Since the coordinating country (Sweden), is involved in a KA1 VET mobility project, we found the need of a tool to facilitate the ECVET documentation. We have concluded after some research that such a tool does not exist in Europe. The objective of this project is to develop an ECVET for IT - toolkit. During this process we will get an insight to how the IT business looks in Europe. Is it the same skills that are needed in the south of Europe as it is in the north when we look at say first line support? Will a student during a transnational mobility get the same learning outcome given the work placement is similar? Also, does a VET student who study to become a web-developer get the same skills/knowledge base during their education in the east of Europe as they get in the west of Europe? Are there cultural differences something that affects the learning outcomes for the students? The aim is to get some sort of common view on which competences a student will need and get during their education, independently of where they have studied. This will improve the chance of mobility during and after the student have completed their education. It is our strong believe that a student who has performed one or more transnational mobilities during their education will grow as a human and the awareness and tolerance for different cultures will increase. In this project there are five participating VET schools at secondary level. The project members have been chosen with geographical location taken in mind. Also, the different members have been chosen due to experiences that we as coordinator think will contribute to yet another perspective. Macedonia in the south of Europe have much experience in the field of special needs. The Netherlands in the middle of Europe has a lot of experience in international projects. They also have experiences in working with refugees, asylum seekers and immigrant to include and integrate them into the Dutch community. Estonia in the eastern part of Europe has been working with VET education within IT for a long time. They will also contribute with experiences from an earlier project about how to include young females to Tech-education. Portugal in the most western part of Europe will contribute with their earlier international experiences and eTwinning competence. Sweden in the North of Europe is one of the countries in the world where IT is most incorporated to our everyday life. The geographical spread gives us a good coverage of all of Europe which is good for the objectives of this project. During the project we will have a transnational meeting in every participating country. During these meetings we will visit four different IT companies covering different areas of IT, like web, support, network and hardware service. These visits together with the accumulated experience of the participating vocational teachers and the sharing of our different curricula will get invaluable insights to how a common learning outcome could and would look within the four different areas we have chosen to focus on. At each meeting we will also look closer at one part of the documentation in ECVET for example memorandum of understanding. At the meetings we will all get a better understanding for cultural differences (if there are any). We will use different digital platforms to communicate and to present our results during the project. We will work dynamically with the documentation we refer to produce. The process will be evaluated constantly, and we will follow a structured timetable shared among the participants as a GANTT chart but also a shared Google calendar. All the participants have clear areas of responsibilities. The results will be presented and evaluated during the project. The result will be the production of the different ECVET documents. These will be deployed on different webpages on the internet: Participating organisations web pages, eTwinning and ECVET toolkit among others. Free to use for everyone. Increased transnational mobilities during the student’s education due to the developed tools will make it easier and less time-consuming to implement. We also believe that the quality and motivation level of the teaching at our different schools will increase since the vocational teachers will be more aware of what technology and work ways being used in the business across Europe, and this will in turn motivate the students and improve their learning and results. Since the employers in the IT sector has a low level of understanding for which competencies and skills our students have when they are done, our hope is that the material/documents we develop will in time be recognised in the same way as the different certifications. * Increased mobility * Increased quality teaching within IT * Similar learning outcome independently of where the students are from * Increased awareness about cultural differences * Higher success rate when looking for employment in other European countries
The aim of this project was to develop a toolkit to be used with the ECVET documentation. This toolkit should be especially aimed at the IT sector since we looked for but didn’t find any documentation on the internet that could make our work with filling out the ECVET documentation easier. During Sweden's transnational mobilities for its students some questions arouse: Is the ICT market the same in different parts of Europe? Is the ICT vocational education similar in different parts in Europe or does it differ and if, in what way? Is it possible to make some templates or drafts that would make the filling out of the ECVET documentation easier and which would work in all of Europe? These were also questions we wanted to know the answers to and that's why this project was founded. The objectives were to compare our educational systems to find similarities and discrepancies and to establish the EQF levels of our different educational programs. We also wanted to know what the companies looked for to employ our students and if it differed in different places of Europe. From the information gathered we wanted to make learning outcomes to be used in the ECVET document system for some different work roles that our students could have during mobilities. number and type/profile of participants; The participants were from five different parts of Europe to maximize the geographical spread. There is a variation of sizes of the participating schools which also could give different perspectives on the project. The participants were Sweden (north), the Netherlands (middle), Estonia (east), the Republic of North Macedonia (south) and Portugal (west). All the participating countries have some sort of vocational ICT education on upper secondary level. Each country also contributed with different skills or experiences we thought valued for the project: The Swedish representative is included in a large consortium for Erasmus+ KA1 mobility which sends a lot of students on transnational internships every year (not during the pandemic, but before and will again). North Macedonia is specialised in special needs since their school is specialized for hearing impared and they also do some transnational mobilities. And had some eTwinning experience. The Netherlands have a lot of experience with international projects and they also work actively with including and integrating refugees and immigrants to the Dutch community. Portugal had experience of eTwinning and of international projects. Estonia also has experience of international projects and has a long experience of vocational education within ICT. During the project we had a transnational project meeting in all the participating countries. During these meetings we did study visits to different ICT companies and interviewed the employers about what skills and competencies they looked for when they recruited new employees. We also compared our different educational systems and curriculums to find similarities and discrepancies. Further more we also compared our different ECVET documents that we used for transnational mobility. The aim was to make some common ECVET documents to be used for transnational mobilities within IT and to learn from each other's different experiences and knowledges. All in purpose of making it easier to implement transnational mobilities and thus increase student mobility in Europe. We found that we all had an educational level equivalent to EQF level 4 and that our different end result of our IT related VET educational program didn’t differ that much. We also could conclude that there were no bigger differences in what the employers looked for with an eventual employee in our different countries. We also could conclude that the employers on the whole generally rated soft skills higher than pure technical skills which was a bit unexpected for us. We identified some different work roles within IT that our students could take in eventual transnational mobility and established which learning outcomes would be proper for the different roles. The information gathered is also used in the teaching at all the participating schools and thus increased the quality of teaching at these establishments with a wider and deeper international perspective. Hopefully this will help our organisations with the documentation during transnational mobility and also help others as well. One unexpected outcome was that one of the participants is now involved in writing new national curriculums within their educational system on secondary level, partially due to their involvement in this project! Experiences from this project is now also included in the teacher training program at the portuguese organisation.