Healthcare English Language Programme Erasmus Project

Project Title

Healthcare English Language Programme

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Context: English has become lingua franca in medical sciences. Students and medical staff are encouraged to read medical journals, participate in conferences, take an internship or work in other European countries to develop professionally and share experience. All above situations will not happen if it had not been for the knowledge of the English language. Access to the EU has opened the job market for new countries from Eastern Europe. There is a growing number of healthcare professionals who undertake work abroad. The project idea was to contribute to objectives of Europe 2020 strategies by enhancing competitiveness of Eastern European healthcare workers, strengthening their career chances and promoting labour market integration. Starting work in a foreign country is a very demanding process. It not only requires good professional preparation, but primarily language and intercultural skills. Communication skills often are not sufficiently developed among healthcare workers. Different from other fields of professional occupation, this gap bears a high risk. Partners that all are experts in this training field unanimously agreed that learning material and approaches that satisfy those demands in a holistic approach was not available on the market.Media development and cheaper mobile devices offer new perspectives for flexible and informal learning approaches that have not found correspondence in the available learning materials and approaches. Partners were aware of the gaps that hinder to provide adequate high standard foreign language and intercultural training to prepare students for the requirements of professional life that more and more takes place at a European workplace.

Objectives: The main aim of HELP was to create an innovative standard learning setting for healthcare English learners and professionals at the levels B1 and B2 of the CEFR. HELP has been funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ programme and addresses two political priorities of the EU: ICT and Open Source usage and Multilingualism by using ICT to modernise European Union Higher Education and strengthen quality mobility and cross-border cooperation. The key aspects are internationalisation, promotion of labour market integration and enhancing competitiveness in the healthcare industry.

Organisations: international interdisciplinary staff composed of language teachers, linguists, pedagogues, medical doctors and software engineers from seven countries.

Main activities; An extensive research in O1 was the basis for our further planning in O3 and the design phase. Research e.g. revealed that we should give more space than initially planned to intercultural topics. We used transnational meetings, monthly progress reports and monthly Skype meetings for discussion and agreement on further progress. During the design phase partners brought in didactical input from their national experiences. For material development we agreed on which partner would have the best professional background for specific module topics. Authors, linguists, medical doctors, language teachers, pedagogues worked together in a multistep development process. Each semi-finished module went for cross-check to authors from another country to gather feedback, based on a detailed check-list. When having a final draft version, the module went to the quality manager (experienced language teacher and pedagogue) for another feedback loop, final check and approval. For the development of online-resources the platform developed was based on Moodle. Cartoon videos with subtitles were developed, key words, language corners and dialogues recorded. Testing took place with 510 participants from 17 countries. Adaptations were carried out. Fine tuning and printing prepared a hard copy for partners and stakeholders.

Results and impact: The programme benefits everyone who wants or needs to improve their English language skills working in the healthcare industry.
HELP is a modular, adequate, homogeneous, media supported training programme, based on CEFR standards to satisfy demands of learner-centred formal and informal learning approaches for the English levels B1/B2 and development of intercultural competences for training centres and learning at the workplace. Our innovative approach to combine the development of professional and personal knowledge, skills and competences (working on medical, linguistic, intercultural, ethical and social content, using motivating methodical approach) guarantees the intended impact on progress in Higher and Further Education. The learning material is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licenses, Apps included, to make HELP results a free, flexible, modular and high quality learning tool to support further development of HE and VET

We see potentials to transfer our results not only for foreign language learning at HE level but for other HE studies as well, especially with regard to media use, flexible and motivating learning approaches

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 339945 Eur

Project Coordinator

FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Institut für Projektbegleitung und Kompetenzentwicklung e.V.
• Stowarzyszenie Angielski w Medycynie
• UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI
• KLAIPEDOS UNIVERSITETAS
• Fast Track into Information Technology Ltd.
• SLOVENSKA ZDRAVOTNICKA UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE