Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MEET-CINCH (A Modular European Education and Training Concept In Nuclear and RadioCHemistry)

Teaser

In 2010–2016 two “CINCH projects” – CINCH I: Cooperation in Education in Nuclear Chemistry, and CINCH II: Cooperation and training in Education in Nuclear Chemistry – were supported within Euratom FP7. The projects aimed at mitigating the special skill-based deficits...

Summary

In 2010–2016 two “CINCH projects” – CINCH I: Cooperation in Education in Nuclear Chemistry, and CINCH II: Cooperation and training in Education in Nuclear Chemistry – were supported within Euratom FP7. The projects aimed at mitigating the special skill-based deficits within nuclear chemistry at master and doctorate levels and the decline of number of staff qualified in this field.
The MEET-CINCH project does not aim at sustainability of CINCH I and CINCH II only – its main aims are to proactively bring the results achieved so far to the end-users, significantly contribute to attracting new talents and increasing the nuclear (chemistry) awareness by developing a MOOC – Massive Open On-line Course, and investigate the applicability of the modern Flipped (Inverted) Classroom concept in the nuclear chemistry teaching and training field.
The main objectives of MEET-CINCH are as follows:
To extend the number of Vocational Education and Training courses developed in the previous projects and make them better available to the end-users. To reach this objective:
• the CINCH II VET Syllabus will be updated
• several new courses will be completed and brought up to the pilot level using existing tools – e.g. RoboLab exercises, Computers in Science exercises, CINCH Moodle course management system – and will both use and expand the teaching material available from NucWik.
• a new platform – CINCH VET e-shop
To attract new talents to the nuclear field. This will be achieved by increasing the awareness of the relevance of Nuclear and Radiochemistry for society by:
• developing and offering a MOOC on NRC‘s importance.
• developing a teaching package aimed for use in high schools for 16-18-year-old pupils.
• establishing a Mobility Fund that will facilitate participation of students and young researchers from other “chemistry” Euratom joint projects in lab courses and summer schools provided by MEET-CINCH or other activities.
The modern Flipped Classroom (or so-called Inverted Classroom) concept will complement the available tools for teaching and training in the nuclear and radiochemistry field. In conjunction with the NucWik database of teaching materials, a set of the RoboLab remote operated laboratory experiments and the CINCH Moodle distant learning management platform MEET-CINCH will provide a comprehensive toolkit, available in the CINCH VET e-shop.

Work performed

\"To promote “nuclear awareness“, several workshops have been organized and the project has been presented at numerous international conferences and seminars. The data collected thanks to a survey on the education and training needs in radiopharmaceutical chemistry (see https://www.cinch-project.eu/news/detail/detail/News/training-needs-in-radiopharmaceutical-chemistry/) by the University of Helsinki (UH) have been summarized.
The MOOC design has been defined.. The RoboLab workshops with high school students from 5 different colleges have been successfully realized and summarized in a survey. Coherently with the results of the survey, it has been decided to further develop the teaching package around the RoboLab#6, IonLab Sr90/Y90 extraction.
Important progress has been also made in the area of sustainability and evolutionary development of VET tools. It has been indicated which courses need to be set up, updated / reformatted, or re-run. Main achievements include the collaboration between the Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI) and the University of Cyprus (UCY) on combined spectroscopy training. The first of the pilot courses, the Hands on Training in Nuclear Chemistry, was delivered by the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) and received positive feedback from attendees. The Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) has been doing extensive development on the RoboLabs, including the development of “simulated” experiments as Interactive Screen Experiments (ISEs). LUH has also supported the National Nuclear Laboratory Ltd. (NNL) on ensuring the readiness of the IonLab experiment. The University of Leeds (UNIVLEEDS) has been working on the MOOC on decommissioning of nuclear facilities which might be also used for the VET tool purposes.
One of the main tasks focuses on the development and delivery of the e-learning platform which will ultimately showcase the MEET-CINCH VET courses and material. A draft beta version of the CINCH VET e-shop has now been developed by CTU and is being tested and commented by the project partners.
In the field of Flipped Classroom, the contents of four courses (“Basic Course on Ionizing Radiation”, “Basic course on Analytical Radiochemistry”, short courses on “Chemical dosimetry for industrial and medical applications” and “Development of radiotracers”) to be developed by LUH, JSI, UH and Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) have been established. Pilot videos have been already produced.
LUH has also started the work on the training event for regulators and administrative bodies. A solution was found which enables easy implementation of different national regulations of different EU member-states and use the national language.
The Travel Fund Operator, the Chalmers University of Technology (Chalmers) distributed the first round of support from the Fund to students in order to participate in the MEET-CINCH Hands-on Training in Nuclear Chemistry course organized by CTU with a very positive feedback.
Due attention was paid to dissemination and communication activities. Evalion prepared the leaflet, the generic poster, project presentation, and the project webpage working closely with Chalmers. LUH has also worked on the delivery of the first public report (see https://www.cinch-project.eu/news/detail/detail/News/meet-cinch-first-public-report/). The European Nuclear Education Network (ENEN) promoted project activities via its vast network.\"

Final results

The Nuclear Awareness part of the project concentrates on the attraction of young persons to the field of nuclear and radiochemistry. To this purpose, the teaching package will be important to increase young people’s interest in NRC. The MOOC is an effective tool in orienteering towards NRC some students already pursuing a scientific career. Some MOOC videos will be exploited to demonstrate to general public the societal relevance of NRC and the rather good job opportunities in this field.
MEET-CINCH will also promote and ease continuous training of personal working in the nuclear business (industry) as well as for lateral entrants by providing trainers with innovative teaching material and methods. With industrial end-users in mind, courses will be developed to minimise classroom attendance by making more use of e-learning platforms.
Developing “simulated” RoboLabs (so called Interactive Screen Experiments, ISE) is a major step towards sustainability and towards the possibilty to allow multiple users to access the RoboLabs at the same time. This is realized in ISEs by combing real film and interactive simulations by filming almost all possible real experimental situations and arranging them in a multimedia system. Accsess to this ISEs can be given via Internet to enable students, similar to the remote controlled experiment, to run the experiment with a pointer device by using their own Computer from anywhere.
An innovative concept to realize the course for administrative bodies was implemented by developing this course partly as a virtual course.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.cinch-project.eu/.