Developing students’ competencies is the main objective of the project Competent student – experienced graduate: workshop developing competences needed for sustainable development in the labour market. The project, implemented as part of the NAWA Strategic Partnerships, will last two years and the opening meeting took place on 4 December 2025 in the Senate Hall of the University of Opole.
The aim of the project is to develop key competences for the labour market and sustainable development through student participation in international workshops, practical tasks in a multicultural group, and study visits to international companies. Forty-five students from Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Kosovo, and Albania will participate in the project. They will be accompanied by a research team collecting data for a report on the competence development programme.
The project results will include, inter alia, the Competence Development Programme ‘Competent student – experienced graduate’ and an e-learning course covering the topics of the workshops. The results of the cooperation will also comprise: a report on qualitative and quantitative research on the competence development and sustainable development programme in Spain and Poland, as well as highly rated international open access publications.
‘Implementation of the project tasks involves the Faculty of Philology and the Faculty of Economics, which is yet another collaboration between these faculties,’ emphasises Prof. Elżbieta Szymańska-Czaplak, who coordinates the project on behalf of the UO. ‘Earlier, we jointly implemented the first edition of this project, and now we are also cooperating on the project ‘Enhancing an evidence-based approach in business-oriented courses’. This time, the project will also involve the Institute of Psychology, which is hosting a researcher from the University of Malta, who is carrying out project tasks as a visiting professor
The meeting that launched the project was attended by representatives of all the institutions involved in the project. The UO was represented by: Vice-Rector for Education, Prof. Anna Weissbrot-Koziarska, Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Prof. Elżbieta Szymańska-Czaplak, Director of the Office for Research and Project Management, Jarosław Kubiak, Prof. Vincent Cassar and Prof. Frank Bezzina, researchers affiliated with the UO, and Agata Gąska.
The Mendel University in Brno (Czech Republic) was represented by Prof. Sylvie Formánková and Dr Renata Kučerová, the Alexander Moisiu University in Durres (Albania) – Prof. Ermira Qosja and Prof. Llambi Prendi, the Haxi Zeka Peja University (Kosovo) – Prof. Edmond Beqiri and Prof. Ibish Mazreku, the University of Valencia (Spain) – Prof. Antoni Segui and Prof. Pau Sendra Pons, and the Wrocław University of Economics – Prof. Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej and Prof. Katarzyna Tracz-Krupa.
In the long term, the project creates a basis for multilateral cooperation between partners and opens up opportunities for its intensification in the areas of research (joint publications, conferences, research programmes) and academic teaching (e.g. mutual offers of e-learning workshops to supplement traditional teaching).