Tutoring and support

IMY tutors are fully engaged to support their mobility learners driving a complex and articulate pedagogic pathway.

The support includes also answers and information for all the social, cultural and life aspects and demands and it is especially targeted to the work placement challenges. Because hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side, IMY tutors are mandated to establish a direct communication channel with each learner and to do everything that is necessary to make each of them feeling safe like at home.

Taking care for us means simply an opportunity to give the best professional support and care to our learners here in Tuscany since before their arrival, during their stay and the way back home until they inform us that they arrived back home and everything is good.

Motivation and driving

When trainees arrive on place, IMY tutors welcome them with an introductory day addressed to clarify and set all the conditions for a great pedagogical success in a safe and secure condition and also to raise awareness of the general benefits and challenges of mobility and the importance and the significance of being European Citizens.

From the first contact with the sending organisations, IMY provides its official Guidebook to be used for the preparation before the leaving from the origin countries. When the learners arrive at IMY in Italy, they are first of all asked to reflect about some of the guidebook contents related to the health and safety and security issues to reinforce their ability to manage a safe and pleasant stay avoiding any unexpected issue and moreover any problem related to security and health.

This step is very important for their staying abroad because many learners are at their first experience and are not conscious about many potential risks related to their own behaviours.

Welcome Day

The introductory day includes additionally a short presentation of the IMY's support structure, the IMY's procedures, the available premises and the staff and how they can be fully benefited, the IMY's insurances, their coverages and the procedures that have to be implemented in case of any accident.

In the same occasion the IMY tutors drive the mobility learners to understand the expected behaviours to introduce oneself at the first day meeting and to know the contents of the IMY's Info kit that was also provided before the arrival.

By the learning outcomes point of view, the introductory day is aimed to make known and to explain the IMY assessment system. Its presentation includes the tasks to be accomplished by the learners for receiving the Final Certificate, based on the Europass Mobility Certificate, focusing the targeted performances and aiming to clarify the Skills and the description of the indicators implemented for the assessment outputs.

Assessment Tools

The IMY assessment system is provided with a 'Performance registration tool' aimed to make clear and understandable all the variables and to share how the performances are evaluated and certified.

The tool provides four pieces of information about: Formative Evaluations, Evaluation Summary, Objectives and Indicators and a Measurement scale.

The Formative Evaluations, are intended to indicate learning and competency development in order to measure performance and improve the learning process through participation in the same evaluation process. These evaluations include:

Self-evaluations completed independently, with assistance from one another, through comparisons with other people, or with written models
Instructor evaluations or others (colleagues, tutors, etc.) with frequent interaction with the stage participant

The Evaluation summaries are intended to indicate the level of competency achieved by using the same evaluation process to demonstrate significant improvements in the learning process.

The Objectives and Indicators, are the variables we intend necessary to reach the level of competency desired. They include the standard objectives, those common for every work placement, proposed by Italymobility and the identificatino of technical, professional objectives, when the stage was organised in collaboration with other organisations, from the original institute.

With these indicators, IMY intends to gather and measure the informative data on the state of advancement/learning about the objectives. Therefore during the period also numerical information is registered relative to the learning process.

The measurement scale ranges are the calculation system, established in points from 0 ( zero) to 100 , where 0 (zero) represents the least amount of performance results and 100 represents the greatest results.

Finally, during the first day meeting the learners are also supported to get knowledge of:

house rules and how to behave in the accommodations
consequences and procedures for breaching the rule cases

IMY tutors introduce personally each trainees to the company and assist them during their first meeting.

IMY tutors also assure that the learners are able to find their ways to the company with public transportation.

The trainees are supported in filling in all the documents required by the sending organisation.

Once the work placement has started, the IMY tutors coach the trainees to held their responsibility to manage the relationship with the company and to respect the agreed working hours. If for example a trainee falls ill or for any other reason is not able to go to work, he or she is responsible to alert the company’s tutor promptly and this aspect is part of the learning outcomoes supported by the IMY tutors.

The trainee and the company’s tutor register the trainee’s hours of work in a chart provided by IMY at the beginning of the work placement.

Ongoing monitoring activities

Ongoing monitoring activities consist in a set of continuous collection of information and live interactions within the trainee, the company's tutor and the IMY tutor in charge to keep an alive communication channel. The information circulates through email, surveys, phone calls and on site visits when necessary, to support the learners throughout all their internship phases.

The monitoring activities are reported in the IMY system and also communicated to the sending organisation's tutors. In additino, IMY organises also sending organisations' tutors visits to the hosting companies when they come to Italy to monitor the activities of their learners.

Weekly Monitoring and Evaluation

Badges and awards

Each IMY learner receive an electronic virtual budget in coherence with his period duration. The levels are three and correspond to one month, two months and three monts duration. The electronic budgets are an occasion to share on social platform the reached achievements and to make impact on the education system supporting a positive image of the mobility for learning.

With the same approach, the IMY system allow to coach the trainees with an awarding systems, also distributed in three levels of merit. The awards are given for specific occasions directly by the IMY tutors or under suggestions of the company's tutors.