Testing a joint ECVET-ECTS Implementation: Be-TWIN project

ECVET Magazine No 3 - January 2011. The latest issue of the ECVET Magazine is available to download. The topics of this issue: -an editorial by Stefano Di Giusto from the Education, Audivisual and Culture Executive Agency; -an article about the project ASSET; -an article about the project VaLOGReg; -synthesis of the results of the projects seminar in Prague; -an article about linking ECVET and ECTS by the project Be-TWIN; -a series of newsitems.
Testing a joint ECVET-ECTS Implementation: Be-TWIN project
The Be-TWIN project tackles the issue of the connexion
between ECVET and the ECTS system, which is being used in higher education since 1989. The project involves a very diverse partnership from 8 EU countries representing stakeholders and education and training institutions in both, higher education and the VET sector. This article presents the basics of the methodology to link ECVET and ECTS which has now been published as one of the project outcomes.
Roughly the first half of the project’s duration has been dedicated to putting in place a methodological device linking the two credit systems. Both the ECTS and the ECVET system pursue the same objectives of credit transfer, accumulation and recognition, mobility of learners and workers, lifelong learning and transparency of national systems within a common European Education Area. However, the ways they intend to achieve these purposes differ. Indeed, the two credit systems have developed in different historical, institutional and methodological backgrounds. To start with, one, the ECTS, is 20 years older than the second, ECVET. The ECTS, although it has been reshaped in 2009 and now includes the learning outcomes approach, is historically an input based system which takes into account the learning content and the student’s workload to allocate credit points to courses and modules. The ECVET system, on the other hand, was shaped according to an output based model and consequently it allocates credit points to the results of the training process, namely the learning outcomes.
Whereas the ECTS is a quantitative mean of expressing an amount of time invested to obtain defined outcomes, ECVET is a qualitative mean of defining the relative importance of units of learning outcomes within a given qualification.
Regarding their technical specifications, the workload for ECTS and the relative importance of the units of learning outcomes within the qualification for ECVET have been identified as the main inconsistencies between the two credit systems. Having acknowledged this, the challenge remained to build a common matrix, which would enable recognition of credit from one system to another, despite the fact that the methodological ground of the two credit systems differ. Thus, learning outcomes have been identified as the only possible translation device between the two credit systems: they are the driving force behind contemporary higher education reform and constitute the very core of the VET philosophy.
The result of these considerations is to be found in the Methodological Guide, “ECVET-ECTS: Building bridges and overcoming differences”, which was finalised in July 2010 and strives to suggest a possible approach to coordinate ECVET and ECTS.
The main innovation of the guide is a double entry table, the “matrix”, whose common denominator is the learning outcomes. The matrix is meant to serve as a transparency tool and a translation device. It enables to link learning outcomes and learning activities and in this way it facilitates translation from an output based system to and outcome based system (and vice-versa). As a common interface, it emphasises learning outcomes and the systems’ secondary layers of information, namely the workload and the relative importance of the units of learning outcomes within the qualification (as expressed in credit points).
The Be-TWIN matrix proposes to training providers using either the ECTS or the ECVET systems to present their training offer more transparently. Both the learning outcomes (grouped into units) and the corresponding learning activities must be filled in the matrix. This should enable training providers using ECVET to better link the learning outcomes with the training offer they propose, and higher education institutions using ECTS to reshape their training offer according to an output based system.
Overall, the idea is to build bridges between the two segments of education and training and to favour the vertical mobility of learners from one system to another. The model is indeed expected to benefit mainly the learners wishing to have their previous learning recognised when shifting from one learning context to another (from VET to higher education or vice versa). A condition for that is that the training providers present the training offer and the qualifications more transparently, thus favouring recognition of prior learning.
In order to use the matrix, training providers have to follow four steps: •First, depict the qualification by filling in the grid with the single learning outcomes corresponding to the occupational profile and then by grouping these into units,  •Secondly, depict the qualification by filling in the grid with the associated learning activities, •Thirdly, cross which learning activities contribute to which learning outcomes in order to identify the overlapping of the training pathway and of the outputs of the qualifications expressed in learning outcomes, •Lastly, allocate the ECVET points to the units of learning outcomes respecting the ECVET specifications, or allocate ECTS credit points to the learning activities, taking into account the workload, or, in some cases, allocate both types of credit points within one training programme.
The methodology developed is currently being tested on three training programmes in France, the UK and Italy in the field of plastics industry, hospitality management and training of trainers. The Figures 1 and 2 present extracts from this methodological guide.