Training database

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A further education database (WBDB) contains structured data records that describe further education offers. A training database thus supports the systematic, electronic recording, presentation and management of information about training offers. This includes the name, the content, teaching methods, costs, funding opportunities and dates of the respective offers. Further education portals, in which those interested in education can search for seminars and educational offers, are usually based on a further education database in which education providers can enter and publish their offers. Such a training database provides information about competing training offers or training providers in a standardized, structured form of presentation.

Training databases are also used for the internal organization of training providers. Training databases can also contain information relating to the implementation and organization of the training (including lists of participants, lecturers, event rooms). Continuing education databases are therefore an essential instrument of training company management. The collection and administration of data on further training offers and their specific organization is often done with the help of process software for seminar management.

starting point

The context for the development of further education databases was the political concern to lower possible hurdles to further education, to facilitate participation, to promote the quality of the educational offers through competition and thus to establish further education as the fourth pillar of the education system.

The number of educational institutions increased sharply in the 1980s. The offer was correspondingly confusing.

The further training database instrument follows the approach of influencing by strengthening rational consumer decisions by means of market transparency and facilitating contact. In contrast, the traditional funding instruments were aimed at financing participants or providers. In the context of this history of development, further education databases in the narrower sense are to be understood as a political instrument to promote competition, transparency and quality in adult education.

Overview

In Germany there are 219 (as of September 2014) further training databases independent of training providers, which provide a total of approximately 500,000 - 700,000 current training offers from around 20,000 training providers (since further training offers are mostly offered in semesters, the highest number is at the beginning of a semester and is then reduced. Exact numbers are not known, especially since the counting method for further training offers differs depending on the database).

Differentiated according to the regional catchment area, there are 103 nationwide, 50 limited to the area of ​​one or more federal states and 65 regional systems (plus a further training database with worldwide claims). Differentiated according to the type of financing, 91 are privately financed (either as an association system or as a commercial system), 128 are partially or fully supported by public funds.

Most (128) continuing education databases do not have a thematic focus, the remaining 91 only provide information about continuing education providers and / or continuing education offers of certain thematic priorities (e.g. information technology and media or teacher training), industries (e.g. logistics or retail), types of offers and types of providers (especially e- Learning and scientific further education) or offers recognized for educational leave (as of September 2014).

All further education databases contain offers of further professional education, some of the regional and individual supra-regional systems also offer offers of general and political further education.

In addition to dedicated, independent training databases, there are systems in the form of a meta search engine . As a nationwide system, this includes the meta search engine of InfoWeb Further Education with around 100 (as of September 2014) connected regional and supra-regional further education databases, but also regional meta search engines that were created later such as the Hessian further education database operated as such until mid-2008 and the Berlin-Brandenburg search portal (with the Berliner and the Brandenburg further education database).

history

The first two training databases were created in 1987. The Hamburg training database WISY and the Berlin training database went into operation at almost the same time . Both databases presented the printed further education directories of these cities in electronic form. In the following three years regional databases were founded in Bremen, Hanover, Osnabrück and Elmshorn as well as the first supraregional database WIS of the German Industry and Trade Conference and the Central Association of German Crafts. With the exception of WIS, these were regional data collections that were used in advice centers. Only the Hamburg WISY system was conceived from the start as a so-called "self-service terminal" and made available to the public at several locations in the city. All other systems primarily had the function of supporting the internal work of advice centers for further training.

Due to the lack of cheap and fast online connections, the data for the "extensions" was usually updated using floppy disks, and data maintenance was carried out by data maintenance staff in a data maintenance center. Only WIS was accessible online from the start via telephone modem or so-called DATEX-P connections for the advice centers of the chambers of industry and commerce and the trades. Two thematic databases should also be mentioned: in Hanover a national specialist database on the field of laser technology and in Berlin a database on what was then known as microtechnology. These databases were distributed to interested parties on diskette sets.

