Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014,
End date: Sep 30, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
The IES Santa Engracia is a vocational training center located in the center of Madrid. We offer different levels of vocational education in the fields of Personal Image (Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Image Consulting and Theatrical Make Up) and Textile, Clothing and Leather (Pattern Making and Fashion, Tailoring and Fashion). We offer three Higher Education Courses: Integral Aesthetics and Welbeing, Image Consulting and Pattern Making and Fashion. The center operates during daytime and evening hours so we have five higher education groups in total. Our students are predominantly young females.
Our institution received its first Higher Education Erasmus Charter in 2011 and subsequently a new ECHE was obtained for the 2014-2020 period. From that moment we have made an effort to find European companies which could provide good quality educational opportunities to our students. As a result of this search, we have signed ten Training Agreements with companies related to our fields of knowledge which have opened their doors to our students during their training in the workplace. The most relevant criteria for this search has been that the companies could provide good quality training opportunities, as well as a good student supervision and support.
The purpose of the project was to provide students of the five Higher Education groups the possibility of internship for training withing companies which is a final compulsory activity to get their Diploma. The objectives pursued with this project were:
- To provide quality learning opportunities for our mobile students.
- To improve the chances of future employment and career development opportunities.
- To improve their mastery of foreign languages.
- To improve their self-concept, since vocational students sometimes see themselves as inferior to university students.
- To open their minds to the world, since this was the first opportunity for some of the students to have an experience of life abroad.
- To get our teachers involved in European projects and to increase the international dimension of our institution.
This project involved five students: two from the Image Consulting course, two from the Pattern and Fashion, and a student from the Integral Aesthetics and Wellbeing.
The Pattern Making students carried out their internship at the Design department of a menswear clothing company in Malta. This company has been receiving our students for placement during three consecutive years. They carried out their activities under the supervision of the head of the design department and performed design analysis, industrialization and pattern grading and quality analysis of manufactured garments tasks.
The Image Consulting students held their mobility at the Front Office in a hotel in Malta, where they carried out activities of customer care and reception, claim and complaint management and group events' organization. The Integral Aesthetics and Wellbeing student was placed at The Spa of a luxury hotel in Malta, where she performed tasks of customer reception, applying beauty treatments, cosmetic products' retail sales and cosmetic stock management.
Regarding the results of the project, all planned mobilities with its full duration were achieved. One of the Image Consulting students got direct employment in the same position when she had performed her placement. The rest of the students considered their curriculum and their future employment prospects had improved with their internship. In most cases the improvement in the command of the English language was noticeable.
The project was disseminated at all stages in our European Project board and on our website. Mobile students have offered to provide their expertise and help in the promotion of our current projects. The students' mobility has enabled the establishment of cooperation with companies that are interested in receiving our teachers for short placements and experience exchange. The interest in language learning has also been increased amongst students and teachers willing to get involved in European projects in the near future. Somehow this project, even though small, is a step on tour way to make our institution more ionternational and open to Europe.
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