What is this project about? Learn about it!

"How to run a sustainable European business" is inspired by an entrepreneurial project started by students at INS Flix: INSOAP, a small business run by students which produces traditional handmade soap. INSOAP´s business strategy for internationalization brings INS Flix the chance to work with a foreign European school for the first time, internationalizing the school’s teachinglearning experience. INS Flix and the Danish school have already worked on an eTwinning project in 2016/17 ("Market research for an entrepreneurial ad-venture"). This shed light on differences both in teaching learning practices and in teaching topics. These differences in the two countries sparkled the idea of the present hands-on project based on a learning by doing pedagogical concept. Learning-by-doing teaching/learning resembles real working life, and it is an inclusive way of teaching both academic and non-academic students. Both schools already work project based, but in diverse ways. At INS Flix the INSOAP project bases the teaching-learning concept on a practical way close to real working life, whereas in Toemmerup Fri-og Efterskole natural science is handled in an academic problem-solving and innovation way.

PARTICIPANTS

The group of Spanish students participating in the project are those who, according to the national curriculum, must be introduced to entrepreneurial skills and studies. About 20 students (aged 14-16) who will work cooperatively in a business-like manner with their European partners to improve the product and position it in another country.

Students will be divided and organized according to their skills and will be in charge of the different areas of the business. In this new international stage, they will be divided in three different committees: the promotion committee who will make the advertisements and will promote the product, the production committee (this will be the biggest group and where most students will work), and the marketing committee who will be in charge of selling the products.

Regarding the group of Spanish teachers, the ones involved in the project will be those teaching the contents and skills to the students participating in it. Therefore, a teacher of English will supervise and monitor the communication as well as those aspects related to language accuracy (the presentations, the catalogue, the website and the app), a technology teacher will teach and guide students in the designing and creation of the website and app. A business teacher and an arts teacher will be in charge of guiding students in the marketing aspects in the project. Finally, two natural science teachers will teach students the saponification process and supervise their production.

The Danish group of students (23 students aged 13-16) are already working together in natural science (physics, biology, chemistry). The project “How to run a sustainable European business” will be part of school curricula, and the participating students will be able to include the experience and learning output from the project in their final oral exams in the subjects: natural science and social science. The teachers participating in the project have been chosen based on their professional skills, interest and teaching subject. The team consists of: The natural science team, the English teacher, who will be monitoring the communication, the social science and the math teacher, who will be in charge of the marketing topics, and he International coordinator, who will be in charge of the monitoring of the project. Students and teachers will corporate on planning the specific details of the project activities. Furthermore, the project includes two specialized workshops: a workshop on sustainable design (packaging) and a workshop on production of TV-advertisements. They will be prepared and monitored by experts from the two National institutions: The Danish Film Institute and The Design Museum Denmark in collaboration with the Danish teachers’ team. Both the Danish and the Spanish students and teachers will participate in these workshops and will in that way benefit from expert knowledge from outside the ordinary school curriculum. The experts will offer insight in sustainable Scandinavian design and give important tools on film techniques in relation to making advertisements.