Course search development – ESF project

The development of the course search is an Info Bank project funded by the European Social Fund (ESF). The project is implemented by the Info Bank editorial team (City of Helsinki) and its funding is governed by the Uusimaa Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. The project is in operation between 1 February 2011 and 31 January 2013. The aim is to add to the awareness of course search in the Helsinki region and on a national scale and to communicate about the service on an international level. During the project, content about Finnish language education will be added and the course service will be technically developed to improve the integration of the entire website.

How will we add to the awareness of finnishcourses.fi?

We will disseminate information about course search: bulletins, outdoor advertisements, internet links and article requests, communication at fairs and events (World village festival and Learn the Local Lingo event, which is part of the Helsinki Region Welcome Week). At the end of 2012, we will produce an informing model directed at immigrants in their own language.

What kind of new content will be produced?

We will produce information on Finnish and Swedish language education in the Info Bank service in 15 different languages. Information for guidance and counsellor workers will also be collected and added to the service. We will also gather more information on course enrolment from training providers.

How will finnishcourses.fi be developed further?

We will collect course information with the help of a technical statistics tool and compile a report for the first year of operation. We will process Russian-language feedback to support the development of the service. Based on feedback, we will make instruction videos on how to use the service.

Tasks related to committing the training providers to the service and co-operation with the ESF –projects, particularly the NEO-Seutu project, will be completed with the help of networking. The development of the course search service is a continuation of Info Bank’s NEO-Selma project (ESF), which took place between 2009 and 2011 and constructed the Finnish-language course search for the Helsinki region.