The impact of project LOASA: what will be the lasting effect of our efforts?

Impact
Bridging the skills gap

What is the expected impact of LOASA on the participants, participating organisations, target groups and other relevant stakeholders? This question could be translated as: What will be the lasting effect on personal level, team/organisation level, and sectoral / branch level, etc? What behaviour has changed after the project has finished? These changes may be (partially) a result of our Erasmus+ activities and could be linked to the LOASA project. Describing the impact is both challenging and essential to the success of the project. Again, let's start with the end in mind.

An example of a logic model, adapted from W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Impacts of the LOASA project

  • Students and employees will engage more actively in international mobility programs, thus increasing their awareness and understanding of their own capabilities and the opportunities on the labour market. This leads to an increased employability.
  • The companies will use the units of learning outcomes and the assessment tools to keep track of the development of their employees. This helps them in strategic planning, HRM, and team development of their companies.
  • Branches will demonstrate their role as a supporter for the green sector in innovation and can prove to be the ideal partner to disseminate the outcomes to the whole sector.
  • For the VET institutes the units of learning outcomes and the taxonomy of Dee Fink are a starting point to further develop and implement the learning outcome approach in accordance with the needs of the labour market in their education.
  • Teachers will have first-hand experience of what intrapreneurial behaviour in companies means and will be more aware of their own capabilities.
  • LOASA partners will have a better common understanding of what working with the New Skills agenda for Europe means and how to cooperate in developing those skills.

Outcomes

Outcomes are the specific changes in attitude, behaviour, knowledge or skills that we expect to occur as a result of LOASA activities. These include:

  • increased levels of educational attainment, and working with the learning outcome-based approach;
  • mobility of students that is in accordance with ECVET principles and where validation, recognition, and validation are guaranteed;
  • increased cooperation between education and labour market in the carousel of partner schools.

Outputs

Outputs are the direct result of project activities. They are often expressed in terms of the number or quantity of services and products delivered. Erasmus+ outputs in LOASA project include:

  • number of students, learners or staff going abroad for a while (international mobility) as part of their study or to professionalise;
  • number of project participants gaining a qualification or having learning accredited;
  • number of organisations involved in mobility or partnership projects;
  • delivered units of learning outcomes and recommendations for others.

Activities

Activities are what we do with the resources or inputs we have such as the ECVET principles, the MoUs, etcetera. The activities aim to deliver outputs that bring about the desired outcomes and impact. In Erasmus+, project activities generally focus on:

  • recognition and validation of mobility experiences of students, learners or staff;
  • development of units of learning outcomes;
  • developing assessment methodology in accordance with the learning outcome-based approach, the ECVET principles and the outlines of the New Skills Agenda for Europe;
  • testing the units in pilots;
  • cooperation projects for innovation and exchange of best practice;
  • support for policy reform and dialogue.

Resources and inputs

We received resources for working out what we wrote in the project application. We have to use this budget carefully and transparency in line with the E+ mobility tool is essential. Agreements on the financial settlement that is used in LOASA is a matter of common understanding and trust between the project partners. A letter of agreement might be useful for this.

Rationale and policy context

This sets out the underlying need for validation, recognition and accumulation of the international mobility of students and employees when going for a learning route abroad. The rationale for Europe is that a skilled and flexible workforce is needed to achieve continued employment opportunities. The assumption is that supporting international mobility and partnership carousel for educational institutes and labor market will help deliver a skilled and flexible workforce.