"The increasing complexity of current and future technical processes requires training that meets the demands. Skilled workers are confronted with increasingly complex systems that can only be mastered through experience and training. The training period ties up personnel and thus entails costs and should be minimized as much as possible. With their service-oriented view, companies are also confronted with these issues and are looking for solutions. For vocational training and thus for skilled workers 4.0, this development raises questions about content and methodology.The technologies of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality can provide support in this endeavor. This project aims at establishing practice-oriented cooperation between vocational schools and companies and developing concrete teaching material in this promising area. The cooperation takes place on a national as well as European level in order to establish a broad exchange of experience on VR and AR technologies and possibilities of their application. Thus, in this project, participating partners from Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain explore and test AR and VR technologies to prepare them for use in school lessons. An interdisciplinary approach pursued in this project enables most diverse disciplines and departments from local, regional and European levels to develop the AR and VR technologies with their own views and procedures, against different backgrounds and levels of previous knowledge, and to disseminate them as innovation multipliers.The five participating partners are technical vocational schools from Germany (BBS Osnabrück-Brinkstraße), the Netherlands (ROC Friese Poort, Sneek), Finland (Tampereen Kaupunki, Tampere), Italy (ISIS ""Città di Luino - Carlo Volonté"", Luino) and Spain (I. E. S. Politècnico de Vigo). A total of 40 students and 18 teachers were recruited for the project. The companies in various industry sectors were selected to join the project according to their interest and their opportunities to support in the area of AR and VR.A joint workshop LTAA1 lays a common content and technological foundation and serves as a basis for developing possible applications of AR and VR technologies in the local and regional setting. Against this background, students, assisted by the company and school, create and independently implement company-based learning situations. From these learning situations, they develop learning arrangements for school lessons, test them in their own school and adjust them for the upcoming LTTA2. In the next step, the students implement and analyse the adjusted learning tasks at the LTTA2 in mixed European groups. These evaluated learning tasks are subsequently implemented in all partner schools, adapted to their own needs and conditions. The results and adjustments are finally evaluated together with all project partners. In the end, the finalised teaching material is presented in a local setting and made available to the general public via the project website. Targeted project results:•teaching material in the form of concrete learning situations from the cross-sector industrial environment with real company-based problems and tasks at local, regional and European level•initiation, dissemination and deepening of workplace-based and self-organized learning (VET 4.0)•expertise in the field of AR and VRThe long-term benefits of the project include:•development of ideas on new teaching and learning methods in the context of VET 4.0•implementation and consolidation of the partners’ “best practice” strategies •optimization of cooperation between companies and schools•intermeshment of practical and theoretical training•strengthening of the European cooperation between schools and companies•improvement of cooperation between learning locations in VET•building and strengthening of transnational networks at different levels•development of new ideas for improvement of operational processes•further development of participants’ professional skills, problem-solving skills, social skills and personal responsibility"

Based on a meeting of professionals in 2017 in Spain (Lleida), the project aims to enhance and step up the exchange already in progress towards a structured, cross-disciplinary professional dialogue. Expanding the project physically by the Italian region of Rovereto and by including Don Milani vocational high school with its focus on social services and health as a new partner is an important step to reach this goal. Target groups are counselling centres and management of early child education, care and education, teachers at vocational schools as well as representatives of providers and professional staff of local administration. The project will help to bring on cross-disciplinary discourse and understanding between the players involved in light of expanding the capacities for care and support, and improving the quality of child day care. A special focus is on introducing digital technologies in early child education, care and education. Expanding child day care means quantity as well as quality of early child education, care and education. Therefore, linking practical and theoretical aspects in vocational training and development receives special attention. This will provide the possibility to identify new social developments and challenges from a practical point of view and include these topics to vocational curricula. In addition to a high-quality professional training in theory and practice, an important point is raising the interest of trainees-to-be for the social profession and creating strong ties with this field of work. Topics will be considered within a European context and discussed with Spanish and Italian professional staff. Among other things, the participants will gain from reviewing their own attitudes, considering other perspectives, learning from European partners and broadening their knowledge through constructive cooperation while stepping up their own professional process. To achieve this, strengthening of intercultural competences, of techniques and cooperation skills as well as European skills is essential and will be especially fostered during the course of the project. Within the time period of the project, a learning activity will be held in each of the partnering countries with the aim that participants get to know each other and the local socio-cultural aspects and take part in an exchange on the scheduled key issues in formal settings such as presentations and lectures as well as part of training visits and talks. This will also provide opportunities for informal dialogues beyond professional issues and may relate to local culture and circumstances of the towns and countries involved. This will support friendly contacts and encounters. With long-term significance of the project in mind, structures of communication and interaction as well as networking with our partners will be improved and continued, and where possible expanded to other European countries. Digital networking and awareness for the European dimension in early child education will be firmly and sustainably fixed in the participating partners' routines to ensure continued and successful cross-border cooperation and a constructive, joint handling of challenges in the future. In this way, we aim to facilitate the long-term process of European experience and cooperation.

