Expand your Frontiers in High Technical Skills and Public Speaking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Expand your Frontiers in High Technical Skills and Public Speaking

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Expand your Frontiers in High Technical Skills and Public Speaking is a Project dedicated to increase to public speaking competences and reduce public speaking phobia among VET trainers and other teaching professors.
The COVID-19 pandemic phenomenon and its ongoing second wave has disrupted nearly every aspect of our lives. Even before the onset of the crisis, public speaking competences of youth was a constant challenge. Now, unless urgent and effective action is taken, young people are likely to suffer from the severe and lasting effects of the pandemic. This has been particularly hard on young women, young migrants and youth in low-income countries. Young people care about the future and their place in it.
Epidemiological surveys and statistical manuals of psychopathology (DSM-5, ICD 10) recognize that social phobias has a prevalence of 7% across general population and 13% of had at least one episode. Social phobias affect significantly the work of educators which faces different audiences and public situation in the daily work, reducing significantly their performance at work and satisfaction for life. Morever, to practice a public speaking situation with a real audience is very stressful for educators with social phobias, it involve a serious risk for the psychological condition of the educators or also discourage their involvement in future work in education. Our project has the goal to increase the competences of VET trainers and reduce their public speaking phobia through the Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT), an innovative approach that has been demonstrated to be effective for reducing phobias through gradual exposition to phobic stimuli.
We have planned this project, after intensive and extensive research of this problem, having considerable academic and practical experience in this field, accumulated cognitive and organizational resources. Now, having consulted with all Partners and taking into consideration national peculiarities, we will try to combine most effective ICT methods with an emphasis on VR technology and necessary offline training in order to bring back and advance public speaking competencies for young people in need.
The partnership is composed by 6 organisation from France, Italy, Romania, Russia, Portugal and Turkey. The partnership includes 2 associations, 2 VET chools, 2 SMEs.
The partnership will produce 3 Intellectual Outputs in 7 languages (EN, IT, PT, RO, FR, RU, TK) open and accessible 24/7 for the following goals
– increasing public speaking competences
– decreasing public speaking phobias
O1 – Manual – a 300 pages manual translated in 7 languages designed to help VET trainers and all target groups to improve their skills in public speaking and reducing anxiety.
professions.
O2 – E-learning Platform – a web-based Platform including 10 hours of public speaking lectures, translated into 7 languages about public speaking techniques, phobia reduction techniques, stress and anxiety management, exercises for increasing the attention.
O3 – VR System – an immersive VR system which simulated scenarios of public speaking at increasing difficulty allow self-evaluation of psychological states and gives tailor based suggestions on phobia and anxiety management
The participating organisations will moreover organize:
– 5 transnational project meeting, including 5 brief workshop dedicated to experts
– 6 multiplier events (120 participants)
– at least 12 multiplier events (200 participants expected)
During the project’s implementation:
– at least 30000 people will be informed about projects results
– at least 3000 people will access to intellectual outputs
– a dissemination plan involving VET centers, school educators, policy makers, decision makers, association representative of professionals included in the target group, press will be involved at broad level in order to promote the adoption of the intellectual output at local, regional, national and international level
– a massive plan of online communication will be performed through the joint action of several channels: official website of the project, e-mail services, autoresponders, social media marketing
An impact study will be performed in order to measure the desired outcomes
– increased competences and resilience of VET trainers
– reduced negative states of educators (phobia, stress and anxiety)
– effectiveness of the model in VET centers, Schools and Educators
The Impact Study will be used in order to promote the adoption of the intellectual output and possible transferability in all fields of education.
The Sustainability Plan ensures that all functionalities and materials will be kept open and accessible to all after the EU funding. Moreover, it includes several strategies to extend the
content with: exploitation strategies in other countries, extension of project’s content, transferability in different sectors.

Project Website

https://www.erasmuska2.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 210000 Eur

Project Coordinator

Paragraf International & Country: FR

Project Partners

• SC PSIHOFORWORLD
• Namoi
• International Institute of Applied Psychology and Human Sciences associazione culturale
• Mehmet Rifat Evyap Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• AFN ­ ACADEMIA FORMAÇÃO DO NORTE, UNIPESSOAL LDA