The first Norwegian college course in technical visualisation will begin this autumn in collaboration with Statoil.
Roughly 25 students are due to start the programme at the Sør-Trøndelag Regional College (Hist), with Statoil's research centre in Trondheim responsible for defining course content.
At the moment, 16 students and three staff from Hist as well as two Statoil employees are taking a course credit at the research centre.
Technical visualisation embraces the application of such methods as virtual reality and three-dimensional animation to visualising work processes.
The research centre has been involving students in its work since 1995. After completing their education, many of these have become useful personnel in the group or at important contractors.
This activity was organised in 1998 as the Statoil Learning Lab, where students have visualised tasks for large parts of the group in the Faros virtual knowledge room on the intranet.
"Our early involvement in education and acceptance of responsibility for the learning process in partnership with the student is quite new," says staff engineer Dag Sjong at the research centre.
"All the results have been positive so far, and this method could with advantage be further developed for recruitment to the group."