Development of Entrepreneurial Skills and Competences in the Vocational Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Development of Entrepreneurial Skills and Competences in the Vocational Education

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

For professionals, who are working in the industry of tourism, it’s a trivial fact that the tourism potential of Eastern and Central Europe is not exploited yet. It is well illustrated by the fact that while Austria has 12,000 tourists per year and per 1,000 habitats, Hungary and Slovakia are only having 2,000 people in the same scale and Romania has even worse numbers. It happens every year although in terms of tourism potential, these countries are not holding less than Austria. Why is this happening then?
Of course, there is no clear answer, but several things are sure: it is sure that the different usage of the tourism potential is highly connected to the different usage of infrastructure and other conditions, but also to the different usage of entrepreneurial skills and abilities in a society. This is especially true within the field of agro-tourism, as this area typically unites entrepreneurs with lower education: most of them are not holding a college or a university diploma on entrepreneurship.
Studying the vocational education and training and its practice in the Central European countries, it is safe to say that these wasted opportunities on capacities are highly connected to the training deficiencies in VET, and especially in agro-tourism and tourism in VET. Surveys show that among the causes of these deficiencies the following things can be found: the underweighting of entrepreneurship in the educational curricula; the lack of appropriate methodology and curriculum development experience; and the inflexibility of the educational systems. In addition, it is also clear that the learning of the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge is nearly impossible when it should be carried out within a frontal teaching method – especially in a vocational school, where most of the students are coming from a troubled socio-cultural background. Thanks to these, vocational schools should be more differentiated in teaching methods; they should support individual learning paths and mentoring schemes more.

In response to these problems we have created our project, which aims to develop a teaching methodology, providing on-line and off-line tools in combination; but also provides cross-border networks and a student-teacher supporting system to have a solution on “how to” teach entrepreneurial skills and competencies in the VET.

We call this project Entrepreneur+, for it is referring to the m-learning based blended education methodology to be created in this project. The system will enable the students to learn following their personalized learning designed and continuously up-dated by a “smart” e-learing background-application supporting adaptive learning. Teachers will act more like “mentors”, supervising the learning process and paying personal attention to each student. We believe that such adaptive learning methodology is a unique innovation on the field of education of entrepreneurial skills in the vocational education, and is the most suitable way to approach the subject.

We have the necessary experience and knowledge to create this innovative methodology and to test it in three countries (Hungary, Slovakia and Romania) in the frame of a pilot-training involving 60 students all-together. We plan that in the curriculum of this application would use the wording, the imagery of the digital natives which would represent a further attraction to the students.
The participating teachers (12 pers.) will be previously trained and empowered to handle the innovative methodology and the digital tools. We hope to give them the feeling of a pedagogical renewal experience, as they will be involved in networking activities and creative work in m-learning curriculum development as well.

We hope that by the end of the project we can achieve the following effects: an increase in the motivation of the students towards learning; an increase in their knowledge and skills in the fields of entrepreneurship; burn-out prevention through the new method for the participating teachers; the promotion of the digital and adaptive methods in the schools and in front of the decision-makers; making tourism more competitive in a long-term in the zone.

We also want to tell you that we do believe in free-sharing; therefore all of the outputs of the project (even the application) will be freely available on the project’s website. Also, the project’s dissemination will contain several events (workshops, conferences, etc.), because we do believe that ICT-techniques are the future. We hope that project will promote this paradigm-shift in the educational policies too, and that our application will be used for various educational reasons therefore it will become a part of the action against digital illiteracy.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 283141 Eur

Project Coordinator

Herman Otto Intezet Nonprofit Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Szövetség a Közös Célokért – Zdruzenie za spolocné ciele
• Interregió Fórum Egyesület
• Asociatia pentru Judetul Harghita – Hargita Megyeert Egyesulet