School Inclusion - Preventing early school leaving

Partners' Institution:

Pixel Associazione

Project's period (from/to):

December 2007 - October 2009

WPs concerned:

WP 7 - Transversal Activities

Objectives of activities carried out:

Pixel role in the project was mostly focused on the organization of the overall transnational work as well as on the continuous planning of the specific project activities. Pixel produced several formats (named Forms) for the carrying out of each of the project planned activities.

Time period:

December 2007 - October 2009

Description of activities carried out:

The main tool created and used for the project management is the project web site. This is a different web site from the project portal. The project web site, indeed, is only addressed to the project partners and to those interested in this project management strategy, while the project portal contains the in progress and final project outcomes and results.

The project web site is organized so as to contain, in the “Download” section, all of the documents related to the project itself (e.g. the project logo, the LLP programme logo, the minutes of the meetings, the Administrative and Financial Manual, the formats to be used to carry out the project activities etc.). The project web site also has a specific section, the “Work in Progress” section to register the activities carried out by each partner within each project work package. The project web site also has a “Dissemination” section to record all the dissemination events organized by each partner.

In order to organize the partnership’s work, the project’s coordinator (Pixel) produced detailed calendar of activities for the project. This calendar has been presented to all the project’s partners during the first partner’s meeting in Florence. Afterwards, all partners jointly followed the adopted calendar of activities. Pixel monitored constantly the partners’ progress of work and respect of the agreed deadlines and continuously sent reminders of future deadlines via email.

In order to allow a constant sharing of information within the project partnership, each partner is required to produce, once every three months, according to a given common format, a national activities report and a dissemination report. Both the reports are uploaded, directly by the partners, under two specific sections of the project’s web site named “Work in progress” and “Dissemination”. This permitted to each partner to be constantly aware of what the other partners were doing, and to learn from each other’s experience.

Pixel proposed the formats to be used to carry out each of the project activities. The formats were presented to the partners during the meetings. Each proposed format was discussed, checked, assessed, changed, integrated and finally adopted by the whole partnership.
The use of a common format allows the production of material by all partners that is organized in the same way and therefore this helps the accessibility and clarity of the project outcomes and allows an effective comparison of the in progress results.
The common formats to carry out the project activities, once jointly adopted, have been distributed to the partners and also made available on the School inclusion website under the ‘Download’ section.

Communication between the project’s partners is constant. The communications means used are: e-mail, Skype meetings and a discussion forum on the project’s web site.

Only the project partners, using the username and password can access the project Forum, which is available on the project web site.

As project coordinator, Pixel, was in charge of organizing each of the first two project partners meetings. The second one was organized in cooperation with the Wilsthorpe Business and Enterprise College, the project partner hosting the meeting at their site in Nottingham (UK).

Below the methodology on how to organize them:

Practical Organization of the Meeting: the possible dates and the agenda for the meeting were proposed and approved with the partners. Information was given in order for the partners to organize the travel in the due time. The hotel was reserved and information was given about the hosting city and the practicalities available.

Preparation of the Meeting: Pixel produced the meeting folders containing all the necessary material for each meeting: the updated calendar of activities; a résumé of the project deadlines; the PowerPoint presentation of the activities carried out; forms and guidelines for the project management and the financial administration. Once all contents were available, the meeting folders was printed and distributed to the project partners, the first meeting day.

Management of the Meeting: During the meeting the agenda was proposed and approved, all the activities carried out were presented, the project in progress results were analyzed and the future deadline discussed and approved. The partners’ questions were answered and the doubts clarified.

Minutes of the Meeting: After the meetings, detailed minutes were prepared about what has been discussed and decided. A full list of annexes was also produced, some updating the drafts presented during the meeting while others were newly created. The minutes and the annexes were then uploaded to the website in both pdf and Word versions to be easily available for all the partners.

Outcomes:

Formats for the monitoring of the activities and the management of the administrative tasks:
-Partners’ Book
-Calendar of activities
-Calendar of Deadlines
-Presentation on Financial Management
-Presentation of the Dissemination Strategy
-Three Monthly Activities Report Form
-Three Monthly Dissemination Report Form
-Guidelines for uploading documents on the project web site and portal
-Guidelines for writing the Interim Activity Report
-Guidelines for writing the Interim Dissemination Report
-Guidelines for writing the Interim Partners’ Evaluation Report
-Interim Project Evaluation Form
-Meeting Evaluation Form

Evaluation of the work undertaken:

Our work was extremely satisfactory, both in developing the contents and accepting suggestions from partners: the forms developed are being regularly used, the expected results achieved and the partners are satisfied by the project management.