealing with the basic vocational education, adult
and continuing education or with higher education.
For the programmes at OTS, internationalisation
has had radical consequences. The European objectives
mentioned in the Bologna and Copenhagen
declarations have to a great extent been fulfilled. All
acts and curricula are available in English as well as
in Danish on the school homepage, and all programmes
are described according to European standards,
ECTS, facilitating comparability of programmes at
OTS with similar programmes abroad.
This development has made it possible for students
abroad to make enquiries about education
possibilities at OTS, and quite a lot of young people
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have found it worth while going to Odense to take
part of their education there. The great contribution
of foreign pupils and students means in itself that
the school environment has become much more
international than has ever been the case before.
On a daily basis this means that part of the teaching
is done in English and that, regularly, you hear
students talking to each other in foreign languages
when they are in the corridors, in the canteens and
in the lounges.
Vice versa, the idea is to get an increasing number
of the school’s Danish students to take part of their
education abroad. For a great number of young
people, the future will bring them into contact with
foreign labour markets or with foreign colleagues.
This applies not only to export-oriented trades, but
also to domestic trades. Young people will be in
close and frequent contact with companies and
their employees abroad. Industry co-operates with
subcontractors abroad or is itself a subcontractor
to a foreign company, and with the increasingly flat
organisational structure which exists in more and
more modern companies, it means that many more
employees at all levels will be given tasks which in-

”Internationalisation is about other things than adapting
the pupils to the future labour market. It is also an important
part of the pupils’ general education, which we
are also responsible for at OTS. The international aspect
of the programmes helps open the pupils’ eyes to the
fact that there is also something interesting outside their
own little village. They must know in order for them to
adopt an attitude to their own lives”.
Lone Olsen, specialist teacher at the Car Repair department
clude communicating with colleagues from abroad.
In addition to the ensuing demand for good language
skills in especially English and German, there
will also be a demand among Danish employees
for a good deal of understanding of other cultures
and other ways of doing things than you are used
to from home. In the near future such qualifications
will be extremely valuable both for the employees,
for the companies and for the Danish society.
That is why OTS strongly supports young people’s
efforts to make the international dimension part of
their education. The school has earmarked special
resources for the student counsellors to help the
young people who want to go abroad, just as the
school is in close contact with the national Danish
agency for the internationalisation of education,
CIRIUS, which makes a great effort to help young
people go abroad. The active support of internationally
oriented students has resulted in a growing
number of the pupils and students from OTS taking
part of their education abroad. Some spend part of
their placement in a foreign company or in a Danish
company abroad, whereas others leave to study at
foreign educational institutions for some time.
Pupils and students abroad
The various EU programmes give good opportunities
for getting practical help and financial support
when the technical schools are to help pupils and
students take part of their education abroad. But of
course the schools have to put in time and effort.
Thus for a number of years, OTS has been working
on making contacts to schools in various countries
all over the world with a view to providing the opportunity
of exchanging students across borders.
The same contacts have naturally also been used for
providing work placement abroad for the school’s
own students just as the school has been helpful
when partner schools abroad have searched for
work placement or student places in Denmark for
their students.
From 2005 OTS has an international class, which
offers the pupils from all vocational education
programmes under the Basic Course preparation for
going abroad to study. The international programme
takes the form of a special education module, which
contains extra language teaching and which puts
special emphasis on disciplines such as cooperation,
communication and international cultural under-
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standing. As part of their education, the pupils have
to work out a special homepage about themselves
in which they have to introduce themselves and
demonstrate what they have learned during the
education they are presently taking in Denmark.
During the process, the pupils draw on the experience
from other pupils who have previously been
abroad as part of their education, and towards the
end of the programme the pupils will go on a study
tour abroad, in which they are going to get in touch
with possible companies for work placement and
solve the accommodation problem in the place in
question. The idea is that the pupils return from the
study trip with an agreement in advance about a
work placement in a company. In that connection
OTS sees it as its natural task to pave the way for
the pupils so that before the study tour there will be
contacts with interested work placement companies
and with the local vocational school. To some
extent we must also take care that the pupils have
somewhere to live during their stay, and that is also
something the school is working on as part of its
strategy to get more young people to go abroad
during their education.
