The ITSHEC project – Integration of Transversal Skills into Health and Social care, Higher Education and the Curriculum – aims to improve the training of healthcare and social services professionals in transversal skills throughout the undergraduate and postgraduate training journey. ITSHEC is co-funded by the Erasmus+ project of the European Union. 

The key competencies that will be addressed are critical and creative thinking, interpersonal/socio-emotional and citizen-oriented skills and learning to learn. These transversal skills are crucial to lifelong learning and continuing professional development (CPD). Additionally, they are essential to promote active and involved European citizenship in civic and social life and will support improvements in a sustainable working environment.

Objectives

The main objective of this project is to design, pilot, implement and evaluate teaching-learning strategies for undergraduate and postgraduate training that aim to address learning outcomes based on the aforementioned Transversal Skills. 

In addition, the innovation and creation of these educational strategies have two specific objectives: 

1) To promote the development of transversal skills in Higher Education students, using innovative educational strategies, such as Virtual Reality. 

2) To train teachers to teach, guide and accompany the acquisition of Transversal Skills in undergraduate and postgraduate training.

Outputs

The teaching-learning strategies that we aim to design, pilot and implement are:

1) Methodological guide: This guide will include Pedagogical framework in which transversal skills are defined and levels of skills development are established and the most appropriate and innovative teaching-learning strategies to support the development of transversal skills, including an evaluative framework. 

2) Toolkit with educational resources to work on transversal skills.

3) Virtual reality tools, materials and educational resources to work on transversal skills. 

The added value of Transnational Cooperation

The added value of carrying out the project with transnational cooperation is placing in dialogue different experiences and educative traditions which, starting from different contexts, share the challenge of training healthcare and social care professionals in transversal skills. Consequently, the consortium has been built to foster the exchange of experience and know-how between different types of organizations such as Health Education Institutions, Public Services providers and an Immersive Training company. 

The ITSHEC Community 

We firmly believe that improving students’ Transversal Skills not only enables them to become better professionals but also creates a more united community, and strengthens and humanizes the doctor-patient relationship.

This is why, through the development of this project, we are in strong communication and cooperation with health education professionals, teachers and trainers, students, patients and service user associations, professionals and professional associations and the scientific community. It is crucial for the project’s values and mission to take into account all these voices, in order to design and implement the optimal solutions

The partners

ITSHEC is a transnational cooperation project between health, higher education and pedagogical innovation institutions. Here you can learn more about our roles in this project and about our expertise and background