By broaden and deepen the students' professional knowledge, we wanted them to develop their professional identity through internships at companies in different countries. The internship gives the students experience of other cultures and a network outside of Sweden and raise their career opportunities abroad within the industry and technology areas. The business development exchange to the SKF Research & Technology Development Center in Utrecht in the Netherlands would improve the staff's knowledge of future industry with a focus on sustainability work and the possibilities of digitization. The visit to the vocational school would inspire the staff to use learning platforms as a support in teaching because the school was implementing a new learning platform at the time for increasing the use of digital support. By inviting supervisors from receiving organizations to participate in the conference "Lifelong learning" and conduct a workshop, students and teachers would be prepared for the upcoming internship period and the supervisors would learn more about the school's curriculum and the students' professional knowledge before internship.
The purpose of the project was to give our students the opportunity to live and work for a longer time in another country, which increases the motivation of our students who have something to look forward to, and helps the students to grow into a global society where they can see both pros and cons of living and working in different countries where everything isn’t "served" like at home. As a student, living in another country for a longer period gives better understanding of cultural differences and similarities between countries and organizations and better language skills. In the workplace, the professional knowledge and professional identity of both students and staff are strengthened. The purpose for staff exchange was to learn more about technology and digitalization with focus on future industry, sustainability issues and not least how these different parts affect and are affected by the possibilities of digitization. Since our staff often job shadow in the organizations where students do their internships, there are also good opportunities to improve collaborate and develop the APL process, improve the connection between subject/courses and internships, and spread "Best Practice" between the consortium's various partners.