A few pupils and students are so autonomous
that they themselves make arrangements for a period
of study abroad. The school backs this up greatly
and has in specific cases made a financial contribution
out of its own funds for the actual completion of
the project, such as for instance air tickets as in the
following example: In the winter and spring of 2005
two students from the production technologist education
were on quite a long stay in China to write
a major project report on the opportunities and
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”Everywhere in Denmark we are talking about
outsourcing and globalisation, and sooner or later
young technicians will inevitably encounter the subject
when they enter the labour market. Therefore
we think that the schools should work actively for
the students to go abroad while they are studying,
so that they can be best prepared for the international
challenges they are going to meet.later on”.
Jesper Steenfeldt and Anders Wraae, PT-students in
China.
threats of starting new companies over there. The
two students made arrangements themselves with
a private Danish company which is in the process of
establishing itself in China, and they are following
the entire process, which comprises contacts with
the Chinese authorities, descriptions and production
methods, quality assurance, work environment,
environment, transport, etc. This particular case
forms the basis of the students’ major project
report. Besides the actual conditions concerning
the establishment of a Danish company in China,
it includes the students’ considerations for the
financial feasibility of starting production in China
and the far-reaching perspectives in outsourcing part
of the company’s Danish production to China. In addition
to the financial support, OTS/the Department
of Internationalisation has supported the students
with the experience which the department itself is
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European Policy Statement
For a number of years the Technical Academy at Odense
Technical College has implemented short-cycle higher
education programmes within a range of technical fields.
In 2003 the Academy was awarded the university charter
by the European Commission. On that occasion, the
school formulated a European Policy Strategy, from which
we bring an excerpt here. The entire text can be found on
the school homepage www.ots.dk:
in possession of after several years’ work on various
development projects particularly in China.
Teachers should also be exchanged
The internationalisation of education also entails
that in many subjects and projects among students
and pupils at OTS there is trans-national cooperation
between pupils and classes. Many of these contacts
have been established because teachers themselves
have participated in international work and have
themselves gone abroad and met colleagues from
other countries, either in courses as participants
in one of the school’s international development
projects or as part of an exchange arrangement with
teachers from foreign institutions. Teachers from the
school’s technical academy also teach e.g. at foreign
universities under Socrates’ ERASMUS programme,
and several school departments arrange study tours
and exchange programmes for their teachers so that
they themselves can feel what kind of a world they
must prepare pupils and students to enter.
An example of how this exchange across borders
works is the international cooperation of the graphic/printing
trades in Egin, in which OTS is also a
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partner. Here representatives of the employers of the
trade meet as well as the unions and the educational
institutions and they discuss the development of
the trade and the needs for new elements in both
the basic and adult education programmes. At the
same time the arrangements made by the organisations
give the teachers good opportunity to establish
international contacts and get new input both at
the professional and educational levels. Finally on
several occasions, Egin has helped establish contacts
between schools, which have jointly been able to
establish international development projects under
one of the many EU development programmes.
OTS/the Department of Internationalisation naturally
makes use of its own experience and its own
contacts abroad to support the effort that teachers
and many employees among the rest of the staff
make to develop the international environment and
the international awareness in the school.
The Technical Academy wants to ensure that the students
can take part of their education at a foreign educational
institution, and that the foreign students will be able to
take part of their education at the Technical Academy. This
is ensured by preparatory visits, entering into agreements
about ECTS, monitoring and evaluation as well as agreements
that the students obtain the recognition and credit
transfer needed for their study stay. Furthermore the aim
is for the Technical Academy to make agreements with
higher educational institutions abroad, so that the students
who want to, can continue their studies there, e.g. a
student who has completed the IT and Electronics Engineer
education at the Technical Academy will be able to take a
bachelor’s degree within this field by adding one more year
of studies in England.
