InnoTrain actions and outputs will focus on key target issues in VET-Business partnerships' promotion acting on weak elements of the work-based learning cycle in 5 European regions in Austria, Italy, Germany, Spain and Greece. The improvement focus will be regional and local, benefitting from a transnational dimension working on effective practices leading to innovation of training programmes and tools for professionals involved in WBL development. Our Strategic Partnership points to create a more systematic engagement of VET providers and businesses with the proposal to investigate, design and implement new synergies among local key stakeholders involved in cooperation structures for WBL promotion and inspire sustainable policy reforms on education and employment. In details activities will tackle the following issues related to E+2018 VET priorities: Continuous professional development of VET teachers, trainers and mentors in both school and WBL settings, representatives of social partners and public authorities with effective capacity building actions through joint staff trainings and multiplying training actions at local level. According to professionals' skills needs analyses performed in the four regions during preparation activities a specific focus will be on Quality Assurance, Evaluation and Monitoring processes of learning outcomes and impacts of WBL either on learners, companies, VET providers and general education providers. We will stress on integrated design of effective WBL experiences investing on professionalization of VET/school teachers and in-company trainers and tutors, bridging the gap between education and business, with a clear and more intense participation of social partners and public authorities in fostering WBL in all its forms. A mix of complementary transnational partners (consisting of 9 partners of five EU-countries) will work on a 30 months basis for creating new VET-Business cooperation structures (Italy, Spain, Greece) and revise existing ones (Germany, Austria). The motivation of partners to participate in the project is strongly connected to the observation of local needs and the acknowledgement about the necessity to try to cover the gap between skills’ qualifications levels and the requirements from job market, starting from strengthening quality and quantity of WBL in education and investing on innovation for practitioners. The OVERALL OBJECTIVE of the project is to create transferable outputs (4 IOs) for the upgrade of professional competences of practitioners daily involved in VET-business relationships and delivery of WBL programmes pointing on qualitative growth of high quality skills and competences. On the other hand we intend to investigate and develop new strategies for effective VET-business cooperation structures involving complementary local stakeholders, but with an outlook at exploitation in other EU regions. NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED - To bridge the gap between the worlds of education and business - To give new impetus to VET-Business engagement in mature regions through continuous training for practitioners - To contribute to reduce youth unemployment rate and skills mismatch strengthening WBL element in VET (all regions) - Lack of active and continuous participation of social partners in the process of design, delivery and monitoring of WBL (all regions) TARGET GROUPS: Professionals in VET/general education/business/social partners/local bodies/youth associations. Implementation will try to tackle skills challenges and needs at regional and local level in five European representative local contexts in Austria, Italy, Germany, Spain and Greece with an Action Research methodology focused on three main issues: 1) Understand and innovate VET-Business Partnerships 2) Design new training programmes and training methodologies based on WBL for skills upgrade of key practitioners 3) Suggest for more effective cooperation structures between a wide audience of stakeholders. The schedule of research for action applied to all three above mentioned issues will have the following backbone: 1) Integration of Comparative research in the 5 EU regions on WBL weaknesses and skills' needs for professionals' upgrade. 2) Capacity building process through joint staff trainings for direct key actors through cross-transfer of recognized European excellent practices on WBL, Quality Assurance, Monitoring and Integrated Monitoring Processes 3) Intellectual Outputs creation addressed to VET teachers, tutors, VET designers, in-company trainers, social bodies, public administrations. 4) Training activities through local Short term joint staff training events for partners, associated partners and external professionals on final outputs related to Design, Quality, Monitoring in WBL development. This will be a testing phase before validation and delivery of final Outputs. 5) Dissemination at regional, national, European level for exploitation purposes and policy reforms inspiration.
InnoTrain actions and outputs focued on the key target issues in promoting VET-business partnerships that impact on weak elements of the in-service learning cycle in five European regions in Austria, Italy, Germany, Spain and Greece. The improvement focus were regional and local and benefits from a transnational dimension working on effective practices leading to the innovation of training programmes and tools for professionals involved in the development of WBL. Our strategic partnership aimed to create a more systematic engagement of VET providers and companies with the proposal to explore, design and implement new synergies between local key actors involved in collaborative structures to promote WBL and to stimulate sustainable policy reforms in education and employment. A mix of complementary transnational partners (consisting of 9 partners from five EU countries) worked over a period of 36 months to create new structures for cooperation between VET and business (Italy, Spain, Greece) and to revise existing structures (Germany, Austria). The motivation of the partners to participate in the project was closely linked to the observation of local needs and the recognition of the need to close the gap between skill levels and labour market requirements, starting with strengthening the quality and quantity of WBL in education and investing in innovation for practitioners. The overall objective of the project was to create transferable outcomes (4 IOs) for the improvement of professional competences of practitioners involved on a daily basis in VET-business relations and in the implementation of WBL programmes focused on the qualitative development of high quality skills and competences. On the other hand, we explored and developed new strategies for effective structures of cooperation between VET and business, involving complementary local stakeholders, but with a view to use in other EU regions. The target group of participants was VET professionals/general education/companies/social partners/local institutions/youth associations. For this purpose, the first step in the project was to carry out cross-country comparative analyses to identify the strengths, weaknesses and needs of the partner countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Greece). These results have led to establishing a general curriculum for the development of innovative training programmes for professionals. A total of 5 trainings based on the curriculum were conducted. The next major milestone in the project was to design, test and validate training tools through a bottom-up approach. The consortium partner chooses Moodle as the basic learning and teaching platform for the InnoTrain project. Especially in the times of COVID, where the project also focused more on virtual collaboration, Moodle was expanded more than expected by the project partners. A badge system (to improve motivation, recognition and credentialing) and learning lunches (learning from each other and learning together in an informal way) were developed. Finally, the number of trainers on Moodle was increased to almost 100. Country comparative analyses were also carried out on the topic of practical guide on Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality in WBL in order to identify the needs. In a further step, the measures of Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality Assurance in times of COVID-19-crisis were specifically analysed. From this, challenges and recommendations for VET teachers and trainers were developed, which can be found in the storyboard. The Storyboard of InnoTrain Methodology gives an overview of the overall project results and methods used.