Life Long Learning 2008 – Erasmus Multilateral Projects - Cooperation between Universities and Enterprises
Project bacground
The continuously changing working environment of today requires new skills and competencies. The traditional educational system does not rely on self-directiveness. The traditional curriculums, the course contents and evaluation criteria are defined in detail. The teachers have the duty to implement the system and the students have little choice regarding the subjects, and practically no possibilities to choose the working methods. The traditional hidden curriculum requires students to sit quiet and obey the authorities. In this way they would become good employees for the needs of industry. Today industrial work is less and less based on monotonous, repetitive assembly line tasks. Workers are expected to be self-directive professionals who are able to manage information and plan their work independently. An employee should be able to utilize himself holistically trough his creativity, thinking, personality, and trough his network and also has to able to work with others in teams. It is therefore important that a curriculum that prepares a young person for this future career should be changed to help the students become a self-directive, creative person who is prepared and able to follow the principle of life-long learning. The transfer from and industrial society to a knowledge society requires a cultural change in business, industry and the public sector. This change requires a new management culture based on the empowerment of the employees. The hierarchical structures do not work any more in a culture that based on inner entrepreneurship and coaching rather than on giving and obeying orders. According to all these facts EU community has to faced with challenges like co-operation between educational institutes and businesses for mutual benefit; flexibility in education to allow students to combine work and studies and individualism in education to allow personal study plan, to recognize individual talents, and to encourage students to complete with themselves for better results. In February 2005, the Commission proposed a new start for the Lisbon Strategy focusing the European Union’s efforts on two principal tasks – delivering stronger, lasting growth and providing more and better jobs. The new Partnership for Growth and Jobs stresses the importance of promoting a more entrepreneurial culture and of creating a supportive environment for SMEs. Promoting entrepreneurship among young people is a key element of the European Youth Pact adopted by the European Council in March 2005.
Aims and objectives
The overall objective is to promote entrepreneurial innovation in Europe following a “learning by doing”. Team Academy approach for the emergence of entrepreneurship communities in Europe that learn together as a global network. It will be achieved by coordinating joint activities of six Team Academies in different regions of Europe (1 in France, 2 in Finland, 1 in Germany, 1 in Spain and 1 in Slovenia) with different levels of development, with the aim of selecting, exchanging and transferring good practices, building up a common European Team Academy programme and creating a Network.
The aim is to create a Team Academy Network which is going to unite the interests of Universities and enterprises (SMS's) in terms ob common objective of promoting enterpreneurship, creative thinking and innovative approaches as part of the curriculum for students and skulls for teachers and researchers. Team Academy approach applies a new learning method based on teams, customer projects, networking and entrepreneurship. It follows a “living model of organizational learning”. Entrepreneurs define their learning and performance goals, acquire shared learning experiences, are responsible for their own and each others’ learning, and help each other to find individual core competencies.” In Team Academy the learning takes place in action. The projects the students run are not simulations. They negotiate with real business partners, earn real money, and have to make their “company” live a real life. Through intents, failures, and successes, students discover how well they master significant competencies and how they can enhance them.
Specific objectives of Team Academy are:
- to identify and analyse drivers and barriers for the Team Academy implementation in partners regions,
- to evaluate the identified approaches and select good practices,
- to set a common learning environment and to define the contents and tools of the entrepreneurship workshops,
- to collect all lessons learned during the entrepreneurship workshops held in the Consortium regions,
- to create a Team Academy Europe Network to assure it's sustainability,
- to outline recommendations regarding policy learning issues,
- to set the basis of European Pilot Team Academy entrepreneurship Programme,
- to disseminate the project results,
- to plan the use and dissemination of the knowledge and to exploit the project results.
