Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

THINK4JOBS is endorsed by a consortium of five universities and five labour market organizations from five countries (Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania). It stems from the consolidated experience of the partnership in Critical Thinking (CT) teaching, training and research, and their commitment to empowering University-Business Cooperation (UBC) in Europe as a need to the successful employment and transition of new graduates from the university to the labour market. To that end, it aims to develop relevant tools and unprecedented opportunities (due to their potential in terms of innovation, applicability, impact and transferability) for the effective development, support and assessment of students’ CT in the transition into a professional context using apprenticeships as a privileged interface.
The activities involved to achieve the project goals are strategically aligned in the following five outputs:
1. Output 1: THINK4JOBS Toolkit with 10 CT work-based learning scenarios for each of the five different professional fields addressed by the consortium, namely Veterinary Medicine, Teacher Education, Business and Economics, and Business Informatics. This Toolkit will result after the triangulation of three data collection approaches that will underline, among others the current state-of-the-art and involve stakeholders’ perceptions about CT.
2. Output 2:THINK4JOBS Training for 12 HE instructors and 12 labour market tutors. Specifically, training packages will be developed, targeting the empowerment of HEI instructors and labour market tutors in conceptual and procedural knowledge of CT as well as in the exploitation of the Toolkit in courses and apprenticeships. Additionally, the training packages will train participants on procedural knowledge and techniques for the exploitation of blended learning. Blended learning supports the internationalization and digitalization of knowledge and meets the priority of HE. This output will be completed through the delivery of a Learning, Teaching, Training Activity.
3. Output 3:THINK4JOBS CT blended apprenticeships curricula will be developed through close collaboration of HE instructors and labour market tutors as working pairs will be developed. 12 CT blended apprenticeships curricula will be developed and uploaded to the free and open Moodle platform, ensuring the sustainability of the materials as well as increasing the exploitation possibilities by other groups of learners.
4. Output 4: THINK4JOBS guidelines/protocol for CT transfer from curricula to the labour market will be an output that will emerge after the implementation and evaluation of the CT apprenticeships. It will result in guidelines elaborated by partners for CT transfer from curricula to apprenticeships. These will consist of recommendations for designing, implementing and assessing jointly UBC approaches to carry out effective, integrated pre-apprenticeships classroom activities and apprenticeships that promote students’ CT. Further, it will include a description of Best Practices for promoting CT in apprenticeships in specific disciplines.
5. Output 5:THINK4JOBS Special issue will be a special scientific issue in a JCR/SCOPUS Journal concerning “CT: bridging a successful transition between university and labour market”. This scientific issue is an important step in presenting the main results of the project. It will include the elaboration of different scientific manuscripts, targeted to disseminate the research developed over the four previous stages.
The THINK4JOBS Dissemination and Communication Strategy along with the various set of disseminating activities will ensure that the project will reach all potential disseminating target groups within and outside the partnerships, at a local, regional, national, EU or International Level. Each country will hold a multiplier event to disseminate the project’s results locally among other faculty members, students and labour market organizations. This process will also be conducted internationally with the final European summit that will disseminate the results also within the educational policy context. All outputs from the project will stand after its completion, through the project’s website, or the Moodle platform. The THINK4JOBS web-meeting portal will develop a network that will foster collaboration and partnerships formation of stakeholders (e.g., HEI, labour market organizations, etc.) interested in promoting CT in their apprenticeships to bridge the gap between the skills that the labour market needs but the graduates lack.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 390438 Eur

Project Coordinator

PANEPISTIMIO DYTIKIS MAKEDONIAS & Country: EL

Project Partners

• VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS
• BRD – Groupe Societe Generale SA
• Orgadata AG
• HOCHSCHULE EMDEN/LEER
• UNIVERSIDADE DE EVORA
• Valstybes instituciju kalbu centras
• Peiramatiko Dimotiko Scholeio Florinas