INTERNATIONAL WORK BASED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
▶Summary
Work-based learning (WBL) is an educational model deeply rooted in some European countries moving forward with greater intensity in the last few decades. There are various types of WBL, and their ...
▶Objectives
The partnership identified poor training standards and a lack of commitment from academics and company facilitators, not giving training the importance it should have. The aim of i-WOBAL was to build up an international WBL model through an online training space for the academic and company facilitators to develop an innovative and more effective teaching-learning process that would revert to the improvement of student employability and adjust it to what companies need, training students specifically on market`s demand. We actively involved all parties (companies, HE centres, and facilitators) by showing them the importance of proper training and how it can positively impact each one of them. On top of everything else, the project also managed to achieve fast adaptability to the different trends in the labour market, as the produced results are versatile products susceptible to change.
▶Activities
The project was subdivided into different activities, which were determined simultaneously by five target groups: adult learning, People with disabilities, Bachelor's Degrees, Master's Degrees, and NEETs (Not in education, employment or training). The partnership carried out the following activities: - Developed and prepared an individual report according to the target group and country, both at HEI level and company level (e.g., policies and regulations for WBL, application and assessment periods for WBL, methods of training for facilitators, and evaluation methods). Each partner focused on the field where they had the most expertise and background knowledge. - Collection, analysis, and evaluation of the recovered information: Once these reports were prepared, the information was shared and discussed among the partners to define common criteria for establishing the guide - Co-creation of the Didactic common guide as a previous step to develop the Online School of Facilitators successfully. - Development of the Online WBL Facilitator Training School: taking the guide as a starting point, we generated a learning space hosted on the project website. This is the central unit of the project activity, and it did involve research, production, testing and evaluation - all stages implemented by the partners. - Online School of Facilitators training course: This course covered aspects and content related to the technical and personal skills needed for facilitation in WBL processes. Course participants learned how to be a WBL facilitator and the benefits it would bring to companies, HE centres, and students. The mission was to be able to train all the agents involved in the WBL ecosystem to generate meaningful and transformative learning processes in cooperation. All the materials on the i-WOBAL website are available, open, and accessible in English.