Entrepreneurial Competences in Vocational Educational Training. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Entrepreneurial Competences in Vocational Educational Training.

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: Health and wellbeing; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

The aim of the EC EUVET project was to exchange good practices within the field of innovative thinking and welfare technology (WFT) in the Social Health Care (S&H) sector as an answer to the common European paradox that we identified at the application stage; Many technology investments are neither really put to practical use nor integrated into the practical care work. We identified a need for practical inputs and experiences in order to optimize the use of technology and innovation in the sector and ultimately help to a better service for the citizens. With 8 partners from different countries we had a broad foundation to secure various strengths and experiences in the field. Therefore, the learning activities in the project focused on sharing best practice and gather all the ideas on an easily accessible platform so that as many people as possible can benefit from it.
The partner countries are Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark. The partners represent different levels of development and use of innovative methods and WFT which has shown to be a strength as we learned a lot from each other because of the differences both in cultural approach and technical resources.
As the EC EUVET project builds on the fact that although remarkable resources are invested in hardware and human competences a lot of WFT remains unused, a survey was prepared for both managers and employees at hospitals and elderly care centers in the partner countries in order to identify some of the reasons for this. The overall conclusion behind the small study shows that innovation and technology have come to stay in the H&S sector but, in addition to the already good education that young students receive, concrete inputs to translate knowledge into practice are lacking. The results of the exchange of best practice in this project serve as a tool to encounter some of these gaps. It provides relevant links to inspirational materials and specific project weeks reports that serve as catalogues with inputs to innovative methods and ideas for best use of WFT. Furthermore, we formulated a learning target focusing on WFT for VET students – it is accessible for everyone, who find it usable. As this was in fact an add-on (learning target number 8) to a former European KA2 project, it was decided to only develop one new learning target rather than creating a joint guideline for EU countries as originally planned in the application. The learning target can be found on the Facebook profile: “EC EUVET – Healthcare – welfare technology and innovation”: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/permalink/3051801324876326/. You can also find the corresponding assessment sheet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/permalink/3051815138208278/

The target group of the project has mainly been teachers in the S&H sector, when it comes to the learning activities. In total, 73 mobilities were used for Learning and teaching activities (LTAs), and 38 mobilities for transnational project meetings (TPMs). The LTAs included lectures of innovative methods and technologies, executed by both internal and external speakers as well as many study visits to facilities, where new and/or innovative technologies were either developed or taken in to use. The participants got the opportunity to test on the spot a variety of welfare technologies, and to find a lot of inspiration that could be transferred to their own schools and finally as result of training of students, to the work places. That is, several stakeholders have taken part in the project as intermediaries of relevant topics and knowledge: representatives of management in the S&H sector, municipalities, VET innovation and research centers as well as representatives from technological development companies. The project has thus managed to reach out to other stakeholders beyond the project managers, both due to the interaction in the learning activities but also because of the survey and – not least – due to the platform that we chose to use for dissemination. The plan was originally to create a web page for sharing the results, but it was at an early stage of the project decided to create a Facebook profile instead (in the following named as FB profile), with the purpose to create a more dynamic, open source platform for sharing internationally know-how among all schools, dealing with welfare educations. For each LTA a report with summaries of each event, including presentations of materials, lectures and photos was created and uploaded under “files” https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/files. This is the main result that we want to draw attention to as it is the essence of all project results.
The FB group had at time of finalization of project 527 members from participating partners and from other schools in the health and welfare educational sector. We believe the platform will provide good opportunities for longer-term benefits.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 131970 Eur

Project Coordinator

SOSU Sjælland/ZBC & Country: DK

Project Partners

• SEY
• VAASAN KAUPUNKI
• ARBEIT UND LEBEN DGB/VHS HAMBURG EV
• SLAGELSE KOMMUNE
• Stichting ROC West-Brabant
• BBS Syke EUROPASCHULE
• Förvaltningen för Gymnasium & Arbetsmarknad, Kungsbacka kommun