The partnership identified poor training standards and a lack of commitment from academics and company facilitators, not giving training the importance it should have. The aim of i-WOBAL was to build up an international WBL model through an online training space for the academic and company facilitators to develop an innovative and more effective teaching-learning process that would revert to the improvement of student employability and adjust it to what companies need, training students specifically on market`s demand. We actively involved all parties (companies, HE centres, and facilitators) by showing them the importance of proper training and how it can positively impact each one of them. On top of everything else, the project also managed to achieve fast adaptability to the different trends in the labour market, as the produced results are versatile products susceptible to change.
Work-based learning (WBL) is an educational model deeply rooted in some European countries moving forward with greater intensity in the last few decades. There are various types of WBL, and their characteristics and regulations depend on the country's legislation. Some countries have well-structured WBL systems with an extended implementation tradition, while others have recently introduced new dual-based learning systems promoting WBL. WBL has traditionally been associated with Vocational Education and Training (VET) and plays an essential role in many European educational systems. In the last few years, WBL has also been related to higher education (HE). It appears as a model of professionalisation as it strongly links the socioeconomic fabric with the academic offer. The need to create specific training adapted to the environment's requirements and the problem of youth unemployment has made this option a new model to be developed. i-Wobal identified and improved the needs of the current tutoring systems. New challenges and demands to our education systems require new competencies. Within this project we developed a learning guide and co-created a training school for WBL Facilitators for both academic and company backgrounds