1. Development of high quality education and training programs 1.1 To enhance our teaching and learning through the use of innovative technology and curriculum ideas gained from our international exchanges. This is in line with the DDLETB strategic priority. 1.2 Enhance our humanities, healthcare and arts curriculum informed by best practice of our European partners. 1.3 Explore merging ecology, psychology and horticulture courses on offer 2. Development of high quality experiences for learners 2.1 To provide every student with international skills, either through mobility opportunities or a well thought out curriculum, so that we can prepare our students for the global market and opportunities of European citizenship. It also meets the DDLETB strategic priority 2.2 Provide our Erasmus students with the opportunity to attend language classes prior to travelling to their host country and provide an information session prior to departure that will include helpful knowledge about the culture of their host country including currency, climate and language apps like duo lingo. 2.3 Facilitate visiting Erasmus students the benefits of assistive technology and translation of lectures via Google translate into their native language. 3. Organization and Staff Development 3.1 To map out the future strategic direction of our international activities by creating an International Strategy for DCFE. 4. Effective communication and collaboration 4.1 To become a more international organization in the future with a strong local and international network.
Our first Erasmus + program was hugely successful in assisting the college build international bridges that have enhanced our teaching and learning through informal and formal exchanges. By continuing with the Erasmus program, we aim to develop a partnership that is sustainable and happens outside formal activities funded through Erasmus. Our International Strategy will address this. The vision of our European Development Plan is for students from DCFE to become active citizens of Europe so that they will acquire the competencies and skills necessary to access the global labour market, along with a heightened appreciation for lifelong learning, linguistic diversity and intercultural awareness. At an organisational level, our vision is to embed best practice in internationalisation across our curricula and systems to meet the current and future needs of our staff and VET learners. VET/FET students are not currently provided with the opportunity to gain or improve European language competency and we wanted to work towards improving this. We believed that the opportunity to provide 48 students with the opportunity to complete their work placement with our partner organisations to develop their sense of EU citizenship, support the awareness of transferable skills and the development of a love for lifelong learning. We believed the learner mobility experience would enhance and increase competencies and hone skills for employment for our participating learners in that they would be exposed to new and different methods of working. This we suggested would ensure that those participating would be equipped with enhanced skills, be more flexible and adaptable and thereby more responsive to an ever changing labour market. Lastly for our students we wanted to raise awareness of the opportunities afforded by Erasmus+ to learn in another jurisdiction and how this supported the integration of competencies, our hope at the time was that they would become ambassadors of Erasmus+ and encourage others to become involved in the future For our teaching staff we wanted to create the opportunity for our teaching community to identify and work with international partner organisations with a view to enhancing the European dimension of our work. Our aim “to facilitate professional development for VET staff” was in line with the SOLAS Professional Development Strategy 2017-2019, which identified wide ranging developmental needs in areas such as contemporary professional practice, subject and course related expertise and technology and systems to support the modern learning process and environment, and to introduce a new way of thinking about professional development and the benefits of lifelong learning, i.e. the teachers as learners in this context. In supporting the professional development and competence of teaching staff working in VET/FET we believed that this would enhance innovation, through new teaching methods, thereby improving the quality and inclusiveness of our VET/FET delivery at local, regional, national and international level. Our final aim was to raise awareness within DCFE of cultural similarities and differences and to promote a sense of European citizenship.