3 Economy + Erasmus Project

Project Title

3 Economy +

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality and Relevance of Higher Education in Partner Countries; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The 3Economy+ project emerged as the need to optimize the academic training of university students from three peripheral and disadvantaged territories such as Melilla, Portalegre and Malta to develop their skills and increase their employment prospects. Due to the geographical location of their regions and the social and economic development ratios that are far from the average in their countries, make it difficult for them to enter the labour market under equal conditions. Those socioeconomic peculiarities may imply a constrained professional career, limited to students’ surrounding context. In order to provide wider professional opportunities, the 3Economy+ project will attempt to provide an international perspective to students’ bachelor degree, while promoting the internationalization of the academic institution and its surrounding community. These actions will ensure the implicit growth of their local and regional economies. To this end, the University of Granada, on its campus in Melilla, together with the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre and the Institute for Tourism Travel & Culture of the University of Malta agreed to work on a methodological basis to implement a training programme that enhances the international profile of its students.
The project is structured around the following activities:
1) Strengthening professional skills. Through a training programme with a wide range of actions, all aimed at achieving excellence within the areas of business, marketing, tourism, ICT, multilingualism and, finally, putting into practice skills such as teamwork in intercultural environments. To this end, various online courses have been developed (using a Learning Management System such as Moodle) consisting of the resolution of tasks on materials and documents produced by teachers and adapted to their regions, with a special focus on their digitalisation needs (see https://3economyplus.ugr.es/eplatform/).
2) Promotion of multilingualism, through courses in Spanish, Portuguese and English. Numerous learning activities have been carried out to promote multilingualism and interculturality among the participants. Moreover, a guide to improve their CV and enhance their professional profile has been created, and a glossary of 200 terms of use in the 3 languages of the subjects studied in the project has been generated.
3) International practices. The students have improved their training with international internships, which have allowed them to apply the knowledge acquired, increasing their skills for employability and labour insertion in the field. We would also like to highlight that, due to the global pandemic that began in March 2020, some internships were adapted to the virtual option. Despite the problems we faced, this modality promoted other qualities of the students that are increasingly demanded by organisations and companies such as skills in teleworking through collaborative platforms. As a second objective, the international profile of the participating institutions has been promoted, as without the participation of different countries it would not have been possible to fulfil the objectives of exchanging differentiated cultural aspects.
The main results obtained can be summarised as follows:
-Publication of a handbook on the studies-analysis of regional economic activities and financial analyses of local companies, regional tourism policies and marketing studies corresponding to three regions of the consortium-IO1.
-Determination of the competencies that graduates should have, according to the needs of job offers and employers-IO2
-Production of short videos collected in an open-access institutional repository on the themes of the project-IO3
-Preparation of 18 case studies related to the 3 areas of knowledge, but with themes from the regions of the consortium-IO4
-Design of online training materials-IO5
– Publication of a multilingual terminology glossary of 200 terms referenced in these subjects-IO6
-Publication of a manual with proposals for best practices in project management, blended learning in general and in the specific training developed in the project-IO7.
As a sustainability plan, or a follow-up activity of the project, the 3 universities of the consortium will attempt to include the innovative knowledge generated in the project in the educational plans of the degree courses related to the areas of knowledge of the project, or at least as optional subjects, seminars or other training actions. It could also be used as reference material or case studies in the subjects related to the project. These training actions could also be completed or supported through an online training with the use of the Moodle platform of the project since teleworking and lifelong learning are already realities in our society. Moreover, studies and applications that are useful for public administrations, organisations and collaborating companies have been prepared and made available to them.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 253913 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA TA MALTA
• INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO DE PORTALEGRE