Learningshift | The future of learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learningshift | The future of learning

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The Future of Jobs, published by the World Economic Forum in January 2016, starts with a revealing estimation: “65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist”.

Today, it became an evidence that a large portion of the core skills required in jobs were not prioritized in our learning paths. While for instance technical skills will still be of high importance, they will for sure need to be supplemented with strong transversal, social and collaboration skills.

Denmark and Finland, two of the world´s biggest players in innovation, recognized the role of learning in shaping a new society and the need to transform learning in order to answer to the rising needs. In the Innovation Strategy “Denmark, a nation of solutions”, the government reflects on and sets an agenda to focus on innovation in education as a first step towards more innovative employees and entrepreneurs, setting the ability to be innovative as a fundamental element of all education levels, from primary schools to PhDs. In the “Mission for Finland”, the country sets the objectives for 2030 and defines the goal to become a “silicon valley of social innovations” and “a country that has managed to export its unbeatable education”.

In this context, the Project Learningshift was designed to be a pioneer initiative, capable of empowering educators as facilitators and change-makers in the learning (r)evolution that is taking place.

In the Future of Learning, published by the European Commission, the authors highlighted the three key concepts that should guide learning in the future: personalisation, collaboration and informalization. Despite the fact that these terms are not new, the urgency of placing them at the centre of the learning design and facilitation still lacks priority and action.

The need and the expectations are clear. It´s now up to the ‘how’ and the method that should guide educators and learning communities in this process of change towards a more desired, meaningful and sustainable learning paradigm.

As the Future of Learning report states: “For a talent revolution to take place, governments and businesses will need to profoundly change their approach to education, skills and employment, and their approach to working with each other. Businesses will need to put talent development and future workforce strategy front and centre to their growth. Firms can no longer be passive consumers of ready-made human capital. They require a new mindset to meet their talent needs and to optimize social outcomes. Governments will need to re-consider fundamentally the education models of today”.

Given this context, the focus of the Project Learningshift was therefore on:

• Rethinking education systems and redesigning a 21st century curriculum;
• Incentivizing lifelong learning, ensuring that individuals have the time, motivation and means to seek retraining opportunities across their lifecycle;
• Collaboration as a mandatory requirement due to the complexity of the change management needed.

To that end the project delivered the Future of Learning Lab, a MOOC designed to provide the context and process for educators to act as facilitators and change makers towards a 21st century learning experience, and some other relevant outputs, such as the Future of Learning Manifesto, summarising the principles, values, competences and pedagogical approach for a 21st century learning experiences, and the Future of Learning web-based community of practice.

The Project involved 6 partners from 4 countries – Portugal, Denmark, Finland and Lithuania –enabling a valuable exchange of experiences and knowledge and more universal and transferable results across Europe.

– Advancis – Business Services Lda (Coordinator) (Portugal)
– CICCOPN (Portugal)
– AUTENS (Denmark)
– Aalborg University (Denmark)
– Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania)
– Tampere University of Applied Sciences (Finland)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 295216,58 Eur

Project Coordinator

ADVANCIS-BUSINESS SERVICES, LDA & Country: PT

Project Partners

• TAMPEREEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• Centro de Formação Profissional da Indústria da Construção Civil e Obras Públicas do Norte
• Autens
• KAUNO TECHNOLOGIJOS UNIVERSITETAS
• AALBORG UNIVERSITET