Testimonials

On the 2^nd of July, FASTER project was presented by Prof. Jiri Vacek, PaedDr. Dana Egerova and Ing. Milan Edl from University of West Bohemia (UWB) at the eLBa 2010 conference in Rostock (Germany).

In this occasion, the training course provided by UWB which is primarily addressed to undergraduate students, Ph.D.s in engineering specialization and SMEs was showcased with specific attention to its 8 training units:

FASTER pilot-testing at the West Bohemia University

During the event, the results concerning the pilot-testing performed at the University of West Bohemia in May 2010 were highlighted. The pilot-testing, conducted with Ph.D. students in mechanical and electrical engineering, consisted of 2 workshop sessions: the first workshop was focused on the business planning with emphasis on marketing and financial planning while the second one was centered on project management with emphasis on management of R&D projects.

The two workshops were focused on the following topics:

Workshop 1 – Business Planning

Workshop 2 – Project Management

Feedback provided by participants – main outcomes

Asked to appraise their satisfaction through an evaluation questionnaire, participants provided some interesting and useful opinions to assess the pilot course effectiveness, summarized in the following table:

Overall, the two workshops proved to be a positive and useful experience which met the expectations of the participants who remarked the necessity of a practical approach, especially for the project management workshop. The workshops‘ contents were considered as satisfactory with no underemphasized topics. Some recommendations were given to put more attention to actual possibilities of R&D project support.

When asked about the teaching method and support materials, the students confirmed their satisfaction concerning the well prepared presentation and the examples of cash flow. They stated that this is an efficient training approach which is ideal to gain a broader overview of problems and then to individually study in more details the most interesting ones, using the references to additional resources. According to them, the trainer proved to be well prepared thanks to the long pedagogical experience, the ability to attract the audience and the clear and understandable approach.

Some precious comments were also gathered about the interests for further workshops. Among them, it was stressed the importance to provide a broader presentation of the software tools for project management, practical examples and case studies and a more extended coverage of the current workshops in terms of timing.