The MentorTrain project aims at supporting mentors in companies (particularly in SMEs), who are working with students and apprentices from professional higher educational institutions at EQF levels 5-7.
Project summary
The success of apprenticeships is very much dependent on the quality of education process of transferring knowledge and developing practical skills. It is therefore important that the most qualified professionals would be involved in the mentorship roles. However, quality mentorship is not only about the professional skills and experience of mentors. Apprenticeships should also lead to the achievement of practical learning outcomes; and this is also dependent on the pedagogical skills of mentors. To this end, the project is developing training material aimed at improving the competences of experienced mentors in activity design.
The MentorTrain project will help to define the specific competences required by early-stage and experienced mentors, and use this to develop a relevant curriculum, training material and prepare the learning activities which can be used to acquire these competences. This will help to solve the problem of occurring insufficient pedagogical competences of the mentors, particularly experienced workers from SMEs who may not necessarily have relevant teaching experience, working with apprentices from professional higher educational institutions. Higher competencies of the mentors will increase the quality of apprenticeships and will assure to achieve better learning outcomes for the learners.
EURASHE is a partner of the MentorTrain project and its role includes representing the voice of professional higher education institutions and supporting the dissemination of the project results at the European level.
