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Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: Sep 30, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
For the academic year 2015/2016 the REACT Consortium (Realise your Abilities and Competencies through Training) didn’t change its composition in terms of members (Università Iuav di Venezia as a coordinator and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, the University of Trento, the University of Sassari, the University of Verona, the Free University of Bolzano and the Polytechnic of Bari as sending partners).
As for the previous year (2014/2015) the management of the Consortium has been very well-planned, there was no need to add any change in the partnership. The result of the good collaboration came to light in the final feedback of the participants (93,85% were satisfied / very satisfied with their mobility period) and in the final score given by the National Agency (94/100). The good results of last year’s management have pushed all the members to commit to working hard in order to keep the same results for the academic year 2015/2016.
The number of traineeships funded by EU grants in the academic year 2015/2016 (56 beneficiaries) has outnumbered the number of mobility established by the agreement (54 beneficiaries). Unlike the academic year 2014/2015, the funds obtained have all been spent. In addition to the grants financed by EU fundings, 54 placements (against 29 traineeships carried out last year) were activated thanks to the funding coming from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Reasearch (from now on called “MIUR”) reserved for Consortia. These figures show an increase of the mobility flows and an improvement in the management of the available funds.
Following the allocation of the budget, Iuav has drafted a few simple guidelines to be handed out via email to the partners in order to settle the management of the project. The guidelines included: the budget allocation criteria; the target groups of the programme; the duration of the placement; a possible common schedule for the launch of the call; the minimum requirements for applicants and the selection procedures.
The grants included both those financed by EU funds as well as those financed by MIUR. The grants were distributed according to the previous year's performance of each institution and the number of applications received during the past edition.
The programme was opened to all target groups: students of the first, second and third study cycle and recent graduates.
In general, the average duration of the internships was three months. However, during this year's programme some beneficiaries found it useful to ask for an extension of the mobility (two / three months) in order to complete the activities assigned. As far as possible, the required extension period has been paid.
Most of the partners published their call within the first months of 2016. Only two institutions failed to award all the grants funded by MIUR. The coordinator promptly proceeded to allocate the remaining grants to the other members of the project.
The reallocation of the funding took place on another occasion, that is, when a traineeship had to stop because of force majeure: the part of the grant that wasn’t assigned was spent to finance the required extensions.
The evaluation criteria shared by all the members included average grade, linguistic knowledge (B1 level), internship project (motivation letter) and the CV.
Each institution created a web page for the project on which relevant documents have been published. Each partner carried out the selection process in a fair and transparent way following the criteria established by the guidelines.
A first important support to the beneficiaries was offered by every sending institution: the staff supported students in finding a suitable host partner and in filling in the Learning Agreement, that before the mobility was signed by the host partner and the academic tutor.
Iuav, the coordinator, took care of the administrative part of the project, the release of the participants’ financial agreement, the payments and the allocation of language licenses. Before the launch of the calls, Iuav prepared a short handbook that was distributed to the beneficiaries of the Consortium.
Monitoring and follow-up with beneficiaries were undertaken by all the sending institutions. At the end of the mobility, each partner proceeded to award ECTS credits (for those who did an undergraduate placement) and the coordinator released the Europass Mobility certificates to all participants.