The “Europäische Bildungsinitiative” EBI – (in English European Initiative for Education EIE) – is a Private Non-Profit Education and Training Association located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.
EBI’s mission is to endorse an innovative approach to education, training and culture. Target groups are adult learners and teachers/trainers in Adult Education.
The three departments of the EBI are
- training unit,
- technical unit (focusing on the creation of multimedia teaching content, maintenance of learning platforms, and programming individual solutions in the frame of offered training) and
- special research group.
The EBI has a trainer pool of 5 trainers, an administration with 3 heads, administration staff, responsible people, and two researchers. All members of the association work voluntarily in the organization and get only paid for their specific teaching/training activities in courses or for their work done in the frame of projects.
All trainers and assistant teachers are graduated in ITC and experienced in project management, eLearning, Technology Enhanced Learning (and Teaching, TELT), Distance Learning (better: Distance Teaching), Open Learning, Open Online Distance Learning, and Blended Learning. They are routined in different kinds of education (IST-Trainings in the frame of Grundtvig or today ERASMUS+) and speak fluently English (at minimum C1-level).
The scope of the EBI is the development of special training courses, new approaches to learning and teaching as well as the participation in international projects to gain new knowledge and competencies and to disseminate the research results and experiences created during the provided courses, research work, and active involvement in teaching to others (in Europe).
The association is involved in the education of adults and of teachers/trainers in Adult Education (AE). Furthermore, the association engages in research focusing on teaching methods (eLearning, Blended Learning, and technology-enhanced teaching & training). The EBI offers IST-Training Courses in eLearning, Technology Enhanced Learning, Blended Learning, Multimedia Based Presentations, Project Management and Content Management Systems. In the last ten years approx. 700 learners attended the courses, several books were published, and researchers of the EBI contributed to international conferences (in the field of innovation, technological enhanced teaching and training).
The association was involved in several LLP cooperation like Grundtvig Learning Partnerships as well as in a Multilateral Grundtvig Project (539717-LLP-1-2013-1-ITGRUNDTVIG-GMP) as a specialist in Blended Learning and multimedia-based content.
The association is well-connected in Europe – this covers similar institutions as well as AE providers (and their Umbrella Organisations) and universities. In Austria there are intensive contacts to technical and pedagogical universities as well as to other similar institutions.