Interdisciplinary Innovation and Internationalisation in Business Baccalaureate Education and Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Interdisciplinary Innovation and Internationalisation in Business Baccalaureate Education and Learning

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

Teachers in the business baccalaureate programmes possess highly specialised knowledge about their subjects, allowing them to continuously transform and adapt practices and projects assignments to different groups of students, thereby enabling the reflection upon the applied teaching pedagogics and didactics. Highly pedagogical and didactical knowledge is therefore required in developing international activities, particularly when assessing the effectiveness of the teaching, and students’ accommodation, adaptation, and achievement of the learning purposes. State-of-the-art teaching in the business baccalaureate programmes has consequently identified learning challenges, especially in the internationalisation, mobility, and multiculturalism practices, which are critical elements in the formation and maturity of young students. For dealing with those challenges, a paradigm-shift from traditional lecturing offered at local level to project-driven activities involving national and international partners must be implemented. This project seeks to contribute solving learning challenges through co-ordinating and sharing the good-practices on developing well-implemented project assignments that involve mobility and multi-ethnicity exchange. The project will therefore serve as a platform for developing a strong long-lasting database containing well-implemented multidisciplinary project assignments and activities, driven by multiculturalism and transnational mobility (Annex 3). The project seeks to transfer the applied international initiatives to students, teaching staff and institutions within the business baccalaureate programmes. Furthermore, the project will develop a dynamic teaching portfolio; a systematic and operational documentation of the international activities that promote intra- and inter-collaboration, and further knowledge sharing. All project assignments and evaluations will be hosted at the eTwinning platform, whereas information about the deliverables from each international activity (e.g. list of participants, internal and external stakeholders, etc.) will be published in the project’s website, i3-bbel.eu, which will be developed shortly before the project starts.

We are at a point where, for instance, institutions interested in implementing international activities have entirely to develop projects assignments and study guides. The successful implementation of interdisciplinary international activities involving various European member states must intuitively be designed in collaboration and co-operation across disciplines, thus requiring the establishment of a common practice and language. Firstly, the approach in this project is to specify the practices and language in advance in order to create a strong infrastructure for the meta-use of project assignments and study guides that ultimately strengthen competitiveness, creativity and the innovation of international activities. By using a common language, students will be exposed to multiculturalism as they will have the possibility to meet and stay at hosting families. Secondly, at school during short visits of 3-4 days, students will be divided into various working groups composed of students across European nationalities. Students will be activated throughout keynote presentations/workshops with the purpose of getting to know each other’s cultural sensitivities, where character traits, learning habits, ability to deal with and learn from mistakes, and willingness to look at different perspectives will be pivotal for a good international experience. Exhibition and symbolic pricing of students’ work will be held and published on the project’s website, thereby motivating and giving ownership to the students. The third step will be to evaluate the results and synergy of collaboration between institutions and students, placing the results in a transparent and dynamic teaching portfolio. Although uncertainty surrounding quantification of intercultural working collaboration represents a major impediment to our ability to exploit the ultimate resolving power of the international activities, it is, however, thought that through collaboration within schools it will be possible to avoid mundane conflicts, rather concentrating on more serious misunderstandings about the process logic of the implementation and further inter-comparability.

Dissemination of the project assignments, evaluation and development of the teaching portfolio will be submitted to each of the associated partners, with the purpose of further raising awareness about the present and future challenges of planning and implementing international activities. We anticipate that key-actors will transfer the projects objectives and results at their own institution, thereby maximising the potential of recruiting engaged students and encouraging all partners to further tailor their own study guides with elements of international activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 113430 Eur

Project Coordinator

Niels Brock Business College & Country: DK

Project Partners

• AGECE CHARLES PEGUY
• NAZARET FUNDAZIOA
• ISTITUTO ISTRUZIONE SUPERIORE A.VOLTA
• Berufsbildende Schule Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen