Intercultural Communicative Competence – A Competitive Advantage for Global Employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Intercultural Communicative Competence – A Competitive Advantage for Global Employability

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

For higher education (HE) to better prepare graduates for jobs in the increasingly mobile international labour market and further European integration, communication barriers such as cultural stereotypes, identity conflict, language deficiency and the lack of interactive skills must be addressed. This two-year project established a pool of 18 experts in the field of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and language training who developed,piloted and implemented innovative ICC educational materials and methodology guidelines which can be adopted by further educators. The project benefited 120 students directly in the first year, 820 students in the second year and about 1700 new language students are expected to benefit in multiplier effects after the project’s completion. Responding to the EU language policy need, 4 partner institutions from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Spain collaborated in the project. Each partner is a recognised HE institution or ICC training specialist with long-standing expertise in foreign language and ICC teaching, methodology and/or telecollaboration.
The main objective of the project was to increase ICC competences and skills (the multiple abilities to interact effectively and appropriately across cultures) in HE for global employability; while the specific objective was to enhance and innovate ICC language teaching and learning in HE by gathering and disseminating best practices and through the integration of an information communication technology (ICT) platform of telecollaboration; to boost both students’ and teachers’ virtual mobility; to implement innovative ICC formats into the HE curricula; and to support the concept of English/Spanish as a Lingua Franca in the context of internationalisation of European HE system. Important components of the project were telecollaboration, a survey on ICC best practice, innovative educational materials and case studies. Journal articles, a specialist seminar and an international conference were used to widely disseminate project results while the produced teaching materials have been available for HE educators post project in the form of open education resources as a long term benefit for all target groups.
This project was developed in close consultation and cooperation with the partners and stakeholders. Regular virtual as well as physical transnational meetings were held for project monitoring of all activities and outputs as well as communication via e-mail. The key people involved in the project were experienced HE educators and ICC trainers with long-standing expertise in the areas mentioned above.
The legacy of this project is the project website with the key ICC resources for other educators (http://iccageproject.wixsite.com/presentation/about-the-project), increased human capital in a group of experts who share their knowledge and train others, influencing students and future teachers in lifelong learning programmes, and finally the HE students who are more employable and knowledgeable of the need to truly become internationally aware if they wish to succeed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 167808 Eur

Project Coordinator

CESKE VYSOKE UCENI TECHNICKE V PRAZE & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE LEON
• BUDAPESTI GAZDASAGI EGYETEM
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE CASTELO BRANCO