To succeed in today’s globalised society, students are required to possess a higher skill set than ever before. They need to be able to understand the complexities of international cooperation and similarly, understand business within an international context.
The exposure to a multicultural working environment afforded by the placements provides students with the chance to develop these skills. By working with people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, their ability to understand others and make themselves understood will be tested, thus honing their interpersonal and relationship building skills.
The main aim of the international projects at the HTL Vöcklabruck is to provide students with the opportunity to experience the economic, political and cultural situations of other countries.
The Leonardo da Vinci program facilitates both work placements for students and exchange experiences for trainers in other European countries.
The benefit of such projects centres around the experiences the participant will gain in the course of their placement, which will go on to help them in their further training and future careers. They will have the opportunity to gain new practical and theoretical knowledge, improve their foreign language skills and work in a new environment and, in doing so, strengthen their social skills and personal competencies.
The HTL Vöcklabruck started with the placement exchange program in 1998. Since then, more than 300 students have completed a work placement in Europe and the United States thanks to the program.
The program has been made possible through partnerships with European schools and institutions in Sweden, France, Spain, Belgium and Germany, as well as partner companies in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Great Britain and the USA.