The Partnership
This is an ideal partnership as it consists
of a consortium between three VET providers and two ‘World of Work’ partners,
whose experience, expertise, skills and knowledge complement each other
perfectly to achieve the project aims and objectives. The partnership focuses on
design of an EU-toolkit to facilitate delivery of high quality locally delivered
hospital laboratory CPD activities. Co-operation has resulted in a clearly
defined distribution of tasks where each partner is able to maximise their
contribution to the learning partnership based on their particular area of
competence.
Effective co-operation and communication between
participating institutions will be the key to the success of the project. The
value of efficient communication has already become evident as it has been
central throughout the planning stages of the project as each partner has
communicated their relevant project expertise, experience and expectations via
email, telephone and partner face-to-face visits. This already established
initial cooperation and communication will be further developed throughout the
project using a wide variety of communication media including social
collaboration technology.
The first meeting of project partners took
place online as a Skype conference. Prior to each host meeting, partners will
communicate via Skype to facilitate co-operation on preparing the content,
objectives and agenda of host events. Face-to-face host meetings will provide
opportunities to meet, socialise and to learn about and from each other.
Opportunities for partners to co-operate to work on the joint content of the
EU-toolkit and to develop the CPD providers Community of Practice network will
rely on effective partner communication which will be facilitated using video
conferences, phone, email and blogs.
While the working language of the
Partnership is English, each partner organisation has designated a specific
person whose role is to assume responsibility for translation of project
materials into their partner country language, make reasonable adjustments for
language and cultural aspects at project meetings and to be responsible for
providing cultural preparation prior to the meeting event in their country. The
co-ordinating institution will assume overall responsibility for effective
cooperation and communication within the partnership while the designated
contact person for each partner institution will assume responsibility for
organising effective communication on behalf of their organisation. A series of
‘Launch and Celebration of Success’ conferences will be held in each partner
country with transmission to other partners to officially launch the EU-toolkit
and CPD providers Community of Practice network and celebrate the success of the
project.
The Transnational Meetings
The Malta team has already been to the UK
meeting where the set-up of the laboratory profession in Malta was explained and
how we organise our CPD shared with the other participating countries. Like the
other partners in the project, we demonstrated a “sample” CPD session typical of
the sessions that we offer here.
The following meeting, which was held
in Croatia in mid-March 2014, examined the second objective of our Project,
which is to define European quality standards and criteria for accreditation and
evaluation of local hospital CPD activities.
The next meeting will be
held in the Czech Republic in July 2014 and Budapest, Hungary in March 2015.
Malta is expected to host the meeting in December 2014.