Office InterActors addresses the need for intercultural awareness, transferable skills and lifelong learning strategies for professional purposes, given the increased work mobility nowadays. Through open dialogue and involvement of the target groups, Office InterActors proposes a VET educational model and EU supported training opportunities for developing basic and professionals skills in Business & Administration. These are transferable from study to work and from one work setting to another: foreign language (English and French as widely spoken languages, plus Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Basque), ICT skills (including use of the Internet and Web 2.0), teamwork and negotiation (also in international teams through online collaboration), general and professional intercultural awareness and knowledge, entrepreneurship, other self-management skills and motivation for lifelong learning.

The Office InterActors target groups are, thus, at three levels:

1. educational / VET professionals and institutions interested to include the Office InterActors model in their educational offers,

2. employers and umbrella organisations representing employers, interested to invest in the training of their staff, apprentices or new recruits,

3. students studying Business & Administration, recently graduated, employees and would-be employees.

The project has transfered, adapted and used the existing InterAct model (the result of a Leonardo da Vinci project awarded the European Label in 2007), proven successful and adaptable to learning at the workplace.

Activities within the project

1. Office InterActors Tutor trainings – cascading trainings has been delivered using hands-on activities and simulations to illustrate students’ experience within the courses. At the same time trainings were structured as piloting sessions and further teaching material development to ensure a better adapting of the courses to the students targeted as beneficiaries. The syllabus for the trainings includes aspects such as: Office InterActors tutor and student profile, attitudes and motivation, positive approach to team work and problem solving, coaching and mentoring skills, Web 2.0 technologies. Tutors’ participation in the development of the teaching material, especially the scenario, and the fact that they already have an idea of who their students would be, has enhanced addressability to the beneficiaries therefore assuring a greater impact upon the them.

2. Office InterActors courses – The best way to describe Office InterActors courses is a strategy of building learning and awareness on business culture and related ICT and language skills. The aim of these courses is not to teach but to create learning opportunities. This implicitly derives in several layers of input, methodological approach and vision.

The Office InterActors didactic model has as main mission the development of transferable basic and professional skills relevant to Business&Administration, with the learning objectives:

- increased awareness and new knowledge of the Business & Administration culture in different European countries (Spain, France, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and possibly others in the second round of delivery),

- development of professional skills related to work in the area of Business & Administration (information management systems, financial management, human resources management, quality management and quality assurance strategies, management) 

- development of transferable New Basic Skills: language skills (English, including French and less widely used languages: Lithuanian, Basque, Romanian, Bulgarian, possibly others in the second round of delivery), computer skills (including use of Internet and Web 2.0 technology), teamwork and negotiation skills, intercultural awareness

- other areas of personal development relevant to professional success: confidence, entrepreneurship, motivation for lifelong learning, time / stress /change management.

Within the Office InterActors courses, the participants work together within scenarios on roles and tasks which, although fictitious to minimize the learners’ stress, are realistic and relevant to their profession. Participants and their tutors are organized in face-to-face groups in different locations (countries), from where they meet each other regularly on an online learning platform in order to carry out the tasks within the scenarios. The features of the online learning platform include the staged release of information by the tutors, authoring tools, internal e-mail and chat mechanisms, on-line editing and exchange of electronic files etc.

The roles and tasks are designed in such a way as to require intense and engaging teamwork and negotiation at the level of both the national groups and internationally. The presence of people working in various departments in a business will encourage dialogue and negotiation skills in the mother tongue while the communication among the international groups will structure the context for real linguistic and intercultural business dialogue. The need to learn basic linguistic and cultural information about the partners will thus emerge naturally and the input in that direction will be welcome by the participants.

Moreover, initial, formative and summative (self-/peer-) assessment and evaluation activities will be deeply embedded within the scripts. The self/peer review exercises will also model strategies of quality assurance based of self-assessment. The delivery of Office InterActors courses courses can only be achieved with the approval and support of employers, with a view to addressing real working contexts and needs.