Partner meetings

1st meeting in Munich, 15-17 November, 2017

The project Engagement and Beyond has been started under the umbrella of Erasmus+, a European Union programme.

The first meeting of colleagues from participating organizations was held in Munich, 15-17 November, 2017 at the premises of the German partner  ETC (Euro Training Center).

After opening statements, all participating colleagues introduced themselves. Since four of the five members have worked together in another EU project earlier, they gave a warm welcome the new member organization, ConnectMedia.

The first point of the agenda was a short summary of the project given by the Hungarian project leader, Edunet Foundation. That was backed by the ConnectMedia colleagues who introduced the basic idea of the project.

During the first part of the meeting the key elements of the project were discussed in detail, including:

  • Foundation Study
  • Engagement Questionnaire – developed for the educational sector
  • Users’ Manual
  • ’Get Engaged’ which is web-based, gamified, feedback software.

In the next part, all participating countries  presented an overall summary on the engagement measuring methods they are aware of in their countries related to the education sector, with particular regard to teachers as key actors and directors as responsible leaders. Special spotlight was directed by the Hungarian team to the possibility of using the most advanced methods, common in the business sector, within the frame of education.

The next section dealt with the experiences gained by the partners when they carried out personal interviews with leaders of schools and enterprises, prior to the Munich meeting.

In the next section, key attention was directed to reaching agreement on the required elements of the Foundation Study, allocating the responsible persons and deadlines to each tasks respectively. An important element was to detail the exact goals and schedule of the ’multiplier events’ that are due in the 1st Q, 2018.

All project-related tasks have been discussed and responsibilities allocated. The timing of the next partner meeting has also been arranged.

The documentation and financial aspects of the project have also been agreed upon, although there were some pending questions that remain to be solved in due course.

In addition the formal parts of the meeting, all the partners attended a friendly dinner.

At the end of the two and a half day meeting all colleagues committed themselves to the goals of the project that will be the foundation of the tasks to come.

See you all in Gean House, Clackmannanshire, Scotland in June, 2018!

 


 

2nd meeting in Alloa, 19-22 June, 2018

The second International Partner Meeting was held in June in Alloa, near Stirling, Scotland. As previously, the Partners were represented by a large number of attendees.

We started the meeting with an overview about what had happened so far. We concentrated on our Foundation Study and listened to each Partner’s summary about the initial interviews. We intend to build the next steps of the development on the outcomes and conclusions of the initial outputs completed so far.

Two guests visited us during the three-day meeting. One of them, Professor Mark Priestley from Stirling University, who is a critical friend to the project. He gave us a short presentation on his latest research in the field of teacher engagement and teacher agency.

Our second guest was Michelle Carr, the local coordinator of the „Developing the Young Workface” programme, which was founded by the Scottish government with a major goal to bring schools and companies closer to each other. She talked to us about engagement from this aspect.

After summarizing all of the work done before the meeting, we started to work in smaller groups on the next steps of the development process. We tried the demo version of the web-based questionnaire, discussed the chapters of the User Guide and started to collect questions for the chapter of FAQ’s. We specified the topics and worded the statements of the questionnaire, and had a discussion about the collection of different resources, and motivational contents.

We closed the meeting by dedicating tasks, defining deadlines and responsibilities. Next time, we will meet in Cracow  with the same participants at the end of this school year.