The project is focused on Vocational Training students in the field of Software Development. The goal is to select a group of students and supply them a set of skills and tools that improve their employability, reducing the gap between formal training and entering labour market. The process will be replicable with other groups of students once the EU financial support has finished, as teachers will learn how-to-do from companies, exchange of good practices will be performed among the partners, and strong collaboration links will be created. Agents in the project are training institutions, software industry companies and social partners. Students, in an amount of ten per school (forty in sum), are in their last course of a curricula EQF level 5 or 4. Their age will start at 18, but the group will certainly include adults. The methodology to be used during the project is Open PM2, an Open Project Management Methodology, free version of PM, developed by the European Commission in 2007. The expected lifelong of the project is 20 months. The activities set contains transnational management meetings (4), training/teaching/learning activities for teachers (3, on different aspects of the project), and training/teaching/learning activities with students (2). Most of the work will be on-line. The most interesting part of the project is the activity to be performed by students, in heterogeneous groups led by experts from a software company, building a software product. The aim of such a product is to celebrate European year of Cultural Heritage. Students will receive the most direct impact on their skills set, their employability and their careers. The schools, social partners and companies will be rewarded with the knowledge, the relationships and the network among them, that will make the organizations grow and consider new targets.
The project was contextualized within higher-level vocational training, the need for students to contact the professional world during their format itinerary, and the need for a relationship between companies and training institutions, as an initial idea. Secondly, the other main element of the context is the heterogeneity and multiculturalism of the workgroups in the current labor market, and the convenience of including these formative factors within the students' curriculum. The objectives were detailed in the proposal and can be summarized in the following points: - The work of the students in a multicultural and heterogeneous team for the development of a software project. - The work of the students in a team led and managed by company professionals. - The acquisition of soft key skills derived from the planned action. The participants were 32 professional training students in the area of software development. They came from four training institutions, from four different countries. The professional profile of the students (eight per country and institution) ranged from EQF 3-4 to EQF 5. The results achieved have been significant levels of competence in soft-skills related to teamwork, as well as technical skills in the application development sector. The impact has been significant in the institutions involved, of all types (training centers, companies, social agents), in different ways that will be detailed later in the report. As a long-term benefit, we must point out the strong ties between the participating institutions, which have already materialized in other collaborative project proposals presented.