Our Project called "Rationalization" will be carried out by a total of 7 institutions, including KFAU (Coordinating Institution), KONTOM and BDUTAE from Turkey, ASAJ from Spain, DEULA from Germany, DTC from the Netherlands and VITECO from Italy. The studies will start on 01.04.2021 and will be completed in 24 months. Instructors, researchers, academicians, experts and technicians from the project partner institutions will participate in the studies. During the Project, international meetings including 2 in Turkey, one each in Spain and the Netherlands will be held. LTTs will be held in Germany and Italy. Activities will be carried out in each partner's own country as multiplier events. The first 3 months of the project were planned as preparation, the following 12 months as academic studies and completion of the intellectual outputs, and the remaining 9 months as the implementation of these outputs and the elimination of the defects. The target audience of our project will be veterinarians and agricultural engineers nationally and internationally, and stakeholders will be NGOs dealing with animal husbandry, animal feed producing companies, sector stakeholders and farmers. At the end of the project, the training curriculum and online training platform will be obtained as concrete intellectual outputs, including feeding dairy cows, calves-heifers, dry cows and male cattle, ration preparation, nutritional diseases, forage crop farming and storage, and animal welfare. The prepared training curriculum will be uploaded to the online training platform in English and Turkish. Project partner countries will be able to upload the training curriculum to the platform in their own language. KFAU will act as the coordinator institution in the creation of the training curriculum and VITECO in the creation of the online training platform. Other institutions will contribute to every stage of the project with a multidisciplinary approach. In order to promote and disseminate the project, leaflets will be prepared and social media accounts will be created. The web-based and mobile-compatible online training platform will be available to the target audience free of charge for 10 years. The intellectual outputs of our project will be open to everyone. Our project will be offered not only to the target group but also to the stakeholders of the sector in order to create a multiplier effect. The domain and hosting costs and usage and encryption rights of the online training platform will be purchased by KFAU for 10 years by making an official contract and all necessary legal measures will be provided for the protection of the platform. At the end of the study, we will obtain concrete intellectual outputs (training curriculum, online training platform), which we call "Rationalization" and all rights belong to the financial sponsor of the project. During the project and in the next 10 years; dissemination and public ownership of the project, increasing professional, scientific and institutional capacity, increasing language skills, contributing to the promotion of project partner countries, cultural exchange, production of new projects are expected. In addition, it is thought that care and nutrition in cattle will improve, animal welfare and cattle production will increase through training of technical personnel, training of producers. As a result, we think that open and distance learning and training increase the quality and effectiveness of education. Innovative information sharing, strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT), open educational resources, open and flexible learning via our project "Rationalization" will affect an effective, sustainable and inclusive growth nationally and internationally. We hope that our "rationalization" project will add an effective added value to our target audience and parallel to the issue of "ration-feed", which is one of the biggest expenses of livestock enterprises, with a "rational" approach. In addition, considering the pandemics we have experienced in the last century (from the Spanish flu to Covid-19), the importance of e-education applications in all areas of life has become very important for all countries. In short, e-education will be more in our lives from now on. The tables and documents described in our project can be accessed from the following link: https://www.kisa.link/Nhwh
We wanted to create an on-line training platform where technicians, veterinarians, agricultural engineers and farmers who are engaged in cattle breeding can access curricula where they can get information about the quantity and quality of the mixtures in the feed they are fed in order to get more efficient milk, meat and offspring. We aimed to ensure that those who access the on-line training platform can make feeding with the awareness of the appropriate feeding diet for the cows and varieties they feed with the information they will receive from here.
The objectives include widespread dissemination of the project, public ownership of the project, enhancement of professional, scientific, and institutional capacity, improvement of language skills, contribution to the promotion of partner countries, cultural exchange, and the generation of new projects. Additionally, it is anticipated that providing training to technical personnel and educating producers will lead to the improvement of care and nutrition in large-scale livestock farming, resulting in enhanced animal welfare and increased production in large-scale animal husbandry. As a result, we believe that open and distance education enhances the quality and effectiveness of education. The strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT), open educational resources, and open and flexible learning through our "Rationalization" practices will impact effective, sustainable, and inclusive growth at both national and international levels. We hope that our "Rationalization" project will bring effective added value to our target audience and address the significant expense of "ration-feed" in livestock operations with a rational and intelligent approach.