The project 'Promoting Accreditation of Learning' (PAL) is a KA2 for the Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices under the Action of Strategic Partnerships in the Field of Strategic Partnerships of Vocational Education and Training.This 24 month project ran from September 2014 to August 2016.The partners were City of Dublin Education and Training Board, Ireland (CDETB), Kodolanyi Janos Foiskola, Hungary (KJF), Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania (KTU) and Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna w Lodzi, Poland (AHE) with Belfast Metropolitan College, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom being the lead partner.Belfast Met & CDETB initiated the project and searched for other European countries which were experiencing similar challenges in the area of PAL in their education systems. Hungary, Poland and Lithuania were identified as the countries that would most benefit in a sharing process with Ireland and Northern Ireland as regards having a mechanism to capture the formal and informal process of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for VET tutors.The profile of the five organisations was an important element in the selection process in the context of securing a mix of core pedagogical elements that could be pulled together to produce the effective mechanisms that are essential for capturing tutors’ formal and informal learning.VET programmes are core elements of the partners included in this project. One of the key objectives of this project was to promote and strengthen peer to peer learning within VET areas. Learning champions exist in most VET organisations; they are those tutors who undertake informal sharing of their resources, expertise and strategies with others and promote the value of learning to others. They act as “pals” to others and as role models/champions for learning but are often unrecognised and their contribution is not captured by Human Resources department for either trainer or trainee. Project Objectives and Main Activities achieved1.Establish how the VET sector currently recognises and accredits tutors’ formal CPD;2.Identify the breadth of informal VET sector professional learning opportunities that are available as cost effective and sustainable mechanisms to support and enhance formal CPD;3.Design an organisational system of recognising, recording and rewarding informal professional learning activities and achievements (CPD credits) aligned to the strategic objectives of an organisation and national priorities;4.Produce a Toolkit of strategies to support the informal sharing of learning from professional experiences;5.Produce a recording tool to monitor, track and verify individual professional learning;6.Recognise role models within organisations as champions of learning/learning professionals through accreditation/certification; and 7.Share the project outcomes with the VET and wider sectors responsible for professional learning.Through this project’s outputs, VET organisations can foster a climate which will enable collaborative informal learning, both planned and incidental, to thrive, be recognised and aligned to their strategic objectives to create a culture of VET learning champions.The target groups are VET tutors, managers, organisations and policy makers. The project aims to support the professionalisation of VET tutors and managers in VET participants in the partner countries in the areas of IT and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This will be achieved through the development and testing of a toolkit, framework and tracking tool based on research of existing practice to support them to engage in informal learning and allow organisations to capture, assess and accredit informal learning activities aligned to their strategic objectives. They will also have the opportunity to have their informal learning acknowledged through the recognition of learning champions as a sustainable and cost-effective contribution to a VET organisation's management of its CPD programme.Although the project has ended, the website www.palcpd.eu remains live and members of public and other institutions are welcome to access the materials and adapt them to use within their own organisations for the purpose of promoting the sharing of informal learning and recognising those tutors who had contributed to the process.

"The Berufskolleg Dieringhausen is a college with a wide range of general education and vocational training. About 2800 students are enrolled in fulltime and part time classes in the professional fields of Consumer Sciences/Hotel Business, IT and Technology, Construction and Health and Social Care on different levels. Our college is attended by students from more than thirty different nations. The project aims at using ""Erasmus+"" to give young people the possibility to do parts of their vocational training abroad, irrespective their ethnic and financial background. Linked to this are goals like improving chances on the labour market, enhance a European identity and intercultural competences as well as enhancing language competences. Participating teachers and other staff members will enlarge their knowledge about different systems in vocational training, exchange their experiences and will be enabled to prepare and follow students before, during and after their internship. 28 students will pass an internship abroad, between three and eight weeks. We have a long experience with our partners in France and UK. For the first time students from our department ""Health and Social Care"" will absolve an internship in a bilingual nursery school in Spain. Teachers of our school will prepare all participants and support them in any organisational question. Mentoring and support during the stay abroad will be assured by our local partners and visiting teachers from our school. Working in multinational teams has become normal in Germany. Work placements abroad will open to our students an experience to be ""foreign"" and to develop tolerance and understanding for different points of view and approaches. At long term we wish to increase the number of students of our school who profit from international programs and would like to promote the exchange between all partners in vocational education."

