TEF - Tourism Education of the Future project, supported by the Erasmus+ program, met in Fátima on April 29-30, 2024. As a part of the TEF initiative, a workshop titled “Work in Action” was held at the premises of Escola de Hotelaria de Fatima, Portugal.
The opening session was attended by Ms. Isabel Costa, Vice-President of Ourém City Council; the President of ACISO – Ourém-Fátima Business Association, Purificação Reis; and Ms. Elisabete Marques, EHF’s Technical and Pedagogical Director. Managing Director of Learning Digital, an Italian business that specializes in the application of AI in VET, Mr. Stefano Tirati was the first speaker. Mr. Tirati not only demonstrated its practical possibilities but also demonstrated how to issue Microcredentials, the new certification format for skills supported by the European Commission.
Ms. Virginia Lacarra, from the Spanish VET and Polytechnic HEI CDEA, presented a report on the project that the Basque Country is promoting for teachers to become accredited in digital skills. She also showed off a number of digital tools that teachers can utilize in their regular classroom instruction. The use of Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality tools in the classroom was developed by Mr. Gonçalo Freitas and Mr. Jorge Alexandre Pereira, two teachers from Rumos Educação, a VET school. The inclusion of young migrants and refugees in the community and education was addressed by Mr. António Castanheira, from Social Services of Ourém City Council. Burnout and well-being in VET students and teachers was the subject of a lively interaction between Mr. José Carlos Gomes, from the School of Health Sciences of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, and the participants, focusing on prevention, diagnosis, and intervention.
A guided tour of Ourém's castle and medieval village marked the end of the first workshop day. The second day of the event started with a detailed presentation, followed by dynamic group work among the participants, on project design, management, and impact assessment, organized by Ms. Isabel Joaquim and Ms. Ana Cunha, from Portugal’s Erasmus+ National Agency. Bringing young people from VET closer to the labor market and integrating companies into this process was the interactive talk that followed, where participants gave their views on these dimensions, led by Ms. Mónica Vieira, from the Teresa and Alexandre Soares dos Santos Foundation’s Education Initiative program.
Prizes in hospitality education: a tool for developing competition between classes and schools, was what Mr. Tiago Braz, from Fórum Turismo, worked on with the participants, in an approach focusing on each of the countries that were present. The work ended with the presentation of the guide “How to organize and implement hybrid – physical and online – skills competitions”, by Ms. Mariëlle Derksen-Steen and Mr. Hayo van der Kamp, from the Dutch VET school Stichting Landsted, a product developed by the “TEF – Tourism Education of the Future” partnership, supported by the Erasmus+ program, under which this workshop was organized.
As we near the project’s completion, we celebrate our achievements and look forward to the continued impact of our partnership in hospitality across Europe. A guided tour of the Museum of the Shrine of Fatima and the Shrine itself was a social activity organized in the afternoon.
TEF Workshop was attended by IUS Life representatives Mirsada Mehremić and Sibela Beširević together with Prof. Anisa Bidžević, from High School for Catering and Tourism, Sarajevo.
