Blended Academic International Mobility
Description:
The Erasmus+ project “blended Academic International Mobility” is an EU project being coordinated by IPP/Praxis. The aim of the project is to remodel international mobility and empower students’ employability by means of blended mobility.
One of the main purposes of higher education institutions is to provide students with the crucial tools to succeed in the global labour market. Professional life is nowadays heavily depending on mobility and demands professionals to excel in communication skills at an international, cross-cultural environment. However, soft skills, as well as international exposure, are rarely addressed by undergraduate courses. Blended mobility overcomes the typical barriers to mobility, thus allowing students to take advantage of the benefits that mobility and global exposure offer. However, regardless of its added value, blended mobility is hardly used and barely recognized as a serious alternative with great potential to overcome the common difficulties of international mobility.
The blended-AIM project sets the groundwork to endorse and structure blended mobility in general. In concrete, blended-AIM empowers international mobility and employability by providing the resources – including training, supporting tools and information – to assist students and companies hosting internships and by streamlining innovative teaching paradigms aimed to develop students’ soft skills in an international environment. This is the point where Praxis Network steps in, with its advisory role since it has long lasting experience and know-how in the field of Projects/Internships.
Methologies used
Undergraduate higher education students are engaged in an International team with students from several study areas and countries in Europe to develop a product for a company during their capstone project course. Task forces are organized for each task. Regular meetings are performed where tasks are assigned to each task force participant, while a 4 months’ virtual collaboration is established.
The students organize themselves according to their study areas. The teams may change from year to year but, usually, include students from computer engineering, management, graphical arts and marketing.
One of the benefit is that there is a real-life project assignment in a close collaboration with a company, with a co-creation process where the company can follow the project progress.
Status
Ongoing