The PEAL project was born in the Spring 2016. It came from an idea, that Tradium Business Department (EfVET Member) as a school needed to get up to speed concerning e-commerce. We realized, that the web shops around the country needed skilled employees, who understood all the differences between physical shops and web shops.

Tradium (Denmark)

Initially each school invites interested students to write an application for participating in the project. All interested students are then processed with the help of their teachers, their overall grades and their school attendance. We wanted the very best. Each school picks out 2 students for each round of activities. Also each school appoints 1 teacher for each activity. There will be 5 rounds of activities, as the 2 Dutch schools will share.

Each round will take place at a partner school. Before the activity the group of students meet each other at a video conference. At this conference they will learn a little bit of the language spoken in the hosting school’s country. They will be introduced to local company culture and will learn something about the companies, they will work with.

When the students have arrived at the hosting school, each team will be assigned a company to work with. The student teams will learn more about the company and will work with an assignment set by the company. The students will also help each other with the 5 different assignments. The students will be at the hosting school for 2 whole weeks. Living and working together and also having fun together.

The 5 teachers will travel outbound with their students and will stay at the hosting school for 3 whole days. During this time they will be sharing best practices and they will do some job shadowing. They will also visit with the e-commerce companies. On top of that they will spend time discussing and producing new teaching material.

Bridgwater&Taunton College (EfVET Member) is situated close to Bristol in the west of England. To get there proved a bit cumbersome for some of the participants, but everybody managed to arrive safely. The students were lodged at a college dormitory, where they were able to cook together and generally relax and have fun. Shortly after their arrival all students were introduced to and visited the companies, they had chosen. These 5 companies were: Handmaiden UK, Brainwave, Exmoor National Park, Compass Disability Service and Walkers Farm Cottages.

All 10 students worked with great effort on the assignments and were well helped by college teacher Jamie Longmuir. At the end of the 2 weeks each student team presented their findings to members from the college and to the companies. The results from the students were found extremely useful and the students were applauded for their excellent work.

Response from a couple of the companies

From Nikki Watson, Contracts and Projects Development Manager at Compass Disability Service:

“The results – well, both myself and the CEO were very impressed with what they had achieved in such a short space of time and their presentation made it all very easy to understand.  We will be able to implement some of the ‘quick wins’ that they suggested especially around our social media presence. The other ideas which we will also take forward, will take a little more time and financing e.g. website redesign.”

From Barry Upfold, Head of Retail & Information Technology at Brainwave:

“Just a quick email to say how much we all enjoyed the presentation today and how we felt it was very beneficial to see different views and solutions.  All credit to yourself and Abdul and Amalie especially.  I must say they showed great maturity and insight and tackled the project we gave them with great professionalism and exceeded expectations.  Please pass on our thanks and we wish them well and are sure they have bright futures ahead of them.   If they ever want to revisit us, please extend our open invitation.”

Meanwhile the 5 teachers were also hard at work. They spent time discussing the development of e-commerce in Europe and especially discussing their own curriculum on the subject. The teachers did a lot of job shadowing in different classes, such as Level 3 Computing, Web & CSS and Level 4 Business Prof.Practice.

Apart from this they started working on the joint material. The subject for the teachers was: An introduction of e-commerce. Online strategies, online marketing mix, newsletters, social media, marketing models, like funnel and aida.

The teachers set up a Google account, where they will post all their findings and teaching modules.