It is a known reality that the graduates from the vocational and technical institutions are not of the qualification to meet the needs of the industry. The students are graduated from these institutions without being equipped and far away from catching up with the demands. We also claim that there are not any complementary competences in CNC CAD-CAM applications within MYK (Board of Occupational Competence) and national competence systems. Today, there are two main branches in machining department at vocational and technical schools. One of these is CNC department for training CNC operators and the other is Computer-Aided Machine Design department for designing machine parts to be designed. As a result, students in CNC department are graduated as CNC operator and the ones in Computer-Aided Machine Design department are graduated as Machine Designers. Whereas, the communication between these two departments are fairly weak at vocation education institutions. The students graduated from these institutions are far away from satisfying the demands in quality, and this is one of the main problems in the industry. However, in today's world at medium sized enterprises, these two departments are used hand in hand and handled complementarily. At these enterprises, the qualified intermediate staff has also knowledge of CAM applications. Yet, at vocational and technical schools, there are not any collaboration regarding this subject and even in their focused areas they are considered weak. This is a concrete fact for both vocational schools and representatives of the machine industry. For instance, to manufacture a machine piece, a qualified intermediate staff is expected to have knowledge of; 1- a CAD programme to design, 2- a CAM programme to manufacture on CNC turning machines, 3- how to operate CNC to manufacture the piece on the bench. A staff cannot be considered as qualified unless having knowledge of any of these three applications. Even the best of the students graduated from vocational education institutions have knowledge of barely one of these. In the 21st century where serious industrial and technological developments take place, the vocational and technical schools are apparently behind the line, and this is claim of almost all the enterprises. Another issue is that these schools direct only very of their graduates and thus the majority of the students head for other sectors. This situation causes significant waste of labour, time and workforce. Conclusively the graduates are incapable of meeting the needs, however to satisfy their employment demands, the sectoral components regard these graduates as low-cost workforce elements where they work unintentionally. The graduates cannot be employed due to their vocational incompetence and lack of self-reliance. Therefore, the employers hesitate about the incompetent employees. This situation causes the traumatic problems for students in their social lives. Consequently, most of these graduates head for other jobs out of their own occupational applications. That is why we consider it as a must to combine the abovementioned three applications to train qualified intermediate staff to make contribution to these institutions. We aim at improving the quality of these students to create a sense that the students graduated from these institutions will be considered as 'qualified intermediate' staff but 'unqualified intermediate staff' and low-cost labour. The main motive of our 'CNC CAD-CAM' project is to obtain products consisted of 3 modules and 160 course hours. With this project, we will improve the competences of the incompetent students in a way to meet the demands of the industry, as qualified intermediate staff. This is a three-year project. For this purpose, we aim at; 1- Compiling a report for CNC CAD-CAM analysis in Europe to determine the best practices in the partners, 2- Creating and improving an action-based description of learning outcomes and competences for a modular training system; creating 3 modules through a 160-hours peripheral education For this purpose, we aim at; • building a CNC module and videos consisted of 60 course hours • building a CAD module and videos consisted of 50 course hours • building a CAM module and videos consisted of 50 course hours 3- Creating a methodology evaluating ECVET modular education systems and flow of the accomplishment levels of unrecorded and extensive learning at vocational education 4- Forming an online competence-based platform 5- Establishing an ECVET platform to evaluate the new competences 6- Preparing educational materials for CNC CAD-CAM training.
It is a fact that machinery students graduate from vocational and technical education institutions do not have the quality to meet the needs of the industry. Students graduating from these institutions are far behind the expectations of the industry and extremely unequipped. However, we have stated in our application document that CNC CAD-CAM applications in VQA (Vocational Qualifications Authority) and national qualification system do not have holistic competence. Today, there are two main branches in the machining departments of vocational and technical schools. These are the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) department that trains CNC operators and computer-aided machine drafting department that graduates students to design machine parts to be produced. Therefore, students from the CNC department graduate as CNC operators, and students from computer-aided machine drafting departments graduate as machine painters who can design the parts to be produced. It is known that the communication between these two departments in vocational education institutions is extremely weak. Since the students at these institutions are far from meeting the needs of the industry, this is the main problem of the sector we have been in for years. Today, in the sector, especially in medium-sized enterprises, these two departments are intertwined and are handled holistically. Hence, a qualified intermediate staff has a good command of both these two areas and CAM applications showing toolpaths. There is no serious cooperation in this regard in vocational technical schools. In addition, the said schools are not able to respond to the needs of the industry even in the fields they provide education. This is the determination of both VET schools and representatives in the machinery sector. For a qualified intermediate staff to produce a machine part, it is a must to know; 1- A CAD program to design, 2- A CAM program that shows the toolpaths to be produced on the CNC machine, 3- To produce the part on the bench, it is necessary to know how to operate the CNC. It is not possible for a personnel who does not have a command of one of these three applications to be qualified. Even the best of the students graduated from vocational education institutions can handle only one of these applications. It is the basic determination of all the visited enterprises that there are serious developments in the field of industry and technology in the 21st century, but VTE institutions lag far behind these developments. It is a well-known fact that Vocational Technical Schools guide a small part of the students to the industry and many students shift to different sectors. And this is a serious waste of labor, time and workforce. These graduates become the cheap labor force of the industry who cannot respond to the requirements of the industry but are forced to work to meet the industry's employment needs, causing these graduates to be kept unemployed in their own fields due to professional inadequacy and lack of self-confidence. This situation leads them to experience trauma in the social life. Hence, many of these graduates shift to occupations outside their professional practice. Our main goal is to bring these three aforesaid practices together to contribute to the institutions and train qualified intermediate staff. Our aim was to break the perception that students graduated from VET schools are 'unqualified intermediate staff' and instead to showcase that these students are 'qualified intermediate staff', while increasing the quality of these students. To meet the needs, we created 'CNC CAD-CAM' products consisting of 3 modules with a 160-hour program. With this project, we aimed to develop the skills of students who lack sufficient competencies for qualified intermediate staff to meet the needs of the sector. With our project results; 1- We created a European CNC CAD-CAM synthesis report, 2- We created a CNC CAD-CAM module booklet and 120 training videos, 3- We developed a methodology for evaluating the flow of informal and non-formal learning achievements in ECVET modular education systems in vocational education, 4- We created an ECVET platform that evaluates new competencies, 5. We prepared blended web-based training materials for CNC CAD-CAM training. As a result of all these intellectual output activities, we created our e-learning CNC CAD-CAM ECVET platform https://www.learningcnccadcam.com/. As of now, 242 participating students are actively receiving online CNC CAD-CAM training on the platform. We have met the basic needs of our project by creating an online education platform that will contribute to the knowledge of especially senior and graduate students before they work in the industry. Realizing these needs has been the main goal of our project. The target audience of the project is all students graduated from VET institutions in the EU and individuals wishing to take part in this profession in the industry.