"There is a growing realisation that digital technology has a role to play within VET programmes and services. Many see such technologies as having the potential to enhance existing learning provision and in enabling new forms of learning, which are captured under the term Technology-enhanced Learning (TEL). However, the use of TEL across European VET providers is patchy and there is a lack of professional practice knowledge in relation to implementing fundamental change in the sector using approaches such as blended-learning.Blend4VET is a TEL project proposal focusing specifically on how blended-learning approaches can expand learning opportunities while also enhancing existing quality of learning programmes. By implementing and trying out different blended learning approaches project partners will learn from this experiment and take on board the key lessons for their organisations.Project objectives:1. Explore and document a process the VET provider should follow when moving an existing accredited programme to a blended model and develop a Toolkit to guide other VET providers in designing and implementing blended-learning approaches.2. Design and implement five blended learning units for different VET con-tent areas as part of existing accredited course for VET learners.3. Explore what implications blended-learning will have the VET institutions, the role of the VET tutor and learners.4. Enhance the professional practice knowledge of VET management, principals and teachers in relation to implementing blended-learning through engaging them in a dialogue and professional development activities.5. Explore how VET providers can work together to develop quality learning resources that can be used across VET programmes.6. Disseminate project outcomes across EU Member States.The project consortium is comprised of 6 organisations from 5 European countries bringing a wide range of technological and pedagogical knowledge and experience. The project partners are 5 VET organisations (Belfast Metropolitan College from Northern Ireland, City of Dublin ETB from Ireland, Koning Willem 1 College from the Netherlands, Tartu Vocational Education Centre from Estonia and Usurbil Vocational School from Basque Country in Spain) along with an e-Learning services and consultancy organisation, H2 learning from Ireland. Furthermore, the project is supported by two Associate Partners - BBC Northern Ireland and SOLAS Further Education and Training Authority in Ireland.The Target group of the project are:• VET Senior management (internal and external stakeholders)• VET Principals• VET Teachers• VET Students• Employers• Private training providers• Awarding Bodies (state and private)This project will select 5 existing face-to-face accredited courses and identify elements that can be piloted in a blended way. The project will carry out an audit of what elements of the courses might work best online and then test this out with 10 teachers, 100 learners, employers and other stakeholders.The focus here is on experiencing how this can be done, by capturing the lessons learnt and in engaging with partner organisations to develop innovative solutions to the challenges encountered. The project will explore the change management process involved in implemented a more harmonised approach across VET institutions that will ultimately increase student retention rates, graduation rates and employment opportunities.The project will develop a number of outcomes:1. “What constitutes good Blended Learning in VET?” Module which will aim to prepare VET teachers from partner organisations to develop and design quality learning content that will be delivered in a blended way.2. Five VET blended learning units – elements of accredited VET programmes which have been redesigned for blended learning and piloted in partner countries3. ""Building Capacity for Blended Learning - Leading Innovation and Change"" Module4. Case studies of blended learning in VET which will capture the process and the implications and the impact this new approach had on partner organisations, teachers, learners and employers.5. Toolkit for Blended Learning in VET which will guide other VET providers in designing and implementing blended-learning approachesThe Toolkit will capture the process a VET provider should follow when moving an existing accredited programme to a blended model, where some elements are offered in a face-to-face setting and others are offered online.The experience from the project will inform the review and/or development of strategic of the VET organisations and will provide valuable knowledge on how to design and implement blended learning programmes within VET organisations. It will inform how VET providers should go about identifying programmes that lend themselves to a blended learning approach and how they can go about designing and implementing such programmes."

