Abstract:

The contribution aims to present a specific international project implemented by three universities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, aimed at team cooperation of students in the digital space and at a closer connection of the higher education of students of social science and technical study programs with the reality of the labour market through the participation of experts from practice. Currently, when the labour market is undergoing dynamic changes in the field of employment due to digitization, it could be a challenge to prepare graduates for positions where employers do not have a clear idea of the professional requirements. Therefore, when selecting new employees, the so-called transferable job skills related to the individual's ability to cooperate, communicate, respond operatively, etc., are increasingly coming to the fore, and they become crucial regardless of the specific professional focus of the graduates. It is, therefore, necessary for universities to respond to this development with changes in the system of university training of students. A truly topical challenge is to look for new approaches to acquiring practical skills, the so-called "learning for life" which will be intensively based on and promptly react to the current reality of the world of work.
In the first phase, the project team carried out mixed quantitative and qualitative research focused on identifying the current group of most required transferable job skills related to personality and professional identity, which mean benefits for job applicants. We used the research results to create an innovative teaching format. In cooperation with experts from practice, we created study materials (videos, moodle courses) and put together an original shared block of two international modules within the framework of lifelong education for students in undergraduate preparation at OU, TRUNI, and STU. The blocks reflect the current global labour market, in which cooperation includes three constituent connotations: international, team, and digital. The effort to improve the employability of university graduates by training key competencies became the leading motivation for the solution of the Interreg cross-border project "Supporting transferable work competencies for the labour market during university studies". Within it, we created the foundations of a network of university teachers and experts from companies and institutions who participated in creating the content of the educational modules.
As part of the testing of the modules in the academic year 2022/23, the project team had to deal with several technical, organizational, and legislative obstacles. However, we consider them important and valuable experiences that can help to implement similar international educational projects. The knowledge gained also from the feedback of the students and from the ongoing evaluation confirms the importance of the development of transferable skills and is a basis for the following academic years when we will continue the international educational modules.

Keywords:

Cross-border project, labour market, transferable job skills, cooperation, teamwork.