Euronet-PBL

Education, Practice & Research Promoting Practice-Based Learning in the Higher Education provisions for Business Administration, Engineering and Vocational Teacher Education

Project website: www.euronet-pbl.net

This project has been funded with support from the European Commissiom through the Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project Euronet-PBL develops a common approach to Practice-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning (PBL) in three areas of studies (vocational teacher education, business administration and engineering studies). In all these areas, existing models are promoting cooperation between universities and enterprises via supporting learning that engages students with real tasks and problems of the world of work. So far, PBL models have been used in different disciplines without shared quality criteria. Therefore, the development has been limited to individual university institutes and to their regional contexts.

The project creates a common evaluation tool for specifying the success factors and critical issues of current PBL arrangements. This tool is used to evaluate six PBL arrangements that represent the three areas of studies in six countries. The evaluation process is undertaken jointly by the participating universities, their partner enterprises and by external evaluators.

The expected impact of the project Euronet-PBL will be:

• at the European level the common framework (and the related products) provide a basis for knowledge transfer beyond the three areas of studies as well as the participating regions;
• at the domain-specific level the joint results (framework, guidelines, toolbox, exemplary cases and web resources) provide a basis for the enrichment of the PBL arrangements and cooperation arrangements;
• at the local and regional level the joint results and dissemination activities provide the basis for broader networking across pilot regions in which universities and enterprises are developing PBL-related cooperation;
• at the local level the tools and criteria developed by the project will enhance cooperation between companies and universities as well as stimulate new cooperation projects.