Context/Background of the project: The project came about through exploratory discussions with colleagues from Belfast, Krakow and Dusseldorf surrounding the importance for our students to experience social engagement in a variety of contexts. It was agreed that the students from the three countries could experience this best through engaging with children in a number of different placement settings in a variety of contexts including working with refugees, the homeless and the travelling community which reflects those in society who are marginalised. Objectives/Description of Activities/ Methodology/Results/impact envisaged:• We want students to experience the opportunity to gain working practice abroad. The main objective is to give the students an opportunity to get to know a foreign culture and the daily routines of a typical kindergarten/school abroad whose key cohorts are mainly from socially deprived and marginalised backgrounds. They are expected to conduct themselves on a professional level where they are embedding and integrating within these environments, adapting their practice to meet the needs of the children they are working with while closely observing/recording holistic child developments and comparing this to normative milestones. • Furthermore, the students are expected to design and execute (perform) pedagogic activities with the children building relationships and learning from each other; what do we have in common and why are we different; reinforcing the value and benefits of understanding and embracing inclusion and diversity . • Ongoing reflection is a key and integral aspect of this project; Staff and students will meet on three separate occasions to pause and reflect about what kind of learning has taken place. This will be important in feeding back into the curriculum of each partner setting in Krakow, Belfast and Dusseldorf while empowering students in dessiminating to others what they have learned and experienced. This will allow us to consider and compare our European values across the three contexts.Number and Profile of Particpants From Dusseldorf we will be sending 20 students and 10 staff in total to Belfast and Krakow over 24 months.

The aim of the Live Skills project was to tackle skills gaps in the Creative and Cultural Sector (CCS) and more specifically in the Audio Visual (AV) and Live Performance (LP) sectors and offer new innovative training to upskill students and cultural professionals in the areas of digital and new technologies, arts management and cultural entrepreneurship, responding to current market needs and modernising VET systems in the UK, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. The Live Skills Alliance was composed of a consortium of nine partners across 4 countries - including expert VET providers in the sector, associations of both employers and cultural professionals, a national accreditation and certification body, a cultural organisation and two European wide associated partners. Live Skills project has designed and delivered three comprehensive and innovative vocational education and training programmes for students and professionals in the Audio Visual and Live Performance sectors, after a thorough research which included desk research, surveys, personal interviews and focus groups, as well as evidence-based process and qualitative findings which identified current trends and skills needs in those sectors in the countries in focus. These results fed into the design of the three new training programmes/curricula, which were then tested through a two-stage pilot of courses and seminars following a blended learning methodology and culminated with a number of short work placements in cultural institutions and creative businesses. More than 655 learners have taken part in the training in the four countries and approximately 100 of them have been offered short work placements in about 25 cultural organisations in Bulgaria, Greece and the UK. The curricula have been made available for free use under creative commons licence on the project’s website that will remain operational for two more years in order to reach and impact a maximum number of stakeholders and learners, alongside with all other resources produced at various stages of the project addressed to students, cultural professionals, teachers, VET providers, employers in the sector as well as education authorities and policy makers. These 200+ free resources altogether, make a significant and holistic contribution to modernising VET education in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and the UK and boosting the cultural sector’s capacity to grow and respond to current and future market needs.The project also disseminated its outputs through the organisation of information days, participation in events organised by other stakeholders, a final international conference turned into a webinar during the COVID19 confinement, and the organisation of sustainability taster and demonstration workshops and policy symposia during the last phases of the project’s implementation, engaging other VET providers, education authorities and stakeholders at large. More than 5000 people in the EU accessed information and materials via the project’s events, website and social media pages. A robust Quality Assurance mechanism has accompanied the project throughout, and a Quality Assurance report was one of the project’s deliverables. In addition, an Evaluation and Quality Assurance Panel was formed, which had regular meetings, offering reviews and recommendations for every deliverable of the project, ensuring that the three curricula were of high quality and aligned with ECVET and EQAVET and that accreditation and transferability could be pursued further following the official closure of the project. Long-term procedures for Quality Assurance and accreditation of the curricula were among the outputs and will potentially support recognition and accreditation processes beyond the lifespan of the project. Finally, an Evaluation Report was produced by an external independent Evaluator which has followed the project throughout, and which reports very positive assessment of the project’s achievements and its quality.