Around Europe, the need for work-based learning and apprenticeships is growing larger and larger. It has been proven that, through years of study and research that apprenticeships taking place in the workplace are able to help people focus more on what they do for a living, find something that really is interested in and makes a career out of it. All that at a much faster pace than someone that has not been involved in work-based learning practices.
It is important to make sure that work-based learning will be promoted as part of the workplace routine. That alone is going to help companies as well as apprentices. It is a win-win situation. But without a proper strategy regarding the promotion of the idea, it will simply never work. And what better place to start promoting the idea of work-based learning than schools.
Teaching this at school will help students connect their learning with their future workplace. That will add to developing employability skills and that is certainly something that employers are looking for, even in apprentices. The experience of learning about apprenticeships and work-based learning, in general, will help the students build and enhance their entrepreneurial skills and abilities and make much more informed choices regarding their career options.
There is no doubt that there is a big gap between work-based learning and students. Students simply do not know that they have that option. And this can have a negative effect not only on the student and their future quality of work but the companies that they will work for as well.
This important matter has caught the attention of the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development. As a result, the IED along with a consortium of experienced partners is now implementing the Empower Teachers to Trigger Work-Based Learning projects, under the Erasmus+ financial framework umbrella.
The objectives of this project are simple yet very important and very promising. First, we will start with the creation of an open-source online platform that will contain the e-learning modules, the Work-Based Learning Teacher Training Model as well as other educational and policy framework resources that will support the school staff such as teachers, directors, and trainers. , and will help them gain professional knowledge in order for them to create their own WBL teaching material by applying their own methodologies that will increase their knowledge as well as connection with the work-place.
The second objective is for the teachers to be able and effectively teach students about work-based learning, the importance of apprenticeship for the development of their career and the effect it is going to have on their option regarding their professional orientation.
These innovative ideas will soon be implemented by the IED and the consortium of partners that teamed up for this amazing projects. Here in the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development, we know how important it is to promote work-based learning that can, later on, lead to the development of an entrepreneurial idea that can be the next big successful business.
