International exposure during studies has a significant impact on personal and inter-personal development of students and on their employability but there are several obstacles of different kind to international mobility. Innovative teaching paradigms are required in order to facilitate international exposure and to develop transversal skills required by the labour market. Blended mobility overcomes typical barriers to mobility allowing students to experience and take advantage of the benefits of mobility and international exposure. However, despite its added value, blended mobility is barely recognized as a serious alternative. The blended-AIM purpose is to promote the employability of higher education students by means of bended mobility. Adopting the blended mobility paradigm in education removes barriers to mobility and promotes equity and inclusion. blended-AIM will provide the information, the tools and will develop and test specific teaching paradigms promoting the easy adoption of blended mobility to boost the internationalization and value to market of higher education. blended-AIM aims to the sustainable promotion of higher education students’ employability by means of blended mobility. blended-AIM specific objectives are grouped in structural and pedagogical objectives. Structural objectives: (a) settle the European Foundation for Blended Mobility, (b) foster internationalization of education and (c) deploy, test and disseminate an innovative blended mobility approach. Pedagogical objectives: (d) promote students’ employability through non-formal learning, (e) promote international experience of undergraduate students and (f) boost the provision and certification of transversal skills. The mission of blended-AIM is to develop the European Foundation of Blended Mobility raising awareness to the benefits of blended mobility and providing the information, the tools and the best practices in a way that they can be easily reused and streamlined to promote the acquisition of transversal skills through non-formal learning and to increase the labour market relevance of higher education. The blended-AIM consortium includes 10 partners: one company, a European Association and eight HEI covering several distinct but complementary study areas that are required to fully achieve the learning outcomes of the blended-AIM course unit. With a focus on employability and the alignment of students’ skills to the needs of labour market, blended-AIM will create the necessary infrastructure and resources to promote the take-up of blended mobility as a paradigm to increase the quality of higher education and provide increased opportunities for all. The first year of the project will be devoted to investigate the current status of blended mobility in Europe and to develop the blended-AIM project course. The first pilot edition of the course will run at the Spring semester of the first year. At the second year we will deploy the European Foundation for Blended Mobility. At the third year we will address long term sustainability by reviewing the SWOT analysis with a focus on sustainability and drafting a list of activities to assure sustainability. Throughout the project lifetime we will run three pilot editions of the blended-AIM project course involving 48 students. An annual workshop will be hosted by major European conferences on higher education to disseminate project results and to discuss core aspects related to blended-AIM. It is expected that blended-AIM will (a) foster equity and inclusion by removing barriers in the access to internationalization and mobility, (b) promote transfer of innovation and raise awareness to blended mobility. In concrete, blended-AIM will deliver the European Foundation for Blended Mobility portal, a certified blended mobility project course unit recognized by partner institutions and a blended mobility kit for students. blended-AIM will impact all stakeholders along time. Short term impacts include: (1) increased mobility opportunities and (2) increased opportunities for professional development of the students from partner institutions, (3) more strategic and integrated use of ICT and open educational resources through the European Foundation for Blended Mobility portal, (4) improved international exposure of students and (5) improved understanding of employability drivers. Long term impacts are expected to be reached in three years’ time. Short term impacts are replicated in long term but with a deeper reach going beyond partner institutions. Besides those, other long term impacts are expected: (6) more positive attitude towards the European project and EU values, (7) greater understanding of interconnections between formal and non-formal education, (8) better understanding and recognition of transversal skills, (9) reinforced cooperation between the worlds of education and labour and (10) improved flow and transfer of knowledge geared by facilitated mobility.
Higher education institutions aim to prepare students to succeed in the labor market. Professional life requires professionals to excel in collaborative and communication skills at an international, cross-cultural environment. Thus, international exposure during studies, having a significant impact on personal and inter-personal development of students, plays a key role in promoting students employability. Innovative teaching paradigms are required in order to develop soft skills and facilitate international contact to higher education students within the available timespan and resources without demanding for costly curricula revisions. Blended mobility overcomes typical barriers to mobility thus allowing students to take advantage of the benefits of mobility and international exposure despite these barriers. However, blended mobility is hardly used and barely recognized as a serious alternative with great potential to overcome the common barriers to international mobility. Blended-AIM raises awareness to the added value of blended mobility with regards to its potential to overcome barriers to international mobility and provides the information and the tools to facilitate its implementation in HEI and companies. Blended-AIM aims to the sustainable promotion of students’ employability by means of blended mobility. The specific objectives of Blended-AIM are grouped in structural and pedagogical objectives. Structural objectives: • Settle the European foundation for blended mobility • Foster internationalization of education • Deploy, test and disseminate a blended mobility project course unit combining best practices Pedagogical objectives: • Promote students’ employability through non-formal learning not requiring curricula changes • Promote international experience of undergraduate students • Boost the provision of professional skills, support collaborative learning and critical thinking The partnership that implemented Blended-AIM and continues developing blended mobility in higher education is growing since 2015 when the project started. The original consortium includes 10 full partners, including 8 HEI, one association operating in the field of Geographical Information Systems, grouping organizations from more than 20 European countries, and the European Association of Erasmus Coordinators, a reputable partner in the European Higher Education Area, with nearly 200 associates. During the last 3 years, the Blended-AIM concept attracted several stakeholders in Europe and abroad. We have enlarged the partnership with four companies, coming from Germany, Italy and Belgium and three universities, coming from Portugal, Slovenia and Iraq. The core activities of Blended-AIM are related to the three pilot course editions that were held in the academic years between 2015/16 and 2017/18 (IO4 to IO6). These pilot editions provided inputs to improve the initial drafts of the blended mobility student kit (IO1) and a course guide (IO3) specifying a set of rules and guidelines for the implementation of project course units following the Blended-AIM paradigm. Another key activity with regards to raising awareness to blended mobility was the development of a Wikipedia entry on blended mobility in the partners’ languages (IO7). All these, built on top of a preliminary analysis of the current state of the art of blended mobility in Europe (IO2). Each pilot course edition includes two training sessions were the students are introduced to multicultural teamwork, work organization, online groupware tools, agile methodologies for system development and pitching ideas. A significant number of dissemination activities were promoted by all partners. As a direct consequence of the dissemination efforts taken during the project, in the last edition of the pilot course funded by the project we had more offers from companies than those we could cope with. There are several companies supporting the continuation of the Blended-AIM course. We are running the 2018/19 edition with 18 students and two companies that we had to select from nearly 10 offers. Also the universities are interested in the continuation of this course unit at their own expenses. In the 2018/19 course edition we have 19 students from 8 universities organized in two teams to develop two solutions for two companies. This is the most significant and rewarding impact we have achieved. The Blended-AIM proved to be a valuable approach for all direct stakeholders (students, companies, universities) and the sustainability is assured due to its intrinsic added value. Companies see Blended-AIM as an innovative, effective and valuable approach, particularly in developing and testing proof of concept. We are driving Blended-AIM to be recognized in the long term as an option to develop proof of concept, mainly for SME; a way for SME to have access to R&D through the cooperation with a multidisciplinary team of higher education students and their supervisors.