Work Based Learning Digital Tourism

Foligno, Italy – The Partnership Digital Tourism (DT) is halfway and the framework is built. In Italy the partnership has formulated, developed and agreed on the job description of the DT technician. The curriculum has also been developed in concept. The most intensive part and progress made, at location, was on the Work Based Learning (WBL) part.

Work Based Learning

Working together with so many countries is fun! It gives you a major boost to acquire new knowledge about the VET systems of the DT Partnership countries and innovate a totally new study course. Of course it’s challenging as well. The schools of Italy, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands have to agree on documents and added value of the new content in this fresh Digital Tourism Course. Other partners from Portugal, Italy and Netherlands have a different role: They are the ‘Work Based Learning (WBL) experts’ and they look at the course from the employers’ perspective. The Work Based Learning period (the internship or apprenticeship period) is a very important part of the course, as theory will be assessed through practise (by doing). The creation and development of the documents (Learning Plan, Learning Agreement, Identification Forms, Identification of soft and hard skills, the assessment tools) around the work based learning parts was very intensive but worthwhile.

‘Let’s be honest, if it was easy everyone would do it!’

Pieter van Schie

Internship and / or apprenticeship?

Formulating and developing a fresh innovative VET course is not easy. But let’s be honest, if it was easy everyone would do it. To make sure you make progress we have to agree on the learning paths and how to get there. One of the pitfalls of EU partnerships is that, because of our different languages and the use of English as our way of communication in the partnership, we must never assume that terminology used, means exactly the same for each partner.

One of the interesting discussions we had during the week in Foligno was how we should call the Work Based Learning period. Non-English speaking countries often use internship, apprenticeship, traineeship, practise by doing, on-the-job-training and work placement and assume it’s more or less the same. To avoid misunderstandings and mistakes we have formally agreed we will use only two terminologies (internship and apprenticeship). We have defined them below:

• Internship: A short fixed term (30 days – 90 days) Work Based Learning hands on training, acquiring work experience without payment at a DT Company
• Apprenticeship:  A Work Based Learning (more than 90 days) hands on training (with pay), acquiring more than just work experience at a DT Company (with potentially a guaranteed job after completion)

DT Project status

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