"Based on the Figures from Office of the European Union (Eurostat), the unemployment rate in the euro-area in February 2015 was 11.2%. A major problem that remains, above all in the southern and eastern European states is the high unemployment of youth under the age of 25 years. In accordance with the objectives of the Europe agenda 2020, this project aims to promote the employment and mobility of trainees, school and university students through the enhancement of linguistic and intercultural competences. Language skills are keys to modernizing the European education system and improving socio-economic structures. Improving the language skills of trainees, school students´ and university students’ resulting in increased mobility and opportunities for integration into the European labor market. Poor language skills prevent professional mobility abroad and affect the competitiveness of European companies and organizations in an international level.In the ""Didactic-methodical Concepts for Vocational Language preparation as a Contribution to European Vocational Education"" project, the school administrations of Lleida and Osnabruck, together with their eight partners, develop competent practical lectures and experiences of Spanish speaking students and students pursuing German as foreign language. Secondly, it provides vocational students, job-related foreign language skills (DaF), intercultural competences and cultural knowledge.The project leaders were the school administrations, the Spanish school inspectorate, vocational schools of the both regions, the universities of Bremen and Jena as well as a learning location for disadvantaged youth. The project activities were determined by the topics planning, monitoring and evaluation of vocational education in Spanish vocational schools. Through the didactic-methodical conception of the communicative job-oriented teaching of German as foreign language (DaF), a long-term lesson planning should be achieved in connection with the development and testing of vocational teaching materials for the teaching of lexical, morphological and syntactic structures. The project outcomes were available on the internet and in the print media. The focus is on a website with the project results conjugation trainer, vocabulary instructor and a picture glossary. Further planned project results, such as a methodology manual with exemplary teaching materials, instructions for application training and materials for teaching intercultural and regional learning contents were not comprehended.It also focused on the internationalization of teacher education by teaching abroad, improving the foreign language skills of German students and developing co-operation between vocational education and training institutions and establishing cooperation between educational training institutions. The aim was to develop, use and disseminate innovative and Lerner/student-centered pedagogical approaches to improve language proficiency concerning professional education. The main goal of this project, in addition to increasing the language skills and the creation of methodical-didactic concepts for teaching, was the evening out the European educational level. The special and innovative aspect of this project was that German students of various professional orientations (German as foreign language and Romance studies) and the participating educational institutions of both countries developed subject-specific teaching contents that can be adopted and applied by other European educational institutions as well. The whole project is transferable to other European partner countries both in terms of organization and content. The sustainability of the project results from the activities and using of language learning and language teaching for both stakeholders and other European partners."

