The purpose of the School is to provide technicians with a means for personal development to bring them up to the standard of skill and knowledge required by modern leading-edge forging companies.
The School is to be based upon distant learning techniques. Some experience of the manner in which this system of education may be supported and executed has been gained by using the resources of The Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Learning (CETADL), at the University of Birmingham. CETADL currently uses WebCT, which is an online learning environment (http://www.cetadl.bham.ac.uk/).
A registered student of the School will be able to access, through the Internet (and maybe through CDs), a variety of learning material, including lectures in text and diagrams, aural presentations, animated schematics of processes, real-time graphical displays of process variables and videos. Reference to recommended reading matter will be made including the 'Forging Handbook' resulting from the WAFAM network.
Assessment will consist of question sheets or quizzes of different types, including multiple choice, match answer, short answer or calculation. The answers will be marked automatically and the results made available to both student and instructor.
Sample study materials are available on the CETADL website. These include video clips, a presentation of gear forging including video clips and computer simulation of the process, sample references and quizzes relevant to the presentations.
Learning will be conducted through a number of modules. Learning materials will be available in English, German, Italian, French and Spanish. One university will administer the course for each of the languages. Because the programme is the same in each language the accreditation will be transferable throughout Europe.
Each student would be allowed two years to successfully complete each level. If the time were exceeded he/she would have to re-register and pay a new fee. In the case of failing a module a student would not be allowed to make another attempt until two weeks had elapsed.
Current discussions are in progress with the EU network FORGENET with a view to collaborate.