Current needs and offerings in GI-related vocational education. Results from a pan-European survey

1. Current needs and offerings in GI-related vocational education.Results from a pan-European survey VESTA-GIS Workshop GI-Forum, Salzburg July 1st, 2008 Christoph Traun Z_GIS, University of Salzburgwww.zgis.at

2. Target groups and respondents

3. Target Groups for identification of actual demands in GI education: • public administration officers, • environmental operators, • research institutes and • companies providing GI services that need qualified skill. for identification of vocational education supply: • academic and • professional operators providing vocational education & training in GI

4. Respondent Characteristics • 93 valid responses in total (58 needs, 35 offers) • National distribution:

5. Demanded and offered contents

6. General GI-Topics: Educational Demand and Supply

7. GI in Water Resource Management: Educational Demand and Supply

8. Demand and Supply of knowledge on INSPIRE • Less than half of the respondents say their organisations have the knowledge and expertise to apply INSPIRE principles • Nearly all rate knowledge on interoperability important or very important. • Often mentioned INSPIRE related topics of interest are metadata, implementation rules, data quality aspects and impacts on various application domains. • 13 (of 35) institutions offer vocational education on GI-policy topics (national, INSPIRE and other EU directives, standards … ). Most of them work together with other disciplines (ICT,…) when setting up training on INSPIRE

9. General conditions and constraints of vocational education and training in GI

10. Duration of Education

11. Place of Training

12. Course Fees • 10 educational institutions offer vocational GI-education (learning material) for free. • Typical fees for a basic introductory, in-class course per trainee and day are around € 300 (median). For advanced topics the median price is slightly higher (€ 350). • The typical fee for a long term comprehensive GIS Course/Studies (distance learning) per trainee/student and month is around 300-600 €. • Because of different organizational and didactical models (blended learning, amount of tutoring, …) and country-specific price levels fees are hard to compare.

13. Attitudes and Constraints • To over 90% of respondents in-service training of co-workers is important or very important. • In most organizations vocational education is financially supported. In 45% of cases working time is set aside for education. • The main constraints for vocational education are seen in education costs (84%), lack of time (73%), complex and unclear continuous professional education market in GI (33%) and missing course offers (27%).

14. Quality and formal Qualification • The most important quality-benchmark of continuing professional education is the successful application of the acquired skills/ knowledge in the job. • Academic titles (like MSc) earned in an in-service continuing professional education programme are valued much higher by employers than non academic, rather skills oriented certificates. • In contrast more employers favor software training and applied skills over more conceptual topics when thinking about co-worker training besides the job. • Types of formal qualification offered by responding institutions: