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Engineering Mobility in EUrope
Start date: Nov 15, 2014, End date: Nov 14, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

CONTEXT Europe has clearly defined its ambitions in learning mobility for 202 There is a strong focus on creating opportunities for young persons between 16-29 years old to be employable on an increasingly international job market. The new Erasmus for All program (2014-3020) objectives prioritize the expansion of learning mobility opportunities, the creation of strategic partnerships for VET education and the accreditation of learning mobility achievements, also through the use of the European ECVET Toolkit instruments. AIMS and PROFILES: VET education faces two challenges: 1. Engineering education in EU is not popular; there’s a clear need to increase the quality and attractiveness of this sector in European countries as there are many job opportunities for engineering students. Learning mobility in an international context will help to provide such opportunities. And challenge 2. opportunities for physical mobilities, i.e. working abroad are limited due to limited funds. Numbers of students participating in physical work placement initiatives are still quite low; in The Netherlands for example the number of VET students involved in mobility programmes is around 1% of the secondary VET population, i.e. 16-19 year olds. By focusing on both virtual and physical mobility a much higher number of students can gain access to knowledge, skills and competences gained in an international context. Access for young VET students to methods, practices and technologies used in other countries will help to improve their employability in a global economy: work-based learning is critical for employability at all education levels, particularly in the current context of extremely high youth unemployment. The Engineering Mobility across Europe (EMEU) partnership project supports these aims by creating an open network for sustainable (virtual) learning and working opportunities for Engineering students in VET education. NUMBERS: To boost learning mobility the network partners will create a minimum of 40 modules based on the format transferred from the Automotive project (www.automobility-in.eu) to suit their national and EU partner students. The latter group will come from 10 partners in 6 EU countries. The EU students will be offered a work placement experience period during or after the modules. ACTIVITIES and RESULTS: the 10 partners create at least 2 modules per vocational area involved, in all a minimum of 40 modules. The vocational areas are Electrical and Electronic Engineering (6 teams), Mechanical Engineering (4 teams), ICT (3 teams), Civil Engineering (Construction, 6 teams) and Cabinet/furniture makers (3 teams). The partners will also create a manual on virtual communication activities to be done between students prior to, during and after the project. Local and regional industry will play an active part in deciding the contents of the modules and in offering work placement opportunities to the EMEU partner students. All modules will be placed on the project website calendar, freely accessible (copy-left) by interested parties and they will be embedded in the partner’s engineering curricula to ensure quality and sustainability of this type of education which EMEU calls “Education in an International Context or EIC”. The modules will be will thus need to comply with criteria in the area of inspection, legal and quality assurance. Embedment strategies and procedures will be described in full for new EMEU partners. The EU ECVET Toolkit documents, to create transparancy and mutual trust amongst partners will be used alongside national, legal documents and procedures. IMPACT The project will have impact on various levels. The most important desired impacts are creating 1. high quality and sustainable mobility networks, 2. increased opportunities for staff and students to be internationally active.; 3. better relationships between education and industry on a local and/or regional level and to create a better understanding with both parties of demand (industry) and supply (education); on 4. opportunities to embed international activities in an educational context; no longer will we talk about Education ánd International project but about Education in an international context which will induce more VET colleges to becoming intrinsically motivated to be internationally active. LONG TERM BENEFITS The EMEU project creates an open network. All partners have been involved in mobility programmes for many years. As proven by the success of the Automobility project this EMEU project will 1. guarantee the commitment of partners to create sustainable mobility networks; 2. create opportunities to embed and valorise virtual and physical learning mobility opportunities for EU students; 3. reduce the workload of staff and students to find new work placement opportunities in the EU. In anticipation of the evaluators' reports regarding this project's submission, the network has already started the project unfunded.
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