Training
Deep Blue has a consolidated experience in adult learning including the design, development and deployment of training packages. Our approach is rooted in the constructionist theory of learning which claims that knowledge is not information to be acquired, encoded, stored, retrieved, and re-applied, but an experience to be actively built, both individually and collectively. Learners are the builders of their own cognitive tools, as well as of their external realities. In other words, knowledge and the world are both constructed and interpreted through action, and mediated through symbol use. Indeed people construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally-meaningful products. In this view, learning requires active participation and profound commitment since it does not consist in plugging in a new module in the student's mind, but it requires a transformation, deconstruction and negotiation of views with others.
Learning is therefore based on experience and knowledge construction, and teaching means scaffolding learners' construction and appropriation of new meanings. Knowledge is thus acquired by active construction, by the actualisation of notions and ideas in external artefacts and by the interaction with these artefacts as new elements of the world, new objects-to-think with.
Deep Blue approach to training relies upon social processes as enablers of knowledge co-construction, and exploits collaboration as a keystone of any learning experience.
Our asset is the capability of transforming these principles in training packages that enable:
Active learning: by involving trainees though case-based learning environments in participative processes in which they are invited to interact with the learning environment and to manipulate the objects that surround them, to transform them and to reflect on the effects of such transformations;
Constructive learning: by scaffolding the processed of knowledge construction both in the immersive phase of the exploration new contents as well as in the reflective phase of interpretation of new elements and re-structuring of previously existing sense-scape
Intentional learning: by ensuring that trainers and trainees share the same goals and that trainees adhere to the learning objectives and therefore intentionally pursue them.
Authentic learning: by rooting and contextualising new content in trainees' reference world and ensuring that value of the proposed topics is of relevance in trainees' daily lives
Cooperative learning: by facilitating social learning processes in which each participant is a resource to the group and supporting collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation among learners.
Training course developed and deployed by Deep Blue:
CREA! Training Course and Training Material (Client: Eurocontrol ERC-Bretigny):
training course on the CREA! Design methodology, to stimulate and promote the generation of innovative concepts for ATM.
The course was deployed at the Eurocontrol Research Center (ERC) in Bretigny to a class of 12 participants. The work included the preparation of training material such as a course syllabus and student's booklet, MS Power Point and HTML Presentations, and an interactive CD-ROM used as a tutorial for participants in the application of the methodology.
Generic HF training course for ATM Safety Actors (Client: Eurocontrol HQ - Bruxelles):
training package on generic Human Factors knowledge, designed to train ATM Safety Actors to include Human Factors into Safety Management Systems processes.
This work is intended to release a full training package to be delivered by EUROCONTROL staff to target stakeholders. DeeBlue has been appointed to develop at training syllabus and plan, the complete training material including both instructors' and trainees handbooks, and to deliver two pilot courses to validate the proposed educational forma, related materials and training activities.