Work-Based Learning as Integrated curriculum in Higher Education. Experiences in Europe. Remaining questions

Abstract

Strategic EU guidelines agree that Higher Education Institutions should involve employers and labour institutions in their curricula in order to respond quicker to the changing needs of the society. In this context, Work-Based Learning strategies (WBL) are relevant option to be taken into account. This paper describes the results of a case study international Project about the WBL strategies implementation in seven European countries. Selected cases showed different ways of integrating social and labour needs within the academic requirements. Besides this, the most important result is that decisions made about three key elements (“3p”): Participant organisations, Programme structure and People involved can highlight the difference between a practice and a good practice when the main goal of the programme is to maximize the students' learning opportunities.