As regards staff, the Technical Academy will exchange
teachers and managers with their peers from educational
institutions abroad, and continue the upgrading of teachers
both academically/professionally and educationally.
Thus throughout the past eighteen months the Technical
Academy in cooperation with other Danish vocational colleges
have been connected to a major upgrading project
with the title Change to global employee, which has been
carried out with the support of the EU ATTAK programme
(see www.partnership.ots.dk). Furthermore, employees
from the Technical Academy have participated in job-swop
arrangements, and there are already bilateral agreements
about the exchange with foreign educational institutions.
The Technical Academy also has as its objective to participate
in development projects focussing on the development
of professional and educational competences. The
Technical Academy is thus to be found in the preparatory
phase of projects under the EU Minerva and Grundtvig
programmes The Minerva projects deal with the implementation
of quality concepts in relation to flexible supply
of education whereas the Grundtvig project deals with
the establishment of models for awarding ECTS in a wide
perspective, e.g. in relation to education modules supplied
for adults and for the lifelong learning perspective.

NETWORK AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
You can read more about Robo-
Cluster at www.robocluster.dk
OTS/the Department of Internationalisation and
Innovation plays an important part in the economic
development in Funen, the region of Denmark in
which OTS is situated. First and foremost this is
about constantly being able to supply educational
programmes of a quality and to an extent that live
up to the needs of the business community and the
standards demanded by the national authorities. But
the task is not by far solved by this. Since in most
cases it takes some time to have new ideas implemented
in the programmes – and as, in itself, it
takes 3-5 years for the school’s pupils and students
to graduate - OTS/the Department of Internationalisation
and Innovation must pay very close attention
to the new trends being under way if we are to be
at the forefront of events. And that is where OTS is
today.
It is not a task to be solved on our own. It takes
all sorts of cooperation. The school sees itself as part
of an educational food chain in which we graduate
people who will actually be able to solve the tasks
set for modern companies in an international
community. And naturally the school also sees itself
as part of the activities revealing new opportunities
for growth and development in our region. By
means of its knowledge, the school also contributes
to the understanding of what it takes for the new
opportunities to be exploited.
RoboCluster
RoboCluster is an example of a regional network
among many which collect the efforts of the
research institutions, private and public companies
and various types of educational institutions in a
joint effort to develop the region of Funen and contribute
to economic growth. The task is to capture
the ideas generated in the companies in order to
make use of them in research and at the education
institutions as well as to develop them further so
they can be channelled into a productive and commercial
gain for the region. In this particular case
the idea is to make use of the knowledge that the
research institutions possess about advanced robot
technology so that, in the best way possible, they
can contribute to the automation of the production
in industry and trade in fields which are defined
by the needs of the local and regional companies’
needs.
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RoboCluster builds on the idea that all participants
in an innovation and production process are
dependent on each other as links in a chain. The
entire chain consists of such diverse elements as
research, company management, the company
development departments and the educational institutions,
which staff the chain, each one of them,
with qualified manpower. If all links do not work on
the mutual task, the risk is that the chain breaks or
jumps off, and then the innovation process comes
to a halt. On the other hand, networks of this kind
are considered vital for the Funen region to keep its
leading position in the global economy.
OTS contributes to RoboCluster at many different
levels. First of all, the school can of course supply
the network with the qualified manpower needed
for the network to be at all able to carry through
its development ideas in practice. This is particularly
the case within IT and electronics programmes,
but also other fields can contribute to an increased
understanding of how to utilize the robot technology
for the automation of production everywhere
in the trade and industry of Funen. For example the
electrician and industrial technician programmes
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and the programmes within production technology
are far ahead. Besides supplying manpower and participating
in research and development processes,
OTS has many contacts among companies in Funen,
which RoboCluster can rely on when new companies
need to be connected to each other in the
network or when new ideas are to be tested with a
view to using them in development and production.
