Euronet-PBL

Education, Practice & Research Promoting Practice-Based Learning in the Higher Education provisions for Business Administration, Engineering and Vocational Teacher Education

Project website: www.euronet-pbl.net

This project has been funded with support from the European Commissiom through the Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project Euronet-PBL develops a common approach to Practice-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning (PBL) in three areas of studies (vocational teacher education, business administration and engineering studies). In all these areas, existing models are promoting cooperation between universities and enterprises via supporting learning that engages students with real tasks and problems of the world of work. So far, PBL models have been used in different disciplines without shared quality criteria. Therefore, the development has been limited to individual university institutes and to their regional contexts.

The project creates a common evaluation tool for specifying the success factors and critical issues of current PBL arrangements. This tool is used to evaluate six PBL arrangements that represent the three areas of studies in six countries. The evaluation process is undertaken jointly by the participating universities, their partner enterprises and by external evaluators.

The expected impact of the project Euronet-PBL will be:

• at the European level the common framework (and the related products) provide a basis for knowledge transfer beyond the three areas of studies as well as the participating regions;
• at the domain-specific level the joint results (framework, guidelines, toolbox, exemplary cases and web resources) provide a basis for the enrichment of the PBL arrangements and cooperation arrangements;
• at the local and regional level the joint results and dissemination activities provide the basis for broader networking across pilot regions in which universities and enterprises are developing PBL-related cooperation;
• at the local level the tools and criteria developed by the project will enhance cooperation between companies and universities as well as stimulate new cooperation projects.

For the last three years we have been employing intern students at Pontydysgu. We try to provide a rich learning environment and involve the students in as many different aspects of our work as we can. And we also try to learn from intern students: from their experiences and knowledge. Especially interesting for us is cross cultural learning. Our first intern was from Wales, our second from Romania, our third from England and Anuraj who has been working with us this summer is from India.

Anuraj has recently returned to India where his university term starts next week. he has just sent us this account of his time in Pontydysgu.

“As this being my first blogpost at Pontydysgu blogs, here is my introduction:

I am Anuraj Dadhich, an undergraduate student of Interaction Design at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India.

Three months ago, after the completion of the sixth semester I was quite lucky to get this opportunity of being an intern at Pontydysgu during my summer holidays. The thought of getting involved with the European working culture for the first time was exciting but I was quite nervous too because as this also being a short term internship (like the previous one at Impelsys, Bangalore) I wanted to give and get the maximum out of it. Fortunately, I can say that what I got in these three months was much more than I expected. However, in the terms of “giving”, I cant say anything right now as it isn’t over yet

The first day of internship, was nothing less than a disaster for both of us (me and Graham). He came up with few of his brilliant ideas and I explained my previous works and experiences and that is funny but both were certainly different from each other. I was a downfall but didn’t last very long.

So, I decided to get myself acquainted with Pontydysgu and its work environment (which was so friendly, I felt like being in a family) and then tried to get myself adjust somewhere in it. This being in process, me and Graham just talked for hours about each other backgrounds, experiences and new ideas and it didn’t take much time to realise that my encounter with Pontydysgu was not a bad idea at all. Ask Graham about his mind turnouts but here are mine :

Since the last couple of years, I have been involved in various projects/internships/workshops which gave me a platform to apply my learnings in different environments/applications. So, my mind being constricted to that was expecting a similar internship this time also. But although this as a design intern and me definitely working as an interaction designer, was a different and spectacular one. This intern, makes me realise that you should never constrict yourself to something very specific because you never know what interests you the most and what you are best at until you experience it. Every experience adds something to every human and this is what I realise can be called as ‘learning’ and everyone does that either formally or informally.

I like internships because nobody here runs for grades, marks or impressing the professors. every task comes with learning and outcomes. And I am proud to say that it happened here too. I started working on new type of projects, new softwares, new applications and all that in this new but absolutely friendly work environment of Pontydysgu.
Morover, the world cup football and the radio set fixation for Barcelona conference was fun!!!

I went to Oslo, Norway for a Euronet-PBL conference, the purpose of my visit was to get more and more familiar with the project, project partners and to get some media (video interviews, photographs etc.) for the web presence of the project. My next trip was to Zurich to attend the sonisphere festival (\m/ Metallica \m/ ) but it was a nasty one : Two days, soaked in rain, standing in knee deep mud while witnessing the metal gods of all time.

With all this Fun & Work, 3 months flew like 3 days and when I look back now I see a perfect learning period (both formally & informally). With my special thanks to Graham and Jo I end this by saying this undoubtedly that these days were the best days of my life (the last ones specially) and I would definitely like to be involved with Pontydysgu in the future.”

For the Euronet PBL project we have been working on blogposts and podcasts updating the progress of the project. You can find the two podcasts below but if you are particularly interesting you can find the blogposts and more details about the project on the Euronet PBL website.

The first podacst is with me and Masriam Bukit from the Indonesia University of Education an interested party.

The second is with Ludger Deitmer from ITB which is the German partner on the project.

Podcast with Masriam Bukit and Jo Turner-Attwell Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (611)

Podcast with Ludger Deitmer Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (445)