The 2nd Transnational Partners’ Meeting (TPM) of the TOUR-X European project took place on the 23rd and 24th of March 2023, in Dolo, Venice (Italy) and provided an excellent opportunity for discussion and exchange on the progress of the project deliverables and outputs.
The TOUR-X is a Center of Vocational Excellence (COVE) ERASMUS+ Project for the Tourism Industry that aims to enhance the ability of the education providers to adapt the provision of skills to everchanging economic and social needs by setting up Knowledge Triangles of VET providers, representatives of the business sector, and public authorities to collaborate better and contribute to regional development in the Tourism sector.
More specifically, during the 2nd TPM, the TOUR-X partners examined the synergies with other projects and pact of skills. Also, they checked all information related to the study visit in Germany, focusing on the German Knowledge Triangle. Furthermore, they enjoyed working in groups to discuss the content of TourX’s “Hospitality Labs” ToolBox for Excellence. They exchanged thoroughly at the World Café on the strategic objectives of the TourX CoVE network, its mechanism of governance and communication flows, as well as the transnational activities to be carried together for the benefit of the VET excellence at the European level. They also agreed on the dissemination actions and planed the next steps based on the objectives and project schedule.
The DAISSy Research Group of the Hellenic Open University (HOU) is a Greek project partner, actively involved in all TOUR-X deliverables, that participated in the 2nd TPM and was represented by Panagiota Polymeropoulou, Senior Researcher of DAISSy, who delivered a presentation about the quality box for increasing the quality in VET through feedback loops and graduate tracking systems. She explained the main aim, which is to promote the communication between VET and the labour market for adding to knowledge triangles of the regional areas involved in TOUR-X by tracking the careers of fresh graduates. In this way, providers can further improve their training programmes and services specifically for the tourism sector. A quality feedback loop will be developed within this framework, focusing on designing a tourism Graduate Students’ Tracking System (GSTS). Indeed, the ability to track graduates is also considered a core component of effective Quality Assurance systems as it provides a mechanism for gathering intelligence on skills utilisation in the labour market and placement rates. The discussion among the TPM participants was vivid since DAISSy had to note their opinions and proposals to incorporate them into the current GSTS development process.
The TOUR-X is a four-year project co-funded by the ERASMUS-EDU-2021-PEX-COVE program of the European Union. It is coordinated by the “AKMI ANONIMI EKPAIDEFTIKI ETAIRIA-AKMI SA” (Greece) with twenty-two (22) partners in six (6) EU member states (Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Portugal) and China.
For more information about the TOUR-X project as well as other activities of the DAISSy-HOU:
- Website : https://daissy.eu/, https://tour-x.eu/
- Facebook: @DAISSyResearchGroup
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daissyresearchgroup/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/daissy_research
- Instagram: @daissy_researchgroup
- Email: info@daissy.eap.gr
