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Technical Development, Innovation and Leadership i..
Technical Development, Innovation and Leadership in European Mobility Projects
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Gothenburg Technical College is the result of a unique private/public sector collaboration between Volvo Car Corperation, Volvo Group and the municipalty of Gothenburg. The College is jointly owned and managed by both organizations. The purpose of GTC is to provide high quality technical education within the technical industrial sector. GTC has for many years sent about 35 students abroad in Europe each year to do their internships. GTC works with internationalisation throughout the entire organisation and is one of the objectives from our owners The need for highly educated staff that has experience from mobility and international coorperation is crucial for the industry to survive and develop. The need for good language skills is necessary for a global company of today. The language and technical development from experiencing different methods used in our partner countries is a key for both our Upper Secondary students, adult learners and staff to have the know-how and experience for high employabitlity. The companies in the industry need skilled employees within Research & Development and leadership, which are our objectives with the project, to be more competitive and manage through recessions and in return create jobs.
The internships are planned to take place in the industrial sector in Belgium, France, Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy and Latvia. The participants of this mobility project consist of young workers, employed by Volvo Cars Cooperation, studying their 3rd year at GTG. They undergo a special designed industrial technical program. Work life integration is part of their training. The international work life training is planned during 5 - 8 weeks. Locating work place training to another European country will increase the participants’ employability on an international market. Many modern European manufacturing industries are forced to be in the leading edge of developing new techniques and methods, that’s why companies change faster than schools. In the work place training in companies with high level of technological competence in Europe, the participants will be able to learn and work with updated technology. Through international training the students will also be better prepared for industrial mobility in the future, since they have improved their knowledge of a foreign language and gained experiences of intercultural communication. The partners are chosen on the basis of long-term relationship and consist of schools, organizations and companies from our previous projects; Q-placement, i2i and EAPP. Latvia is a new partner for us, and we are very eager to start working with them. The project aims to improve quality of technical development and innovation and the course leadership and organization. The participants of this mobility project will study how research & development differs and how it is similar in Sweden from our partner organisations as well as how leadership and organisation differs. There is much to learn, both for our students abroad and for our students that will meet participants here in Göteborg. This year we also want to increase the mobility for our adult learners. This is also crucial for our staff, to keep the high level of skills within the technical and industrial sector.
One way of evaluating the quality is to make the participants evaluate their experiences of the internship period. By working with their awareness about their own social competences by using self assessment tools we have seen they have grown as individuals during their stay abroad. The self assessments methodology has been integrated in all classes doing their last year at GTC and is something we want to work more with the adult learners. An important aspect of the Learning Outcomes in this project are not only the technical development in mechatronics, telematics and technical design, but also the intercultural and social skills. We have developed a tool for students to do a self assessment and we have lessons for each class to work with social skills, leadership styles and discuss companies' expectations. The lessons have been positive evaluated by the students and has along with the knowledge acquired abroad been very valuable for their life-long learning and for their opportunities in finding jobs with this experience in their CV's. Recruiting young people in leadership is a challenge for the companies in the industrial sector in Sweden. With this project we aim to strengthen the participants for the future in this regard.
The benefits are numerous;
• Improve technical skills for future employment in the industrial sector.
• develop greater awareness of the social, political, and cultural environment of the host country
• increase their networking and employability opportunities
• develop transferable skills, such as problem solving, teamwork, communication, decision-making, autonomy and flexibility
• increase independence and self-confidence