As part of the overall network in RoboCluster,
there are other networks around RoboCluster, which
for example organise the subcontractors and bring
them in touch with each other as colleagues with
a mutual interest in a joint development effort for
their particular, but important link in the entire innovation
chain. Likewise the regional research and
educational institutions cooperate with the private
companies’ development departments in the special
education exploratory, the Luna project.
The Luna project
The Luna project is an attempt to combine education
at all levels of the chain of the innovation
process with actual development projects in a very
interdisciplinary and project oriented environment.

”The concept of innovation is actually a little
disregarded in the ordinary European production
life. Often there are not enough resources for
innovation, and often you do not know how to
make use of the creative forces in an efficient way.
By teaching the students the Kubus method,
we give them some tools they can bring to the
companies and thus contribute to increased
innovation.”
Head of department, Jan Lund,
IT and Electronics
The project has been launched on the thesis that it
is hopelessly old-fashioned to distinguish between
school and reality, between education and development
work. The aim of Luna is to create an
entirely new and modern interdisciplinary, applicable
learning platform where this distinction disappears
and where people who will subsequently have to
work together in a joint innovation chain are trained
in seeing themselves as part of this chain and as
cooperating on the joint development tasks. In the
project work university students participate on a
par with apprentices and company managers and
research, organisation and production become part
of a joint, concrete process.
In the Luna project the links of the innovation
chain are connected to form a unit: the educational
institutions are linked, pupils and students will work
together irrespective of subjects and levels, companies
and educational institutions are connected,
education and research are connected, and research
and companies are connected – altogether for the
purpose of enhancing the development of new
ideas and growth in the region.
Currently we are working on a project on the
development of new production methods within
the process industry by means of industrial robots.
The project includes concrete research on the optical
placement of the fibres in components with complex
geometries such as windmill blades. Besides we are
working on the development, automation and optimisation
of the process technology by means of robots.
And finally the project includes the actual work
of designing and producing the tools needed for the
project to be implemented and for the results to be
transferred to ordinary industrial production.
The Kubus project
Kubus is a work method developed in Denmark to
be used for innovation projects. But it has also proven
to be a good tool for the aspect of instruction
which deals with the development of creative talent
among pupils and students. The main philosophy
of the Kubus method is that creativity is something
which can be learned. It is not the prerogative of
especially talented individuals who have been born
with this creative ability. But by the right way of
going about innovation projects, all project workers
can be stimulated to contributing to the creative
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process in various ways, and from an educational
point of view the Kubus method has definitely
entailed that the students have gone further in
their projects, and the quality of the educational
programmes has generally been enhanced.
According to the Kubus method, the aim of
the innovation project is not defined in advance.
First you seek knowledge in the area you want to
innovate. In this “preject” phase the aim is to get
all of the knowledge which is available, but which
you have not yet become acquainted with, so that
in the further process you have a good basis for
starting the actual development work. It is during
this gathering phase you usually get the sudden
“eureka” experiences which provide the ideas for
the innovation or improvement of a product or a
production method. After a focusing phase in which
the new discoveries are distilled, you start focussing
and formulating aims for your project. The actual
project is managed on ordinary principles, but in the
”preject” phase it is important that the entire team
take turns at doing the various management tasks
so that everybody has responsibility and everybody
contributes.
19
At the Department of IT and Electronics students
are taught in that way of working. Partly because
the aim is to teach people who can, in one way
or the other, contribute to the innovation in the
companies where they are later to be employed, and
partly because the work method in itself has shown
to give far better results than other ways of teaching.
