Professional Foreign Language Preparation of VET Students in Customer Service for Quality Tourism (ProTourism)

The ProTourism project is set in the context of the demand for skills in the tourism sector in Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia and the capacity of the VET sectors, especially VET schools in...

The ProTourism project aimed to improve the quality of English language teaching in vocational schools in the tourism sector. It aims to provide VET teachers with pedagogical materials that are in line with the skills demand of employers in this sector. The professional skill areas we focus on are customer service and communication. Our project brings together five organizations from four countries where tourism is important, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, in their efforts to support vocational schools in providing quality training in specific areas. In our project, we had set ourselves consistent and logical goals that will lead to the qualitative achievement of the set final result - the creation of digital pedagogical materials for specific professions in the tourism sector with a focus on customer service and communication. The overall completion of the project was structured into three overarching areas of activity: Activity I – Project Management, Activity II – Development/Implementation of Project Results and Activity III – Promotion and Sharing of Project Results. Each activity includes sub-activities distributed among the partners with a specific scope, time and a specific result.

The overall completion of the project is structured in 3 overarching areas of activity within which sub-activities are distributed as follows: Activity 1 - Management: Development of project management guidelines, tasks allocation of tasks between partners, continuous communication and cooperation process within the partnership, monitoring through internal Activity 1 - Management: Development of project management guidelines, tasks allocation of tasks between partners, continuous communication and cooperation process within the partnership, monitoring through internal progress reports; risk management; interim and final report to the Bulgarian national agency; organization of 4 transnational project and etc. Activity 2 - Development: Activity 2.1 – Development of pedagogical materials and upload to the platform. Activity 2.2 - Development of teaching materials. Instructional training of language teachers in the field of VET. Activity 2.3 - Pilot training of trainees in VET. Activity 2.4 - Evaluation and and fine-tuning Activity 3 - Promotion and sharing: Creation of a website; 40 online publications; 15 thematic presentations at external events; organization of 1 multiplier event in Sofia.

The main tangible and intangible results of the ProTourism project can be divided into several thematic components: – Set of digital pedagogical materials to support language training in VET schools with an emphasis on the topics of Customer Service and Communication. – Instructing and training a total of 27 foreign language teachers by profession in VET schools from each partner country (Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia) on how to use the created digital pedagogical materials produced in their classrooms. – 488 VET students in grades 10-12 participated in pilot activities. – Within the framework of the project, we disseminated its activities and results to 850 stakeholders from all partner countries and beyond through 1 multiplier event, 40 online publications, 10 thematic presentations at external events, ongoing information, online articles in various media, etc.). Among the achieved intangible results are: – Improved professional and digital competences of language teachers; – Improved professional language competences of VET students; – Improved skills of VET students in Customer service and communication for the Touristic sector; – Improved quality and attractiveness of VET education in partnering institutions.