AppRaiser: 360° professional development appraisal service for trainers Erasmus Project

Project Title

AppRaiser: 360° professional development appraisal service for trainers

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Every year more than 40.000 thousand youth workers are trained in more than 1500 training activities organised by youth work and training organisations and institutions in Europe. In the last years European Training Strategy (ETS) was developed to ensure transparency, effective management and good quality of youth work training activities. The most recent development was the launch of ETS competence model for trainers to support professional development and recognition.

The International Youth Work Trainer Guild together with partner organisations takes the momentum to develop a professional development appraisal service for trainers. With this project we plan to address the needs of international community of trainers to have online tools to support their self-assessment, external review of performance and curate their professional development.
Such developments are welcomed and recommended by the recent European youth policy recommendations and institutions which support the implementation of European youth work and training programmes.

We aim to increase the quality of youth work and training activities in Europe by developing a web-based 360° professional development appraisal service for trainers and other training stakeholders.

During the project we achieved the following specific objectives:
1. To create a web-based environment for trainers, training participants, trainer peer colleagues and training service contractors to implement a 360° review of trainer’s’ performance and assess trainer competences. Success indicator: well functioning and engaging web environment.
2. To develop web-tools and guidelines which will enable trainers to perform the self-assessment of their performance and competences using the ETS competence model and feedback of participants, peer colleagues and contractors. Success indicator: 239 people completed self-assessments.
3. To develop web-tools and guidelines that will enable at trainers to collect 360° feedback from participants, peer colleagues and contractors. Success indicator: 3415 external reviews collected.
4. To develop web-tools and guidelines to support trainers in their professional development using the 360° review data. Success indicator: 46 professional development plans submitted.
5. To develop and secure a peer trainer support system that ensures individual professional growth in response to their participation and feedback received through the appraisal service. Success indicator: 46 peer support meetings happened online or in person.

This project directly involved staff, members and affiliates of partner organisations of this project. The profile of involved participants: youth work professionals, trainers, project managers, graphic, UX/UI designers, software developers.
Beyond partner organisations, this project involved participants of training activities, other trainers active in the field, training service contractors and representatives of European institutions, such as SALTO Resource centres, Erasmus+ National Agencies, coordinators of trainer pools.

Besides of the regular project management activities, such as transnational and online partner meetings, dissemination, evaluation and reporting of project activities and results, this project developed the following intellectual outputs:
1. Web-based environment to run 360° Appraisal service;
2. Web-based tools and guidelines to support trainers self-assessment
3. Web-based tools and guidelines for external review of trainer competences
4. Web-based tools and guidelines for trainers professional development
To support development of these intellectual outcomes staff training activity was organised.

To develop intellectual outputs we applied most effective methodologies which use Goal-oriented Design principles and Design Thinking process to build web tools, content and software of 360° Appraisal service.
The professional development appraisal service for trainers and other stakeholders was built using 360° review model, Appreciative Inquiry methodology and self-directed learning approach.

This project enables the international youth work training stakeholders to use the 360° professional development appraisal service to review and assess trainer performance and competences using ETS competence model. Trainers have web-based tools to perform their self-assessment and become more aware of their professional competences and needs for professional development. Other training stakeholders, e.g. training participants, trainer colleagues, training service contractors are able to provide with the external review of trainer performance and give feedback. Ultimately, youth workers trained to a high standard will increase the quality of the youth work services and experience that young people have.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 194275 Eur

Project Coordinator

International Youth Work Trainers Guild & Country: DE

Project Partners

• LIETUVOS NEFORMALIOJO UGDYMO ASOCIACIJA
• Badgecraft Ireland Limited
• HA MOMENT CRL
• ASSOCIAZIONE INTERCULTURALE NUR
• coobra – cooperativa braccianti