Abstract:

Start IT is a project developed by a consortium of six European Union Higher Education Institutions (HEI). The project is led by HTW Berlin, and financed by Erasmus+ under contract n.º 2021-1-DE01-KA220-HED-000023215. The primary objective of the project is to foster the development of soft and digital skills in higher education students. These skills are extremely relevant for the future of young people, as they are skills that are widely considered as extremely relevant for employment. The existing curricula in HEI do not focus on these skills, due to the need to focus on the core technical competences of the given degree programme. Therefore, innovative teaching methodologies, such as active learning, are required in order to achieve the objective of fostering soft skills.

Within the project, active learning is implemented through the organization of mobilities of length eleven days. In each mobility, 50 students from the participating HEI work in diverse, multidisciplinary, international and multicultural teams, which are supervised by academics from the participating HEI. The main objective of each team is to engage in entrepreneurship. To achieve this objective, the student teams are challenged to develop a mobile app, and an associated business plan. For this project, the mobile app is related to the promotion of sustainable practices.

Start IT started in March 2022 and the first mobility took place in September 2022, in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. It was organized by ISPGAYA. Vila Nova de Gaia, neighbour city to better known Porto, faces a tremendous increase in tourism and tourism related activities. Therefore, the topic for the mobility was the promotion of sustainable tourism within the city. During the mobility, the students were surveyed. The project utilizes the MIMI methodology for assessing soft skills and the SII assessment for measuring the development of digital skills. The assessment methods are tailored to the needs of the participating students and are integrated into the learning activities. Outcomes from that survey are presented in this paper.

This paper intends to depict the essential aspects related to the implementation of this mobility and the results achieved from this mobility. A contextualization of the main aspects associated with the project are introduced. Methodologial aspects related to the project implementation, and a description of the main elements related to the organization of a mobility of students is described. Results achieved from last September are later presented.

Keywords:

Active Learning, Soft skills, Digital skills, Sustainability.