The project aims at developing a holistic, ICT-supported and competence oriented learning and validation system that shall be applied in internships at the interface of academia and business. It will contribute to promoting and valuing those competences and learning outcomes that are of fundamental importance in our economy and that are acquired to a large extent in non-formalized learning contexts.

This will be achieved through the following main activities:

• Researching existing approaches to acquire and validate key competences – especially social and civic competences, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, learning to learn – both in higher education , in industry and enterprises;
• Developing an overarching competence oriented learning approach and a validation system to assess, evidence and certify learning outcomes acquired in different learning contexts;
• Enriching existing validation and certification systems by creating reference systems for the above mentioned key competences, assessment tools and a quality approach that will link the validation with existing ECTS-based validation and certification;
• Customizing the web-based LEVEL5 system for competences acquired in European mobility, internships and CPD programmes.
• Piloting and evaluating the competence oriented learning and validation system in internships or internships that will be organised as learning projects;
• Transferring  the project results both into university contexts (to enrich formal curricula) and into the business sector (continuing professional development schemes).

The project will contribute to an improved transparency of the acquired competences, to a higher variability of learning pathways and eventually to a better matching of learning contents and individual learning styles.