"The future Smart Factory with the increasing degree of digitization and complexity of production and maintenance processes requires training that meets these requirements. The key element and the main aim of this project was to initiate, expand and standardize the learning cooperation between vocational colleges and companies using the example of energy management in the times of Industry 4.0. Companies can enrich education through current practical problems and their solutions as well as through technical infrastructure. This integration of theory and practice can appear highly motivating for both students and teachers. For the reality is more complex and not as predictable as the next page in a book and thus always represents a challenge for students and teachers. Thus, learning cooperation can also be considered as advanced training for all parties involved in VET.The cooperation took place both at national and European level and allowed for wide-ranging exchange of experience on technological possibilities and perspectives, as well as methodological approaches in education in general, and in particular in the area of workplace-based learning. The project involved four vocational colleges from Italy, Estonia, the Netherlands and Germany as well as cooperating companies. All students involved in the project are receiving training in electrical engineering or mechatronics. They were supported by their instructors and teachers.Through the joint launch of learning arrangements, this project collected, tested, questioned and optimized the ""best practice"" approaches in the learning cooperation of the participating European partner schools. This took place in two runs, each consisting of an operational implementation phase and a Learning Teaching Training Activity. On the one hand, it was about finding the problem and the solution. On the other hand, the task-related subject-specific content was prepared and tested by the students, before being passed on to the European partners in the form of a creative lesson sequence. The students could choose the content themselves after consulting the company. In the first run, the focus was on energy management and in the second run on company-specific contents regarding the Industry 4.0.As the students carefully and independently developed, tested and performed their company-specific work assignments and learning arrangements for the Learning Teaching Training Activity, they were able to develop their skills for coping with future practical tasks. In addition, the project language was English, so a further professional and interpersonal challenge could be dealt with. On the one hand, the teachers involved in the project were able to gain new ideas in the technological spectrum of Industry 4.0 as well as initiate a substantive discussion with regard to the future 4.0 skilled worker. This was mainly about the generation of possible work areas in the aforementioned spectrum and the creation of concrete learning situations. On the other hand, as already described, the cooperation between learning locations was initiated, tested and assessed in collaboration with the European partners. Furthermore, a methodological guideline for standardization was cooperatively developed. The following goals were thus achieved by the project:1. Method optimization regarding: a. previous approaches. b. the independence of the trainees in the sense of self-organized learning. c. cooperation between companies and educational institutions (cooperation between learning locations). 2. Exposing new relevant learning content in the context of ""Industry 4.0"". 3. Creation or strengthening of networks.Teaching in the form of a learning situation with a practical task was new in this form for the partner schools. This ""best practice"" approach in combination with ""self-organized learning"" and ""students teach students"" is innovative and requires an open educational landscape. Because only by “opening up” is it possible for students to live out their creativity, develop ideas and solutions, present and integrate them."

The project came about due to a significant increase over time of additional support being made available to students suffering from anxiety, particularly linked to exam pressure. The ability of VWNC students to perform under pressure has become a serious issue for both the college and the students, impacting on the results they achieve and their preparedness for progression onto university and employment and the pressures they will face in those environments. Current strategies support students with stress and anxiety to some extent, but are not always proving to be very effective at improving performance of the students under pressure. Although it is accepted that for all people exams, assessments or presentations can be a stressful experience, a growing number of young people seem ill equipped with the strategies to cope and this can disproportionately affect their outcomes and hence life chances. The project’s overarching aim was to address this particular need which is increasing and impacting on the well-being of young people as well as giving students, teachers and trainers from participating institutions an opportunity to share their own perceptions on dealing with issues around pressure, and trial new strategies as adopted by partner institutions to help foster resilience and to reduce anxiety. It is hoped that this will aid students to perform better under pressure and get the best possible results from their courses. In addition, the project strategies strategies will help students to cope better with the transition to higher education and employment. Objectives • Identify and implement strategies at the point of enrolment and on programme to build resilience in order to develop a more self-assured student. • Engage with students to develop appropriate student centred approaches for dealing with pressure and improving outcomes. • Share best practice with fellow professionals to improve the effectiveness of support. • Carry out student surveys to measure the impact of the project. • Develop a range of strategies to support the transition to higher education and employment. Needs and Target GroupsThe project focused on the needs of two different groups. Firstly, students with anxiety who are undertaking exam based qualifications and secondly students on exam based qualifications not currently presenting any symptoms of anxiety. This is in recognition that some strategies will be preventative whilst others will help minimise anxiety levels. While the UK group focused on those undertaking A Levels and/or Applied General qualifications, the project partners selected groups that undertake appropriate assessments that require students to perform under pressure and deal with any potential anxiety issues to ensure they perform to their full potential. TransnationallyVWNC students come from a range of schools with no discernible differences in terms of student resilience to the pressures of exam performance. As there is no hard evidence of work being undertaken in the UK to address this issue, we are therefore currently following what would be best practice in terms of support for these students in the UK and it is not having the type of impact we would expect. This project was carried out transnationally in order to explore significantly different practices and determine whether strategies practices in different countries are proving effective in improving performance students. We undertook a proper assessment by both looking at our own practices and comparing them internationally with the aim of developing new approaches that will have the potential to significantly improve the outcomes for students and develop an approach that can be utilised across a range of different institutions in the UK and Europe.