After the introduction of the Kubus method,
the students are no longer given assignments like:
”develop a driverless car, which can follow a white
line on the road”. Instead the assignment will have a
much wider scope so that the students now have to
develop “something useful”, which can be put into
production, and which contains at least elements
“so and so”. Among the projects that the students
have developed according to this method are a
crane for the shipbuilding industry, a robot for the
collection of paper in streets and parks and a system
for the operation of a multimedia theatre. Naturally,
inventions from the first year of an innovation
project programme are not epoch-making, but the
method clearly encourages the creative processes,
and there is no doubt that the projects which have
been developed in this way are far ahead of the old-

The participants of the project Competence
Centre Bitola
• OTS/Department of Internationalisation,
Denmark
• Dalum Agricultural School, Denmark.
• Agricultural School Centre, Bitola,
Macedonia
• Electromechanical School Gorgi
Navmov, Bitola, Macedonia
fashioned projects as regards creativity and growth
of knowledge among the students.
In the light of recent years’ experience with the
education in creativity and innovation, OTS has now
teamed up with Aarhus Technical College in a joint
research project on innovation as a subject and
method in the programmes.
Competence Centre Bitola
On the international scene, OTS/the Department of
Internationalisation has made use of its knowledge
about the importance of the school for the regional
development of several competence development
projects in various parts of Eastern Europe, among
other places in Belarus, Azerbaijan and Kaliningrad.
The department has participated as a partner in
projects where others have been in charge and have
had the main responsibility, but we have also had
the management and co-ordinating responsibility in
a number of projects. A good example of the latter
was the development of a development project for
employees at two vocational schools and a competence
centre in the Macedonian region of Bitola.
The aim of the project was to strengthen the
vocational schools in the region so that, on the one
hand, they can function as natural partners in the
development of a regional trade and development
policy and, on the other hand, contribute to the
implementation of concrete activities which can
enhance the economic development of the region.
The core of the project was the development of
a regional competence centre in Bitola whose tasks
would be to contribute to the solution of the regional
problems of unemployment and generally poorly
educated manpower, among other things through
the counselling by future entrepreneurs and actual
education activities.
The project comprised the education of VIPs in
the participating Macedonian institutions within
areas such as management, consultancy, communication
and marketing with a view to first gearing
the institutions to act in a market-economic system,
and then to equip the participants to enable them
to advise future entrepreneurs on how to start and
run their own companies on market-economic
conditions. The second phase of the project saw the
development of two actual courses, which were to
be marketed and offered for sale by the schools in
20

Bitola. One course was about hygiene in the dairy
business, and the other was a course for entrepreneurs,
which included general themes about the
conditions for entrepreneurs in Bitola as well as
down-to-earth subjects such as business plans and
budgets. In the third and last phase the courses
were carried out and tested on interested workers,
unemployed people and future entrepreneurs.
The final result of the project, which was completed
by the end of 2001, is naturally difficult to assess.
But the fact is that the project resulted in the Competence
Centre of Bitola now having a coherent
model for how to play a serious role as a school in
the commercial and economic development of a
regional area. Furthermore, it is a fact that the commercial
networks which were established during the
project have resulted in new, independent projects,
which are either in themselves financially viable or
which have achieved such a degree of development
that they can form the basis for further project aid
from international organisations such as the Stability
Pact, the Human Rights Initiative or the World Bank.
21

THE INTERNAL
COMPETENCE
DEVELOPMENT
An important prerequisite for OTS to fulfil its role
in relation to the development and education in
the international community is naturally that all
staff groups of the school work together and see
themselves as important links in the chain which
keeps the machine going. The school management
must be able to see the visions and the school tasks
in proportion to the regional, national and international
developments, and management should
be able to formulate strategies and action plans
which are understandable to employees at all levels
in the school organisation and thus may be agreed
upon. The technical and administrative staff must
understand the visions and work independently and
goal-oriented to create the necessary technical, administrative
and physical conditions for the visions to
be implemented. And the teachers are the ones who
have to ensure, at the performing level, that visions
and strategies actually become generally accepted in
the daily work in relation to pupils, students, work
placement companies and the rest of the cooperative
partners of the school.
