The closing ISTRA project meeting was held

The closing ISTRA project meeting was held

The last partnership meeting and the final conference under ISTRA project "International Standards training in VET for promotion of market relevant education" 2016-1-BG01-KA202-023738, funded by Erasmus + programme of EU were held on September 4, 2018 in Burgas, hosted by the Burgas Free University.

The results of the performed trainings on standards for risk management and for information security management systems and the training course for work in virtual learning environment were reviewed and analyzed at the meeting. The summary information showed that ISO/IEC 27000 training was completed by 122 trainees, and ISO 31000 - by 133 trainees, which is three times more than the planned in the project number of trainees. The course for trainers in Moodle was successfully completed by 42 persons, 13 of them from BDS.

The Project Coordinator, Dr. Yanislav Zhelev, underlined that the percentage of successfully completed persons compared to those enrolled on the courses had also been extremely high - over 50% for both courses. For comparison, according to statistics, usually about 10% of all enrolled on non-compulsory training manage to successfully complete it.

Each of the partners briefly presented all the dissemination and publicity activities performed about the project.

Students, lecturers, companies, organizations and journalists from Burgas were invited at the closing conference held on the same day. The attendees were made aware of ISTRA project summary, the activities performed and the results achieved. Ms Rositsa Georgieva from BDS and Mr. Kaspars Milasevics from the Latvian Standards Organization presented the training courses and the highlights on the standards included in the two courses - ISO 31000 and ISO/IEC 27000 respectively.

Particular attention was paid to the results of the ongoing and final evaluation of the quality of the project implementation, with focus on the feedback from the participants in the trainings. The final assessment showed that the project had achieved its planned objectives and results, no deviations from the initial requirements were found, improvements had been made according to the opinions and recommendations expressed and the final products were highly appreciated by the specially engaged internal and external experts as well as by the representatives of the target group. Although some of the participants in the training had submitted recommendations for improvement and changes, there was no negative opinion on the content and method of carrying out of the courses.

Each of the partners presented its "lessons learned" by the project implementation and one of the main findings of all of them was that the performance of trainings in virtual environment had been highly appreciated by students at vocational schools and universities as well as by participating adult learners.

The conference ended with an official ceremony of awarding certificates to a part of the trainees from Burgas and each of the partners received the certificates for the trainees who completed the courses.

The final meeting was attended on behalf of BDS by Rositsa Georgieva and Vanina Pencheva - members of the project team.