Studying and Travelling for an Environmentally-friendly Promotion Erasmus Project

Project Title

Studying and Travelling for an Environmentally-friendly Promotion

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The project STEP TO EUROPE has enabled the creation of a well-structured educational path that has led to the simulation of an online travel agency by the students of the three partner schools, ITE Tambosi Battisti (Italy), Halesowen College (UK) and IES Ayala (Spain), who, working in synergy, have created a Web-working platform.

The idea for a project that would lead to the creation of such a product arose from the needs analysis of:
– the education and training sector, as outlined in the Project Europe 2020 – Strategic Framework for European Cooperation, which highlights the development of skills and competencies, multilingualism, the promotion of mobility and entrepreneurship as the main objectives to be achieved;
– the territories of the partner countries: the three schools are embedded in economic contexts where tourism is the main sector of wealth production and employability. It is therefore considered strategic to invest in the improvement of the training process of tourism, marketing, and information technology technicians, which correspond to the study courses offered by the schools involved.

At the Institute Tambosi Battisti, there was already a laboratory simulating a Travel Agency, where students carry out role-plays of tour operators and travel agents, with the production of young, sustainable and responsible tourism proposals. We wanted to turn this AdV laboratory into an international resource, involving young European clients as tourists.
The students of the three schools simulated professional tour operator activities in their areas, through the production of tourist itineraries in Trentino, the Black Country, and Andalusia. These products strongly satisfy the requests of a spirit of innovation and attention to the customer, respond to features of sustainable and responsible tourism, have a strong originality in the choice of tourist destinations. For the creation of these products, students had to analyze the tourism policy and market strategies in the three countries and be able to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the sector and draw ideas for their own proposals. The comparison among the students of the three schools, made possible by the role-play activity, allowed corrective and improvement action, thus promoting the attitude to analysis, self-analysis, and revision of own actions; this is a desirable attitude in a process of growth and development of self-entrepreneurship.
The activity made use of technologies and the tourist proposals took into account the latest operating guidelines of online tourism marketing.
Brochures with the produced itineraries have been uploaded on the shared site, created by students of the computer courses in the three schools.

During the mobilities and the virtual contacts with partners, students worked together using the English and Spanish languages, confirming and enhancing an attitude of openness toward each other. The cultural exchange has recorded remarkable growth and maturation processes, it has greatly improved the communicative and linguistic skills of students and has enabled them to activate citizenship competencies while performing real-life tasks in new environments. The active methodology adopted, highly task- and project-based, enhanced motivation and re-motivation to study and strengthened the students’ disciplinary and professional competences. Besides, it helped reduce the risk of drop-out for some students.

The project also created opportunities for exchanges between teachers of schools with similar characteristics, and for close collaboration for the implementation of other VET projects, as well as for exchange of good teaching practices. In this context fits the shared production of the intellectual output “Geography for Tourism: tips and materials”, a teaching guide for the teaching of tourist geography in CLIL.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 174539 Eur

Project Coordinator

Istituto Tecnico Economico “Tambosi-Battisti” & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Halesowen College
• I.E.S. Francisco Ayala de Granada