Creativity and Digital Skills – Requirements for the 21st Century World of Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creativity and Digital Skills – Requirements for the 21st Century World of Work

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

Through the project entitled “Creativity and Digital Competencies – Prerequisites for the World of Work 4.0”, the coordinating school and its four selected partners together sought ways to achieve joint educational success. The following thoughts were the basis of the project idea: The situation of schools and also of the participants of the teaching system have changed a lot in the 21st century. The digitalized world poses new challenges to teachers and students, including the expectations of the modern working world. The teacher finds himself in the role of the advisor who is no longer the focus of teaching, but – as a coach – strives to provide his students with useful knowledge which guarantees them good chances on the job market, although technological progress is often faster than training measures for teachers can be. The main goal of the project was to promote the creativity and skills of the students. In this way, we wanted our students to be better prepared for their future professional life. Our project was based on the fact that the working world of the future, which is difficult to assess at the moment, will certainly need creative and imaginative personalities. The project work was started after a needs analysis conducted in the schools concerned. According to the results of the survey, the need to provide more support to the students in preparing them for the world of work became evident. The students, who had been involved in all phases, were the main actors of the project. Project teams were formed in the schools participating in the project. They were networked together so that they could participate in the role of facilitators, observers, or evaluators, depending on the nature or location of the project work. In the initial phase, the students reported on the lessons of the local schools in the form of videos, then they created explanatory videos in some subjects. In this way, they were able to help shape the lessons themselves, which had a very positive effect on strengthening independence and personal responsibility for learning success. At the first meeting in Budapest, the representatives of the country teams were familiarized with the business idea “Startup”, which gave them knowledge in the realization of business ideas and made them realize what kind of expectations they have to meet in order to have good chances in the working world of the near future. They received suggestions for strengthening entrepreneurial and critical thinking. The participating students as multipliers helped their own project group to establish company contacts in order to jointly compile a “Guidebook for Students: Career Choice and Job Interviews” and to make their own presentation videos. At the second student meeting in Riga, the importance of language skills was emphasized and the CLIL method was tested by the international team. In addition, the topics of job opportunities, expectations of companies and job opportunities abroad were further explored in workshops and meetings. Unfortunately, the third student meeting with the planned topic “Gender Equality” could only be organized online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, it unfortunately lost some of its impact, although the topic seemed very important to us, since three all-girls schools (DE, UK, HU) participated in this project. During the project work, not only the promotion of the students was considered, but also the training of the teachers. The teachers of the participating schools were given the opportunity to learn about new, effective teaching methods – with a critical look at the current methods. The international exchange of experience enabled the teachers to link subject-related content with contemporary and also digital means in order to be able to train qualified specialists of the future. With this project, short-term training sessions were held for the staff in Germany and Portugal, where recognized professionals and experts trained the teachers and gave them valuable advice. Since we were convinced that new teaching methods also demand new evaluation systems, the teachers compiled an e-book of evaluation systems as a project result, in which the basics of feedback that is as objective and constructive as possible were laid down.
On the one hand, the pandemic has made our project work more difficult – on the other hand, it has shown how topical our subject matter is, as we have all had to meet this challenge with creativity and digital competencies. We hope that our project results will enable better teaching and learning, so that our students will have good chances on the job market and our staff will be motivated to optimize their own teaching methods.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 106527,87 Eur

Project Coordinator

Patrona Hungariae Ovoda, Altalanos Iskola Gimnazium, Kollegium es Alapfoku Muveszeti Iskola & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Girls’ Day School Trust
• Gondensino – Estabelecimento de Ensino Particular, LDA
• Dr.-Johanna-Decker-Gymnasium Amberg der Schulstiftung der Diözese Regensburg
• Rigas Valsts vacu gimnazija