Participation in Erasmus+

Our participation in Erasmus + is in its initial phase and we have little experience but this academic year we have started with:

• European project application (KA-122 VET: “Improving our VET) we already initiated contact with two HEIs in Portugal needed to implement the project.
• Initial contact with three HEIs of France.
• Some students have participated in a job selection process for a Dutch business group.
• One teacher went to Croatia with a mobility consortium (Association of Automotive Teachers of Galicia, APAGA) He has visited one HEI and several automotive enterprises, which could be important for future mobilities. 
• Three teachers will visit Czech Republic and one teacher will visit Italy with a mobility consortium (APAGA)
• Implementation of bilingual programs in four subjects.
• The French department has organized a cultural trip to Paris, with the aim of reinforcing French language competence. Our intention is to organize student exchanges in the next academic years.
• Participation in an English language level accreditation program with 32 students. IES Universidade Laboral were accredited as an examination center for the Trinity tests.

 

Erasmus + actions will be implemented at our institution in four stages:

• Planning: we define the needs, objectives, learning outcomes, activity formats, development of work programme, schedule of activities etc.  
• Preparation: practical arrangements, set up of agreements with partners, linguistic/intercultural/learning- and task-related preparation of participants before departure etc.
• Implementation of activities: during the mobilities, the student will have the support of an "Erasmus tutor" for the purpose of establishing communication by telephone. A virtual classroom will also be set up for this purpose.
• Follow-up: evaluation of the activities, identification and documentation of the learning outcomes of participants, as well as dissemination and use of the project's outcomes

 

For these phases, we are going to use the Erasmus+ Mobile App and Erasmus without Paper Network to simplify the process by digitalising all the main components necessary for the organization of student mobility.

 

As far as recognition and validation of skills and qualifications, we will implement Europass Diploma Supplement. 

 

The Erasmus+ Team of our institution is structured and organized with a simple work organization chart, where the functions and tasks of each person are clearly distributed.

• The central figure is the Erasmus Coordinator who plans the work with the previous approval of the Headmaster.
• At least three teachers and the deputy headmaster work on the proposals with the coordinator.
• The advice of the Head of Department involved (Automotive, Maintenance,English, French, etc.) will be taken into consideration.
• The Department of Professional Orientation will offer advice in order to ensure equal opportunities for all students.
• The information will be sent to tutors, teachers, students and the rest of the educational community so that they can make contributions, suggestions, proposals for improvement,etc

 

Strategy, objectives and impact

 

IES Universidade Laboral de Ourense is a Higher Education Institution located in the north west of Spain. Each year IES Universidade Laboral pretends to improve and offer more opportunities to the entire educational community. In this sense, one of the main objectives for this course is to begin with a strategy for modernisation and internationalization. 

This internationalization pursues several goals:

• Improve our weaknesses by knowing other educational systems.
• Preparing our students for a greater international labor integration and thus improving employability level.
• Improving foreign languages and digital competences.
• To build bidirectional bridges to exchange technical information, emphasizing digitization, environmental and energy management.

Next actions will be performed in order to achieve the objectives::

• Increasing online cooperation between HEIs in different countries through eTwinning platform.
• Student mobility for traineeships 
• Staff mobility for job shadowing, on-site  courses, etc

 

In order to pursue the objectives settled, we consider very important the collaboration with both HEIs and enterprises. We must be able to take advantage of all the synergies between these two actors and also with the administrations, both in Galicia, Spain and abroad, taking advantage of any training offered by Erasmus, collaboration with Consortiums, participation by teaching and attending master classes with national companies and foreign.

The impact we hope to achieve in the future, through our participation in Erasmus+ projects is:

• Consolidate relationships with existing partners (HEIs, enterprises, Administration, etc.)
• Increase the number of existing partners.
• Increase the number of student mobilities.
• Increase the number of staff mobilities.
• Implement new bilingual programs.
• Implement transversal activities using of foreign languages. As an example, one of the ideas that we have is the coexistence of students and teachers with a foreign team in a car competition developed in Spain, to serve as logistical support, collaboration in vehicle maintenance and repair work, accommodation and translation to facilitate their stay.

 

Indicators

Since we are just beginning these experiences, our goals must be humble but at the same time ambitious for future updates of our actions and projects. In the first years we want to consolidate goals achieved and improve a little at least every year.

 

For this, we propose some indicators, which must be reviewed every year:

• Number of collaborating HEIs 
• Number of collaborating enterprises
• Number of student applying for mobility
• Number of staff applying for mobility
• Number of mobilities performed by students
• Number of mobilities performed by staff
• Number of teacher collaborating with Erasmus + team
• Number of bilingual programmes
• Number of transversal activities using foraing languages