Presenter Name Event Name

Virtual Mobility through Innovation Labs

Hilde Evers – Lieve Mulier – Robrecht Van Goolen VISIR Seminar 25-26 March 2014

www.visir-network.eu

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www.visir-network.eu

Virtual Mobility• Objectives

Explore and enlarge accessibility of international internships

• SectorHigher education

• ImpactAll stakeholders of internships:– Students: study genuine business problems and improve ICT, entrepreneurial

and cross-cultural communication skills– SMEs: improve business performance through innovative solutions– HEIs: new transferrable learning method

• Why is it innovative?New type of collaboration between all stakeholders

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The history of my practice• How did it start?

offer more flexible and cost effective ways to do an international internship

• Who financed it?through LLP project EU-VIP

• What problems/barriers we found along the way?technical failures, limited foreign language knowledge, finding mature students, getting businesses involved

• What creative solutions have brought us here?setting up a new learning method for international internships: Innovation Labs

• What we would change if we could?– define sectors that would be interested in virtual projects– find, involve (potential international) businesses fitting the required knowledge, competences – develop a user-friendly virtual platform

• What we would NOT change?– high commitment among all stakeholders – maturity-based selection of students– matching of the required competences

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The future of my practice

• Where will we be in 3 years? fine-tune a user-friendly platform for all stakeholders

• And in 10? have the virtual tool applied in a wider network of businesses, HEIs and students

• What would we need to make it scalable? - increase dissemination

- SMART strategies

- highly motivated stakeholders who adopt the practice in their organization