Abstract:

The Erasmus+ project “Internships for Enhancing Social and Civic Key Competences for Lifelong Learning in Technical Universities” (IN4SOC) aims to impact the way internships are designed across the EU in Technical Universities, by incorporating a social and civic (SOC) approach in line with the sustainable development goals. The main objective of IN4SOC is to increase the involvement of technical universities in the social responsibility of the students’ host organizations, as a pedagogical approach that considers the acquisition of the key social and civic competence of students and strengthens the engagement of academia with the community.

This paper aims at disseminating the IN4SOC project and network. The project was funded in 2018 and will run until August 2021, with an initial partnership of five Universities and seven Associated Partners as host organizations for the internships. The Universities within the current IN4SOC network include University of Bordeaux (France), University of Miskolc (Hungary), New University of Lisbon (Portugal), Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) and Technical University of Madrid (Spain). The current IN4SOC network is set to be enlarged to ensure the sustainability of the SOC internships and the impact at local, regional and national level. This communication also intends to serve as an invitation to Universities and Host organisations to join the IN4SOC network.

The main outputs of the IN4SOC project are:
(a) the Guidelines to formulate replicable socio-civic internships,
(b) the Quality Checklist to assess the quality of the SOC internships,
(c) the Guides for a successful SOC internship,
(d) the IN4SOC tool to connect students and organizations,
(e) the Rubric to evaluate students’ performance through the SOC internships and
(f) the IN4SOC toolkit to implement SOC internships in Technical Universities. The toolkit will be the reference document for any University and Organization wishing to implement SOC internships.

Keywords:

Higher education, social competences, civic competences, sustainable development goals, lifelong learning.