Due to the activities of the then Federal Ministry of Education and Science and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the “North German Association of Further Education Databases” (NDV) project, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, the new federal states and in Vienna, regional further education databases were created. In 1993 there were 33, they provided information on around 63,000 further training offers. These databases were either run by the federal states (as in Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) or were run by cities and municipalities as municipal institutions.

The KURS database of the Federal Employment Agency (now the Federal Employment Agency) was presented as the second national database, also accessible online under the name "KURS-Direkt". KURS was about the software implementation of a directory (with the title EBB - Institutions of Vocational Education) distributed in parallel as a print medium in up to 30 volumes until 1995 for the employment advisors in the employment offices. KURS, too, was initially only accessible in the employment offices and was used as a replacement for the print medium. After preliminary work by the NDV, whose tasks included the development of standards for data exchange, from 1994 the Federal Labor Office first developed a PC version of the previously only operating system using disk sets and later using CD-ROMs Sinix ongoing database KURS sold to regional advice centers. The special feature of this PC version was that it also made it possible to exchange data with existing regional training databases. With the growing popularity of the Internet, the first commercial training database was established on the Internet in 1995 (afw.de, the forerunner of today's training database Seminus). In the second half of the 1990s, numerous other commercial and publicly funded training databases accessible via the Internet were established. Many of the existing databases were also opened to a larger group of interested parties via the Internet. In 2000, around 65 training databases were already accessible via the Internet.

In 2003, further training databases were tested for the first time by Stiftung Warentest . Not least against the background of the less than satisfactory test results, the PAS 1045 for further training databases was developed on the initiative of InfoWeb Further Education , Stiftung Warentest and DIN . The PAS defines minimum standards for the content and functions of training databases and defines formats for the electronic exchange of information about this content. As a new test showed, the quality of training databases has improved significantly since then. In 2017, Stiftung Warentest tested further training databases again; only two scored very well in the comparative test with the quality rating.

literature

  • Wolfgang Plum, North German Association of Further Education Databases (1991). Search strategies and thesaurus structures of regional advanced training databases, Hamburg 1991
  • Wolfgang Plum, North German Association of Further Education Databases (1993-1). Final report of the model project North German Association of Further Education Databases, "Regionalstelle Hamburg", Hamburg 1993
  • Wolfgang Plum and Peter Horak (1993). Continuing education: Information and advice in the new federal states, in Fundamentals of Further Education (GdWZ) 4/1993
  • Wolfgang Plum: Some (also moral) aspects of the use of further training databases in further training advice. In: Further training in the region, (1993-2) 6, pp. 19-21
  • Wolfgang Plum (2001). Despite and because of the Internet: Lack of transparency as a feature of the training market in Germany ( MS PowerPoint ; 4.6 MB), presentation given at the specialist conference of the BMBF on an InfoWeb training project on October 8, 2001 in Bonn
  • Wolfgang Plum (2002). Presentation of selected results of an inventory of the training databases (XLS; 69 kB), presentation at the meeting of the AG Infostandards of the IWWB on July 11, 2002 in the premises of the Stiftung Warentest
  • Wolfgang Plum and others (2004). PAS 1045 Further Education Databases and Further Education Information Systems, Berlin 2004 (see http://www.iwwb-files.de/projekt/PAS )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For a more detailed definition, see Plum and others 2004: 6
  2. ↑ Own invoice according to InfoWeb training
  3. ↑ a b c d Stiftung Warentest : Further education databases - It's worth searching , test.de from January 18, 2007, accessed on January 12, 2017
  4. ↑ this and the following information from Plum 1993-1 as well as my own experience as a project manager of the North German Association of Further Education Databases from 1990 to 1993
  5. ↑ compare Plum 1993-1, Plum and Horak 1993
  6. ↑ Unless otherwise specified, all information is based on internal materials from the author
  7. ^ Stiftung Warentest : Further education databases - none is perfect , test.de from June 26, 2003, accessed on January 12, 2017
  8. ↑ For the development of the PAS, see the materials at http://www.iwwb-files.de/projekt/pas
  9. ^ Stiftung Warentest : Further education databases: The best for your course search , test.de from December 14, 2016, accessed on January 12, 2017