Difficulties

• Subject matter experts were not integrated enough within the project.

The subject matter experts should be involved from the beginning, with training in CAL if necessary and earmarked time during the project.
During large CAL project, it is common to plan carefully funding for the technical human resources, and to rely on subject matter expert  enthusiasm to  create all brilliant scenarios which are needed. This was exactly the case for EuroMET.  Unfortunately this did not  happen, and furthermore, some willing experts lacked  a good overview of all the CAL pedagogical aspects and potentialities. It is paramount to fund expert time from the beginning and to include in this time the necessary training in CAL matters before starting.

From our experience, the expert time needed for 1/2 hour CAL module is at least about 10 hours, shared between initial scenario writing, search of relevant multimedia material, follow up of development and final proof-reading. A quick calculation for EuroMET (80 hours of training)  shows that, if we assume that an expert works on 3 modules on average, and including one day of CAL training per expert, the total expert time should be about one person.year.

• The actual translation is extremely time consuming and often underestimated.

The initial planning for the translation of the EuroMET material was 3 person.months per language. At the end we came up to 9 person months, which was 300% of the initial estimate! Even reviewers at the European Commission never pointed out this discrepancy, although they should have a good experience in this domain!
Everybody knowing the EuroMET development format (ESR) recognises that translation is as easy as for text files

Nevertheless, it is important, especially in Europe, not to underestimate this item. It is important that the translators could check the results in the final interface.A proof-reading by native speaker meteorologists is also necessary .

Count about 1 person.day translation work for one language and for one training module of 1/2 to 1 hour.
 

• Decision makers were often unaware of the objectives and of the achievements of the project.

A special effort should be made to involve decision makers during the whole process.  A special "internal communication" strategy should be organised from the beginning towards decision makers within any consortium. CAL and WEB based training are still very new activities, and a complete rethinking of training organisation within the institutions is needed to integrate this approach. Far in advance, regular meetings should be organised to show progress, to obtain firm agreement about further steps etc...
 
• It is extremely difficult to prove the pedagogical efficiency

Let's give an real life example: two sample classes are trained respectively with "conventional methods" and " a CAL approach" . The students are tested at the end of the training period with a classic test. The "conventional" students pass the exam better than the "CAL" ones. 6 months later, another test is made on the 2 samples. The CAL class passes better this time. What does it mean? Is it because "conventional" students absorbed the stuff just for the first exam and forget it afterwards? Was the CAL class more involved and motivated by the personal approach and integrated better the knowledge?  What about the personal background of each student during the 6 months period? Can somebody give us a definitive way to test the pedagogical efficiency of CAL versus traditional training? Please refer to the papers and presentations  from our evaluation specialists about this topic.

• The tool is underemployed by the European NMSs, including the partners of the project themselves

This is a question in the frame of this conference's topic: why is CAL still unemployed within some large training centres?  Without disrupting completely the current way of teaching meteorology, a wealth of new approaches could be explored: on-the-job training, continuous training at distance, matching prerequisites on line before travelling to a  centre for the core of the training....The general feeling is that responsibles are  not convinced of the advantages of this compared to the traditional approach, or maybe just do not find the time to change radically the training strategies...
 
• The communication tools are underused

The communication kit made available with the EuroMET libraries is far underused. It seems that students do not dare to ask questions, or maybe are not aware of the potentiality of this tool. It is a pity according to me, because a large central European forum for training, carefully monitored to produce a comprehensive FAQ, would be a wealth for the whole meteorological community.

• A technical stroke of genius: the esr2htm tool (macroprocessor allowing the author to separate completely the content from the layout) and  the organiser (creation of customised training applications)

The esr2htm tool, developed initially to unify the GUI of the EuroMET libraries, have proved to be extremely powerful for the management of large web sites. It is being used spontaneously by numerous webmasters and helps to standardise websites and simplify their translation. Further updates are under development and will be distributed by Pictus.
 
• The popularity of the system

At the time of the redaction of this paper, the number of accesses to the EuroMET libraries was far over 100,000 since its operational implementation (July 1998)
Everybody can check if this trend is going on the statistics page of EuroMET
 
• The number of acknowledgement received (individuals, newspapers)

The central address of the EuroMET organisation receives every day acknowledgements of people using the libraries and appreciating the service offered.
 
• The high number of voluntary registrations

At the time of this paper (3/4/99),  319  individuals had registered to access our libraries on a voluntary basis