Context The enhancement of cross-border mobility of VET learners, trainers and staff has constantly been a reference in terms of increasing quantity, quality and effectiveness of the opportunities for building personal curricula through learning experiences abroad. The Erasmus+ Programme transversally fosters mobility of learners, educators and staff of educational institution across the different level of education. The Budget of the Programme was and is concentrated up to 60% of the overall investment in mobilities. As a result the number of mobilities has dramatically increased, also as a consequence of the choice of switching the Grant requests from individuals to institutions, requesting the last a big effort for being prepared to manage high number of mobilities. Within this context the project partnership, composed by VET institutions that are active in the field of Mobility both as hosts and as sending institutions have identified a specific area in which important step forwards should be addressed, that is providing VET Schools and Agencies with a stronger capacity to perform the daily management of high number of mobilities through digital based tools and processes. Target Groups The project addressed the needs of the 4 main actors in terms of the daily management of all the tasks that are part of the process of an appropriate planning, management, reporting and assessment of VET mobility initiatives: - Internal staff of the sending institutions - Internal staff of Hosting institutions - Staff of Companies hosting WBL mobilities - Participants in mobility initiatives Objectives The objective of the SoftMob project is to answer to the needs of all the actors playing a part in mobility project and experiences, by providing them with: - a complete software helping them to reduce the administrative and management burden of the different activities in order to better concentrate on the contents quality - A set of direct testimonials of the different protagonists to be used as reference Best practice to improve the effectiveness of the management of Mobility initiatives Outputs on Completion The SOFTMOB project focuses on providing the different actors a transnational based set of tools, processes and best practices aiming at improving the quality and effectiveness of VET mobility initiatives and projects. The expected results are: 1. The creation of a complete Software (IO2) to be used cooperatively by all actors playing a part in Mobility initiatives in order to appropriately manage the different administrative, coordination, monitoring, assessment and reporting tasks that are demanded reducing the operative burden and allowing to concentrate on the quality and consistency of the mobility experiences. Through the planning, implementation, testing and exploitation of the Software the SoftMob project will achieve the following results: - Sending institutions will be able to manage high numbers of mobilities (e.g. VET school organising a mobility for 100 VET students) minimising the impact of the administrative burden through operative tools allowing the staff to autonomously and effectively manage all the tasks related to the organisation, the monitoring, the assessment and the reporting through clear, automatic and replicable processes. - Hosting institutions, mainly tutor and administrative staff, will be able to interact directly and effectively with sending institutions and beneficiaries of the mobility initiative, through digital based processes and communication, in order to simplify the administrative burden through automatic, replicable and standard digitally based activities. - Companies hosting WBL based mobility initiatives (e.g. job shadowing, study visits, internships etc.), through their tutor will have the possibility to easily interact with the VET institution tutors, manage effectively administrative tasks including training agreements and regularly fill in reporting and assessing tools. - VET students and mobility participants will be able to easily access all the information related to their mobility initiative, manage autonomously and directly their documents and regularly report and evaluate their commitment to the foreseen tasks. 2. Through the creation, use, dissemination and exploitation of the Intellectual Output 1 – Case studies and interviews learning toolkit the SoftMob project will: - Provide all the actors of Mobility initiatives (as defined above) with exemplary best practices addressing selected challenges related to the management of the different phases of the mobility preparation, implementation and follow up. The best practices in addressing the challenges will take the form of direct interviews with the protagonists, allowing the users to have a direct, practical oriented and easy to use reference learning material to be used to improve the effectiveness of their workeveryday activities.
The SoftMob project aims to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the internal management processes of mobility projects and to reduce the administrative burden associated to the coordination of high numbers of mobilities in order to achieve a direct impact on VET institutions quantitative and qualitative involvement in international initiatives. The specific objectives were to answer to the needs of all the actors playing a part in mobility project and experiences, by : - Building a tailor made, complete, easy to use and flexible software to reduce the administrative and management burden of the different activities related to the planning, implementation and follow up of mobiity projects in order to allow the protagonists to better concentrate on the quality of the contents - A set of best practices and tools to be used as reference to improve the effectiveness of the management of Mobility initiatives and to motivate and involve more institutions and more people involved in VET to take part to mobility initiatives and exchanges The project fully met its expectations as demonstrated by the impact reports and by the end users testimonials available at: https://softmob.pixel-online.org/testimonials.php
The project consortium starting point was related to the long-lasting effort of enhancing cross-border mobility of VET learners, trainers and staff . Erasmus+ Programme concentrated up to 60% of the overall investment in mobilities, a tendency that has been further confirmed within the 2022 – 2027 Programme. As a result the number of mobility projects dramatically increased asking an important effort to institutions and actors involved to manage the administrative aspect without affecting the quality of the activities and results. Within this context the project partnership identified a specific need that was providing VET Schools and Agencies with a stronger capacity to perform the daily management of high number of mobilities through digital based tools and processes. Specific needs of the four main type of actors playing a part in the planning, implementation and follow up of VET mobility initiatives were defined both at planning stage and in the first part of the project activities (see interviews): - Staff of Sending institutions needed a technical support, stronger processes and standard forms and activities to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency in managing the different phases of their mobility projects - Staff of hosting and intermediary institutions needed to enhance the quality and consistency of the cooperation with sending institutions - Staff of companies / institutions hosting mobilities needed to increase the quality and effectiveness of the comunication with sending institutions on one side and participants on the other side - Participants needed more consistent process related to the organisational aspects of their mobility and more immediate interaction with the sending/hosting/company tutor