OTS/the Department of Internationalisation has
a very decisive task in providing a solid foundation
for the school’s development in that direction. Together
with other Danish and European educational
institutions the school has undergone a tremendous
development within the last twenty years, in which
the focus has changed from the slightly narrow local
or regional perspective to the very wide international
view on education, and throughout these years
the staff at all levels have been frequent participants
in all sorts of adult education programmes of a professional
or educational nature. But the world keeps
moving, and there is constantly a variety of tasks to
be solved in order to keep the school and its staff
abreast of development.
Consequently, in 2003 the school launched a very
ambitious competence development project, which
was in principle supposed to give all the school’s
teachers the opportunity to take supplementary and
qualifying adult education within particularly the
educational field over a number of years. The project
is managed by OTS/the Department of Internationalisation
in cooperation with “Danmarks Erhvervspædagogiske
Læreruddannelser”, the Danish national
centre for the education of teachers at national
vocational schools.
22

The actual competence development takes the
shape of problem-oriented project work in which
each participant in cooperation with his department
develops a project which is related to the needs
defined in the department.
Quite a few of the projects have been very
specific in relation to the development of teaching
material or methods within the subjects offered in
the department.
Other projects have been of a more general
nature, focussing on new considerations concerning
pedagogy and didactics in relation to the latest
knowledge on e.g. learning styles or the needs
for more independence and responsibility among
employees in the production.
Matrix for flex-learning
In the Department of Electronics and Data, nine
teachers have so far attended the competence development
project. In the department they are very
engaged in the latest recognition that pupils and
students do not all follow the same strategy when
learning new things. Some students prefer reading
the manual from one end to the other before they
23
start using a machine. Others would rather throw
away the manual, start the machine and see what
happens. Not until they get stuck, do they want to
consult the manual and the basic theory. Both ways
may in principle be equally good for learning how
to use a machine, and it is up to the school and
its teachers to take into consideration the various
different ways of learning and to give the pupils
the opportunity to tackle things from a number of
different angles.
That is why for some time, the department has
been working on developing an e-learning concept
for what you call total flex-learning. This actually
means an end to the traditional pedagogy, in which
all pupils and students follow the same progression
during the teaching process – regardless of which
learning process functions best with them. Instead
the staff are working on developing a matrix with
assignments and instructions, in which the pupils
can start where they want and then jump back
and forth in the subject-matter and look for the
knowledge they need at any particular time in the
process.
Some pupils will follow the traditional progres-
Themes for competence development OTS
• From teaching to learning
• The application of IT in education and learning
• From acts to curricula
• Internationalisation
• Quality
• E-learning
• Innovation and entrepreneurship

sion, in which the knowledge you need is divided
into levels with the basic level of knowledge being
provided by what you might call rote learning. It is
knowledge which has to be learned by heart and
which is not subject to debate.
A little higher in the hierarchy is the instructive
knowledge, which enables the student to carry
out a task described in a manual. Still higher is the
ability to make use of already acquired skills and
knowledge in new and so far unknown connections.
Here creativity enters into the picture; the pupil has
to make some choices, and to a certain extent it is
open to debate whether the pupil has found the
right or the best way to solve the task. At the very
top we find the ability to make new discoveries.
Other pupils will probably start in the middle or
at the opposite end of the scale and then jump
back to the relevant levels and pick up more basic
knowledge as they need it. Consequently the idea
of total flex-learning is not to give up traditional
taxonomies, but to enable the pupils to start at the
end of progression which suits them best according
to their learning styles, and then flick through the
pages of possibilities in line with their needs to challenge
themselves or return to lower levels to pick up
knowledge needed.
