Job Shadowing in Vocational Education (MBO)!
Everyone has experienced it: you’re in your final year of secondary school and have to choose a further education program. For some, it’s an easy decision; for others, it’s much more difficult. That’s why the MeelopenMBO project was launched at the initiative of Alfa-college. MeelopenMBO is a project in which MBO schools give students the opportunity to spend a day shadowing an MBO program. The goal is to help students make their choice for further education more easily and with greater confidence.
Why this is a good choice for students
Students get to experience the learning environment, the curriculum, and their potential classmates. This gives them a clear idea of the program and allows them to discover whether it suits them.
Registration
Students can register via www.meelopenmbo.nl, search for an MBO school, and choose a program offered by that school. An overview of available shadowing dates is then displayed, allowing the student to select a day to spend shadowing at the MBO.
MBO Schools
Several MBO schools participate in the program. These schools are located in the Overijssel region. Each MBO school also has its own MeelopenMBO website. These websites function similarly to the general MeelopenMBO site. The only difference is that if a student registers via one of these sites, they do not need to choose the desired MBO school first, since they are already on the specific school’s MeelopenMBO site. During registration, they only see the programs available at that particular school.
Development and Hosting
Multimove handled the web design and development of the websites. The websites use Multimove Live as the content management system (CMS). The CMS administrators at the MBO schools can, among other things, add programs and input the available shadowing dates for each program, allowing students to select a day to participate.
Student registrations are automatically organized for each MBO school within the CMS. Additionally, the program contacts and the students automatically receive a confirmation email for their registration. MBO schools can generate attendance lists for all entered data and set the maximum number of students who can participate per program per day.
Students also receive an automatic reminder email shortly before their shadowing day, optionally including a personalized note. A few days after the shadowing day, students automatically receive a link to an online survey created by the school in the CMS, where they can provide feedback about their experience.
Infracom ICT manages the hosting of the websites. Because of the high number of visitors and registrations, the websites are hosted on a dedicated VPS server. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It is a physical server divided into smaller virtual servers. One of the advantages is that it allows multiple websites to run on the same server while remaining separated from each other.
