#EuropeHome Erasmus Project

Project Title

#EuropeHome

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial skills are high on the EU agenda and it is widely recognised that investing in entrepreneurship education is one of the highest return investments Europe can and should make. Europe needs relevant higher education that helps students to prepare for life and work, nevertheless employers increasingly report mismatches and difficulties to find highly qualified employees.Therefore there is an increasing need to ensure that graduates are well-educated with the right type of knowledge and skills including transversal skills, e-skills and solid understanding of their chosen field.

The #europehome Project (#eh) aimed to contribute to the above-mentioned priorities and proposed to create and test a model of a win-win cooperation and a structured framework which involves three target actors (Universities, Employers and Students). The goal of the #europehome project was to address the challenge of student employability and the need of increasing the relevance of education, therefore #europehome placed a particular focus on:

– Employability and entrepreneurial education to foster entrepreneurial mindsets, as well as address the entrepreneurial skills in line with the Higher Education Modernisation Agenda. In order to tackle this, #europehome has developed a set of online modules with free public access, focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and employability.

– Employability and Erasmus mobility via part-time placements in companies in order to implement a mechanism for matching international students’ skills with the labour markets needs, as well as maximize the impact of studies and student international mobility by offering to merge both experiences (academic and professional). This placement scheme has been implemented for Erasmus students in the areas of Economics&Business and Engineering&Computing.

– Employability and internationalisation at home via involving local non-mobile students in part-time placements in companies, together with international students (tandems).

– Relevance of education via closer collaboration between academia and the world of work, thus paving the way towards concrete actions in order to address the identified challenges.

The #eh project was based on a pilot project carried out by EUF-CE network and introduced significant innovations. Firstly, close university and business collaboration on the basis of “Local Hubs” established at each partner University to ensure dynamic cooperation, coordinated interventions in the academic curricula and knowledge exchange. Secondly, creation of learning material (an E-module for students) and Guidelines for academic staff that allows to showcase a comprehensive model of University-Business cooperation.

The proposed scheme aimed to ensure favourable circumstances for students to earn competences, which are highly valued in the labour market and thus considerably increase the employability of prospective graduates. #eh aimed to stimulate the development of entrepreneurial skills in various disciplines and promoted innovation in higher education through more interactive learning environments and strengthened knowledge-transfer infrastructure.

The outcomes of the project will be maintained online and are available to students and academic staff from any institution. Regarding the placement scheme, primarily it will be maintained and continued within the project partner group (both #eh and #emploi projects) as well as among all European University Foundation network (24 network universities), since all network universities have strong links and dynamic student mobility flows which allows for further expansion of the scheme. In addition to that, exchange students both from programme countries as well as partner countries (outside the EU) will be encouraged to benefit from the created scheme.

The impact of the project goes far beyond the project life-cycle and it will be prolonged vie placement scheme, further usage of the material and the creation of Local Hubs which intend to continue university-business cooperation on a local scale.

The project was carried out by 8 partner organisations from 7 EU countries, namely 5 universities: University of Alcala (UAH-Spain), University of Aveiro (UA-Portugal), University of Latvia (UL-Latvia), Lodz University of Technology (TUL-Poland), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh-Greece); 2 networks: European University Foundation (EUF-Luxembourg), Erasmus Student Network (ESN-Brussels) and the company Collective Intelligence Research Centre (CIRC-Latvia).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 194071 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE ALCALA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Collective Intelligence Research Center
• LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE
• POLITECHNIKA LODZKA
• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• ERASMUS STUDENT NETWORK AISBL
• EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION-CAMPUS EUROPAE
• UNIVERSIDADE DE AVEIRO