International dimension to increase Lifelong Learning possibilities in Europe

Abstract

Thanks to the European policy, mobility of students has been encouraged via ERASMUS, allowing universities to recognise, within their programmes, semesters or complete academic years spent abroad. Within the frame of global European projects, such as the ERASMUS Thematic Networks [www.elleiec.eu], Tuning approach was proposed as a way to facilitate both exchange of students during their studies and mobility of workers during their professional life. The philosophy behind that is not to focus too much about the actual courses followed by a student (which is extremely tricky when a student is sent abroad) but more on what he gets as a whole concerning knowledge, skills and competences, taking also account of soft or generic skills like internationalization, multiculturalism, teamgroup work, foreign language... Another interesting aspect is the use of tools like RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) which is very useful, when we want to give a worker the possibility to pass a diploma, based on the partial or total recognition of his professional knowledge, skill and competences. The present paper develops the work achieved within the ELLEIEC project, relative to International Modules (IM) and International Curricula Networks (ICN), concepts proposed in the project and experimented practically, to facilitate the mobility of students and of citizens/workers.