School life in the field of electronics and electrical engineering and related fields, such as robotics and mechatronics, is often standardized, improvised and less encouraging for pupils (SuS) and teachers at vocational schools. There is a big discrepancy in the working environment between professional reality and what happens in the classroom. Thus, in addition to the technical equipment, primarily the interior design is meant. To make matters worse, this learning environment leaves little scope for modern teaching concepts. Over a period of 23 months, teachers and students at two vocational schools from Germany and the Czech Republic want to work towards a learning environment in their schools that promotes innovation and creativity, both on the pupil and the teacher side. In cooperation with young and successful companies from the electrical engineering industry (so-called start-ups), premises are to be created according to their model. In the process of interior design, the participating students should be strongly involved. Teachers focus on working in collaboration with e.g. IQSH (Institute for Quality Development in Schools Schleswig-Holstein) to revise and develop teaching and teaching methods that, adapted to the premises, promote the desired innovativeness and creativity. On the Czech side, there is intensive cooperation with VŠTE České Budějovice University of Technology. Their lecturers and students are involved in the project as scientific advisors. The results of this project are sustainable, as the newly designed learning environment will endure in the long term and the developed didactics and methodology will be exemplary and transferable to other professions. The occupational fields from the above mentioned areas should be made more attractive for female students by redesigning the learning environment and the didactics and methodology, as these are hardly to be found here.
The original idea of the project was to establish a connection between vocational schools and innovative companies in the fields of electronics, electrical engineering, robotics and mechatronics. The project goal was to have classrooms planned and designed by students based on the model of startups from the above-mentioned sectors in such a way that a pleasant and conducive teaching and learning environment is created. Due to the Corona Pandemic, however, the project goals that should have been reached in the course of visiting companies have not been set up. The first two meetings (C1 and C2) took place under pre-corona conditions and therefore as planned. The focus was on getting to know each other and acquiring basic knowledge in order to be able to work successfully on the project. For example, there was a lecture on the legal forms of companies. The teachers exchanged information about modern teaching and learning techniques (cooperative forms of learning) that would have been used in the new learning environment. In addition, the rooms that should have been redesigned during the project period, were inspected and measured. The meetings C3 - C5 served to process those project goals, which could still be achieved without visiting companies and redesigning the classrooms, which were in particular the gain of intercultural skills but also of professional competence in the field of programming of processors and application of 3D - or of Smart House programs. The sustainability of the project has also turned out to be much less than hoped for, but the following points should be mentioned here. Since then, the methodical considerations on cooperative forms of learning have been regularly applied in the classroom. Furthermore, this first KA2 project between the two schools has resulted in a new KA2 project because of the crisis they have mastered together. All participants were able to increase their intercultural and professional competence through the project and thus increase their willingness to be mobile within Europe.