The VETCOP project is a transnational VET software development project. Further strengthening skills, qualifications and competences associated with international trade and commerce are extremely important for the European trade enterprises to stay competitive and achieve success in the global market. The consortium behind the VETCOP project wants to improve employability in the European trade sector by developing a virtual European trade platform for vocational education and training (VET). The platform will realize international, collaborative experiences and interactions in the context of ICT-based teaching, training and learning – also known as virtual mobility. Using ICT to create a virtual “mirror” of the single market will not only promote virtual mobility, but also new possibilities of using multimodal learning content that meets the expectations of digital-born learners. The main objective of the VETCOP project is to enable international trade for more than 4.000 Practice Enterprises and 120.000 students per year in a virtual online environment based on simulation as a practice-oriented learning methodology. The students will be able to buy and sell goods and services in the virtual marketplace and to make realistic payments through the secure credit card and banking systems. Through work based learning in the Practice Enterprises, the students acquire skills and competences matching both educational curricula and labour market needs in the field of international trade and commerce. The consortium behind the VETCOP project involves participating organisations from four Erasmus+ programme countries: Germany - EUROPEN-PEN International France - REEP Euro Ent'Ent Spain - Fundació Inform Denmark - International Business College (coordinating organisation) The organisations from France, Spain and Denmark all work with VET through different implementations of the Practice Enterprise concept (virtual companies run by students) within their own national contexts. They are all members of EUROPEN-PEN International - an umbrella organisation administrating a worldwide network of Practice Enterprises. Its headquarters are in Germany. It is an ongoing ambition for EUROPEN-PEN International to harmonize common elements of the different national implementations of the Practice Enterprise concept in order to support transnational collaboration, cooperation and hands-on interactions. The VETCOP project encompasses a range of activities. As a software development project these activities are mainly about the actual development of code, work packages, modules, subsystems and intellectual outputs, all of which in the end constitute the VETCOP trade and commerce platform. The main subsystems are 1) B2B Marketplace, 2) Banking system and 3) Credit card system. The project lists 7 specific intellectual outputs: 1. Architecture and system model 2. Communication standard 3. Database structure and platform prototype 4. System platform and functionalities 5. Web services 6. Feedback and testing service 7. Online guides and print manuals Naturally, the project also contains numerous activities that secure an effective project design. These project management activities include creating a communication plan, facilitating transnational meetings, maintaining documentation, analyzing risks, controlling budgets, monitoring velocity, securing schedules, evaluation activities, and so on. The development of the trade platform follows The Unified Software Development Process in combination with the agile benefits of Scrum. Most importantly, this means that some of the risks associated with developing in a transnational team are met by working iteratively in short time-boxes with frequent builds and an efficient tracking of velocity. This secures control of delays due to too optimistic estimations, requirements inflation and many other well-known risks in software development. The trade platform will expand the opportunities of VET teachers to design specific educational hands-on courses and to keep these courses in line with development of international skills and the didactic principles of work-based learning. VET teachers will have a new, dynamic and flexible platform through which they can ensure consistency between curricula, training methods and learning outcomes (skills, qualifications and competences). VET students will acquire valuable learning outcomes within the field of international trade, foreign languages and ICT that will increase their mobility as well as their employability in the European labour market. The long term benefits of the VETCOP project include a better qualified work force in the European trade sector. This will help SMEs in Europe to strengthen their ability to hire staff with the right skills, qualifications and competences in order to boost European growth and competitiveness.
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