The Kick-off meeting for the project Virtus- Virtual Vocational Education and Training took place on the 25th and 26th of February, 2016 hosted by the project coordinator EUROtraining, in Athens, Greece. The Kick-off meeting brought together EUROtraining with the 6 other partner organisations which include CESIE (Italy) European Progress (Greece); BEST Institute für berufsbezogene Weiterbildung und Personaltraining GmbH (Austria); FFE Fondo Formación Euskadi (Spain); ECQA – European Certification and Qualification Association (Austria); RTWH Rheinisch -Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (Germany).
The Virtus project is a 2 year project co-funded by Erasmus+ Key Action (KA3): Support for policy reform, Prospective Initiatives Forward-Looking Cooperation Project.
Key Action 3 provides grants for a wide variety of actions aimed at stimulating innovative policy development, policy dialogue and implementation, and the exchange of knowledge in the fields of education, training and youth.
The Virtus project addresses the Priority 4: Opening up (virtual or physical) infrastructures of education and training institutions to adult learning and provision of modular certified learning opportunities; it aims to open up a virtual infrastructure of education and training institutions to adult learning and provision of modular certified learning opportunities in the following sectors: Tourism and Hospitality Services and Social Entrepreneurship.
The project aims at mainstreaming virtual vocational education and training, providing certified modular learning outcomes in Europe and beyond, supporting job creation, productivity, competitiveness and innovation.
During the 2 years of the Virtus project, a series of outcomes will be produced:
- Needs Assessment analysis Report
- State of the Art in Virtual Organizations in Education and Training Report
- VIRTUS Virtual VET Centre and virtual community
- VIRTUS Modular Courses: Tourism and Hospitality Services and Social Entrepreneurship
- VIRTUS Policy Recommendations
The next phase of the Virtus project will see the launch of the in-depth research on the situation in each partner country in regards to the training needs of adult learners, VET teachers, SMEs in Tourism sector and Social enterprises. Moreover it will be investigated the field of virtual organisations in Europe to outline their state of the art and identify and highlight best practices in the field.
The next partnership meeting will be held in November in Bilbao, Spain hosted by VET center Fondo Formación Euskadi.
For further information about the project, please contact Irene Pizzo: irene.pizzo@cesie.org
