About

Mission

Our mission is to become recognized as the leading authority worldwide in the field of Project/Internship by creating and maintaining an environment that promotes and supports innovation aimed at improving students’ employability and soft skills.
 

History

There are many distinct flavors of Project/Internship courses throughout the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): multinational teams of students working at their home institutions with a common goal (such as the MUTW), multinational teams working at a host institution (EPS), multidisciplinary teams (University of Minho in Portugal, Fontys University in Netherlands), capstone project courses developed in a company or at a research lab (most engineering universities), small project course units running at the end of the semester (LAPR course unit at ISEP in Portugal), simple projects (accounting for 6 ECTS, for instance), complex projects (accounting for 20 ECTS, for instance) and many more.

This network is motivated by the previous work of MUTW – Multinational Undergraduate Team Work, an Erasmus Multilateral Project, funded by the EU, running from
October 2009 till September 2011.
 

Roadmap

The PRAXIS consortium consists of 44 members. Through their joint forces and within a three year timeframe, the PRAXIS thematic network will be established. The work plan is organized in 11 work packages. The main outcomes are the PRAXIS Center of Excellence and the PRAXIS Virtual market.

The focus of the project during the first year will be on the analysis of the field and design of the models and tools to describe and operate on it. During this first year we will map and model the target field of PRAXIS. When referring to the field we mean the broad area of project/internship and similar instruction types along with any initiatives related to them and to improving student employability. A detailed map of the field, clearly showing where we stand and what the market needs are, will allow us to identify opportunities for innovation and for improvement. The PRAXIS buzzwords for the first year of the project are exploring, mapping.

The second year will be focused on setting up and deploying the center for excellence in the field and the virtual PI market (PI stands for Project/Internship). Designing the market and the center for excellence as well as setting them up targeted for the opportunities previously identified, while assuring the required critical mass, will be the main achievements of the second year of theproject. Our second year will be guided by headings acting, innovating.

The third and last year will be focused on exploitation and sustainability to assure the continuity of PRAXIS beyond funding. We will be focused on identifying opportunities for enlarging the consortium and on making PRAXIS a renowned brand in the EHEA and abroad. The third year of PRAXIS will be focused on exploitation, sustainability.
 

Target groups

Any institution that is concerned with higher education and students’ employability should be interested in our work and its achievements. Among them, we may stress: students, higher education institutions (HEI), employers, governmental departments related to higher education and professional associations.