The design and development of training content and sessions focusing on business transfers advisors could be considered as a critical milestone within the context of DANAE Project, not least for the following reasons:

• the interdisciplinary nature of business transfers, including both:
  • “hard” factors such as economic, legal, taxation and organisational issues and
  • “soft” factors, such as the emotional and wider psychological parameters involved in the process.
• the legal, ethical and economic diversities in the various national contexts,
• the corresponding diverse backgrounds and expertise of existing and potential business transfer advisors in the said socioeconomic contexts.

In this context, DANAE Project aims at designing and developing appropriate training modules and delivery methods focusing on advisors with diverse skills and expertise in business transfer. Furthermore, DANAE Project contains the design and development of appropriate assessment procedures and feedback capturing mechanisms.

The required instructional design process will be preceded by a consistent analysis of the training needs of the target population (i.e. advisors wishing to promote and support business transfer processes). The latter is considered critical in terms of creating a Trans European Training Framework for advisors with different backgrounds and skills as well as diverse know-how in business transfer.

Under this framework of requirements, basic design principle and approach of the DANAE project is the development and operation of a flexible and adaptable training needs’ analysis model, capable to cope with diverse ethical/ cultural environments as well as to different knowledge backgrounds and skills.

The above research and analysis process will be integrated and constituted over three distinct, yet interconnected axes:

1. Research Tools – Content and Architecture (Pedagogical – Instructional parameters)

2. Delivery and Collection (Technological parameters)

3. Analysis – Results (Statistical parameters)

The training process is going to be adjusted to the principles of the blended training models. According to these principles, the designing process follows a tool-based approach, making use of different instructional techniques as well as delivery methods for different groups of skills and competencies. In this design approach, the same curriculum could comfortably accommodate face to face lectures in an academic auditorium, focus groups in a champers’ premises, asynchronous web based case studies, as well as synchronous web based brainstorming teams.

In this context, pilot training sessions will be delivered in a twofold manner:

• initially, they are planned to be delivered through the web: at least 120 trainees from at least 12 EU countries will be invited to participate on DANAE web training and evaluation sessions, while at a second stage,
• a fraction of the above trainees, ideally comprising at least one trainee from each participating country, i.e. a total of 12 pilot trainees, will be invited to participate in a 40-hour long training session in Athens.

Delivery of training sessions will be followed by evaluation of the latter, both by participants and by external evaluators, as well as by adjustment of the sessions, in line with the findings of the said evaluation.

The evaluation will not be limited to the training sessions’ content, but it will also be extended to cover the delivery method, as well as the certification content and method.