Improved Mobility Erasmus Project

Project Title

Improved Mobility

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The aim of the “Improved Mobility” project was to identify factors that make it possible to measure the probability of successful mobility of trainees in Europe. The idea was that raising awareness of one’s own strengths also increases the likelihood of taking up offers such as those made by Erasmus+.

The recording of individual factors was only one part of the study. Institutional opinions were also taken into account in the project on the basis of personal interviews with trainers, representatives of training centres, companies and institutions.

The sectoral focus of the surveys was mainly on the construction sector as well as the automotive industry, as access to the target group was guaranteed by the composition of the consortium.

The project idea came about because the topic of “mobility” had become a topic of increasing importance for vocational training in recent years.

Many institutions had increasingly recognised that stays abroad during vocational training were a useful supplement. The basic idea is that globalisation is leading to an increasing internationalisation of jobs. It goes without saying that it is an advantage if the relevant skills are already acquired during training through stays abroad.

Consequently, the consortium asked itself, how does successful mobility come about? What are the factors for successful mobility? The project started with this focus.

The basis for a proper investigation was in particular the fact that the EU in this context pursued the goal of encouraging 6% of trainees in Europe to spend a period abroad during their training.

In Germany this rate was 4% in 2015. After the project idea had already been completed, the latest studies were published in a BMBF press release in July 2018. 5.3% of trainees in Germany had already taken up an offer of a stay abroad during their training in 2017. One year later, the figure had already been 6.3%. The trend is rising with a target which the government of the Federal Republic of Germany had set at 10% by 2020.

In the partner countries of the project consortium, the rates at project start were 5.9% in Spain, 4.9% in Italy, 1.3% in Belgium and 7.4% in Lithuania. The quotas indicated that, on the one hand, there was experience and a wide variety of findings on mobility in the individual partner countries, but on the other hand, there was also a need to gain insights into successful factors.

In the course of the project, trainees were questioned by means of questionnaires both before and after mobility and it was also worked out which factors in companies are advantageous for mobility. As explained in the introduction, personal interviews were conducted at institutional level with representatives of training centres and their customers or affiliated companies.
As far as the trainees are concerned, they were either interested in the topic of mobility and were able to reflect on important personality traits by means of the questionnaires and thus to check whether mobility is useful for them. In addition, trainees who had completed mobility with one of the project partners were interviewed. These persons were asked about their subjective sense of achievement. In this way, it was possible to derive success factors in general and to generate effects of before and after the completion of stays abroad within the scope of a training.

All findings were compiled and published under the title “Improved Mobility Final Results & key findings” under the following link:
http://improvedmobility.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Erasmus-Improved-Mobility-final-results-EN.pdf.
The results can be downloaded in all partner languages at http://improvedmobility.eu/en/final-results/.

In summary, the following can be said about the results:
In total, the questionnaire survey was able to reach 432 trainees and 46 contacts at institutional level.
Essentially, personality traits that could be important during training abroad were examined. These could be assessed by the participants on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (important).

– “Communication skills” were rated as the most important, “ability to spend time alone” as the least important.

– The most difficult personality trait during training abroad was the “inability to leave the comfort zone.”

– In general, all personality traits considered difficult during training abroad, after mobility, were considered even more problematic.

– The “involvement of families” was identified as the most important external aspect for successful stays abroad.

– The most important aspect for improving stays abroad in education was “Requested certificate for the execution of stays abroad”, while “Support in the search for foreign partners” is rated as was rated less important.

Overall, it was found that a “greater availability of information on stays abroad” was rated as extremely important, especially after mobility had been completed, which could indicate that trainees did not feel sufficiently informed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65705,04 Eur

Project Coordinator

TALENTBRÜCKE GmbH & Co. KG & Country: DE

Project Partners

• International Formation Center S.L.
• VIESOJI ISTAIGA VILNIAUS STATYBININKU RENGIMO CENTRAS
• SCUOLA COSTRUZIONI VICENZA ANDREA PALLADIO
• BERUFSFORDERUNGSWERK DER BAUINDUSTRIE NRW GGMBH
• Lux Impuls GmbH
• CENTRE IFAPME LIEGE HUY VERVIERS ASBL