New teacher and pupil roles
The entire paradigm shift which has taken place in
education in recent years has had far-reaching consequences
for the relationship between teachers and
pupils. Both teachers and pupils have been given
entirely new ways of relating to each other, and the
demands this makes on the teachers is the general
headline of the other project under the competence
development project. If you dig a little deeper into
what the project is about, you get a long explanation
ending in a question of how many different teacher
and pupil roles you are actually able to relate to
at the same time as a human being.
The project takes its starting point in the teacher’s
own situation in the department for Forging and
Industrial Technology where he teaches at all levels,
from Technical Introduction for totally ignorant
compulsory school pupils to people with an education
and long, practical work experience within
the trade. He has noticed that there is a gradual,
but marked change in the demands made on the
24

teacher regarding educational and professional competences,
depending on how advanced the pupils
are. The less the pupils know about the subject,
the more pedagogic twists and turns the teacher
has to make for the pupils to realize the necessity
for certain forms of knowledge. The demands for
professional knowledge at this level are relatively
modest.
It is quite the opposite, the better the pupils’
professional basis is. Professionally competent pupils
have a much better chance of formulating what
new knowledge they want to get during a course.
To them by far the most important thing is a professionally
competent teacher, whereas pedagogy does
not necessarily matter very much.
The exciting thing is that within each of the four
main roles there are various possibilities of adapting
teaching to the individual needs that the pupils
may have. But what might worry a bit is that, to an
increasing extent, the school is establishing open
workshops – multi-workhops – where several pupil
types at several levels have to work at the same time
with a single or only a few teachers instructing. This
will make demands on the teachers to be able to
25
appear in all four teacher roles while providing differentiated
and individual teaching at all the professional
levels present in the workshop. The interesting
thing is to find out how to tackle this situation as a
teacher.
Competence development 2005
In the spring of 2005, 65 teachers from different
departments have been enrolled for one or more
competence development courses. The participants
have been enrolled for the courses individually or
they participate as entire teams as part of collective
competence development of the team. OTS/the
Department of Internationalisation encourages
teachers to plan their competence development in
a way that allows them to have their new competences
formally recognised in the form of master’s
degrees, diploma degrees, VVU-certification (corresponding
to HND level) or the like. In that way
you ensure that the competence development gives
tangible benefits at all levels from the purely personal
to the overall national level. At the personal
level a competence development programme can
widen the practical and theoretical knowledge of
In 2005 projects are held under the
following headlines
• Problem-based learning
• English language
• Inter-cultural competence
• Curriculum Development
• E-learning
• Innovation
• From acts to curricula

the individual teacher and the individual team. This
can naturally be used as a platform for the teacher’s
personal career development and improve his basis
for negotiating about pay and conditions of employment.
For the department competence development
provides the opportunity of strengthening the
educational profile in order to solve concrete tasks in
relation to the challenges met every day. The departments
which are active in their competence development
are also the ones who are at the head of the
school’s entire educational development. The school
as a whole profits by the total competence development
by increasing the intellectual capacity in the
school and raising the educational standard. Thereby
the school gets the chance to distance itself from
regional and, in some cases, also national and
international competitors on the education market.
In addition to that, competence development has
the obvious advantage that it contributes to creating
a living and dynamic workplace, which gives the
teachers and the rest of the staff the best opportunities
to get personal challenges and personal growth.
This triggers a positive spiral, which then again increases
the interest in competence development and
renewed development. At the overall national level,
general competence development at the vocational
colleges will contribute to increased readiness for
change in the vocational college system, which will
then gear the schools to react better and faster to
future changes in the labour market and the society
in which the schools prepare the pupils to function.
So far there have been a little less than 250 enrolments
for competence development at OTS, and
the school expects one more course in 2005 and
two more in 2006.
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DEPARTMENT OF INNOVATION
AND INTERNATIONALISATION
ALLEGADE 79 • DK 5000 ODENSE C • DENMARK
TEL. +45 6312 65 00 • FAX +45 6312 6599
http://www.ii.ots.dk • ii@ots.dk
ODENSE TEKNISKE SKOLE