Youth workers Online Learning Opportunities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth workers Online Learning Opportunities

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Youth workers Online Learning Opportunities

Digital Youth Work and Online Learning of youth workers is high on the agenda in Europe and initiatives are met by stakeholders and practitioners with a lot of good will and enthusiasm. Nevertheless the experience of the last years also shows that the initial enthusiasm tends to drop significantly when online courses are put into practice on a European level– lack of time, of a common reality of youth work or of formal recognition of the achievements are among the most mentioned reasons.

Still poywe sees a great potential in online learning and believes that digital approaches have reached everyday practice in youth work – at least on the level of engaging with young people in online environments and concrete activities. We also see that our practice might lack incentives for youth workers to stay involved in online learning – such as formal certificates, fun and experimental methods, tailored offers to the real needs of youth workers, trainers that are equipped to function in those online settings.

We therefore propose a Strategic Partnership on the topic of Digital Learning of youth workers, which we wish to build on our own experiences gathered in the past years with first online courses and other projects and on the expertise of a diverse partnership.

We see the following Intellectual Outputs/Activities for this project:

Step 1 – Research
Find out what grass root youth workers really need and want, in an online learning activity that is not linked to their studies and thus part of their education, in terms of:
topics, methods, time, needed support, recognition and the right combinations of those. And also investigate the main obstacles or triggers to in the end not engage in an online learning offer or drop out during the course.

We would like to use a series of diverse, creative methods for this research part instead of launching the 1000th online questionnaire. Methods could include: short quizzes with only one or two questions over a longer period (your Friday quiz moment), discussion groups, prototyping (!), idea labs…

Step 2 – Online Youth Work Learning Menu
Youth workers are often faced with flexible times, project based necessities of work loads and not least giving priority to the needs of the young people they work with when planning their time. This is one factor that might make following a classic structured course (e.g. 4 hours/week for a certain amount of weeks) difficult. We therefore would like to offer a self-directed, self-paced learning opportunity for youth workers.

We aim to create a platform that works like a restaurant menu, where people can choose their own menu according to their needs. It should consist of a collection of relevant material to diverse topics e.g. youth work principles, digital youth work, quality in youth work,.. (also that based on the research done at the beginning of the project) – the learning resources should include: video (tutorials), exercises, games, papers and documents,..

Youth workers can decide to just find one paper they are interested in at the moment, watch a series of videos covering diverse aspects or to go through proposed learning experiences that include a mixture of the above mentioned options and create a wider learning – thus potentially in the future could lead to certificates and/or credits.

Step 3 – Reflective Practice Space
Youth work is a reflective practice – monitoring and evaluating your own work and intervisions with colleagues (and if offered professional coaching or supervision) are an important part of providing quality youth work. Especially for youth workers in small settings that might even be alone in running a service or centre in a rural area, this is an important element of their professional development that is difficult to arrange. Therefore the platform should include tools for self-abasement, training and information on reflective practice and if possible an interactive place for matching mentors or peers with similar questions (e.g. the digital youth work cafè every second Tuesday a month…)

Step 4 – Capacity Building/Training of eTrainers
Once this online learning approach is developed, we need to train eTrainers that can provide it – so a Training of eTrainers incl. a Manual for using an open setting like the learning menu and facilitating reflective interactions will be foreseen

The target group is youth workers on all levles and we are espeically aiming to reach out to those youth workers who for diverse reasons are not able to attend offline training or follow existing courses: because of lack of time and resources, because they are alone in their workplace, becaus of lack of permission by employers or any other reason.

Project Website

http://www.poywe.net/training

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 104608,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

PROFESSIONELLE OFFENE JUGENDARBEITIN EUROPA, PROFESSIONAL OPEN YOUTHWORK IN EUROPE & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Udruga za promicanje kvalitetnog obrazovanja mladih s invaliditetom “ZAMISLI”
• YOUTH WORK EUROPE
• UNIVERSITAT FUR WEITERBILDUNG KREMS
• APPJUVENTUDE – Associação Portuguesa de Profissionais de Juventude
• Ungdom & Fritid – Landsforening for fritidsklubber og ungdomshus