EDGE Project Erasmus Project

Project Title

EDGE Project

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

The EDGE (Enhancing the Delivery of Guidance and Employability) Project aims to enhance the progression prospects of socio-economically disadvantaged adults in order to promote social inclusion and equality measures. Amongst the partners (Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Austria, Greece), these learners comprise both young and mature adults who are early school-leavers, as well immigrants. The opportunity presented by Erasmus+ has enabled partners to share best practice, drawn from our considerable collective experience in the delivery of second-chance education for adults and young people.

Specifically, the objectives of the EDGE Project were to develop innovative approaches (career guidance, learner engagement strategies, self-evaluation tools, e-learning resources) in the provision of employability skills development. These have been achieved through the production of our four Intellectual outputs:

Open Badges
Open badges are a new online ‘learning currency’ that can operate in conjunction with formal accreditation but can capture the granularity of the learning experience. The project developed a framework for creating, issuing and verifying Open Badges, created over 30 ready-to-use Badges, piloted these across the strategic partnership and incorporated the learner and staff feedback into the Badge framework. Learner and tutor/teacher resources have also been developed and are available (along with the Badges) on our website for practitioners, learners and other organisations to use.

ePortfolio
This tool consists of a Moodle-based Guidance and Employability Course which enables the learner to develop and collate their skills and achievements. This then feeds directly into the Mahara-based ePortfolio where a learner has a choice of using simple pre-built templates or designing their own ‘space’ to showcase their achievements and accomplishments so far (including any Open Badges they may have been awarded). Selected pages, using secret URLs, can then be shared with prospective employers or educational organisations.

Learner Retention Guidelines
The project also compiled and produced a set of guidelines for improving the engagement and retention of poorly motivated learners. All five partners perceive preventing early drop out as one of the keys to improving employability skills and enabling learners to develop and continue on a career path. A set of questionnaires was devised and agreed upon and then conducted among key focus groups in each partner country. The focus groups consisted of learners, teaches/tutors and programme managers. The results were collated and a set of ‘best practice’ guidelines were produced and disseminated across the strategic partnership and beyond. See project website for a full list of the guidelines.

Final Report
The first part of this is a concise handbook for practitioners that includes a step-by-step guide on how to set up and begin using the ePortfolio and Open Badges. This guide is available internally to any manager or tutor/teacher to learn about and implement our digital tools in their programmes. This guide is also available to any external party that would like to develop and implement Open Badges and the ePortfolio in their own organisations. The second part of the report details the research, methodology and the results from our focus groups and pilot studies.

In order to produce the outputs above, the project undertook the following activities:
Five transnational meetings,
research and presentation on the national unemployment context, current policy and responses and resources available in each country,
conducted focus groups to ascertain barriers to learner retention and solutions to improving retention of poorly motivated learners,
piloted our two digital tools – ePortfolio and Open Badge Framework,
up-skilled key staff in the use of these digital tools,
created a website (www.edgeproject.eu) to share and disseminate our outputs and results,
developed and implemented a Monitoring and Evaluation strategy and
disseminated our results locally, regionally and internationally through local media, events, and the production and distribution of five newsletters.

Our target groups now have two new digital tools to improve their employability skills and therefore improve their chances of gaining employment. Our Open Badges offer our target groups recognition of their existing informal/non-formal skills as well as making them aware of the skills and attributes that they need to acquire. Secondly, through the ePortfolio our target groups have access to a one-stop guidance resource which takes them through an online course designed to identify what skills they have and what skills they need and then showcase these along with their formal accreditation, Open Badges, and other achievements. These two outputs are supported by our Final Report which has a step-by-step guide to setting up and using these digital tools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126111 Eur

Project Coordinator

Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board & Country: IE

Project Partners

• INSIGNARE – Associacao de Ensino e Formacao
• DIE WIENER VOLKSHOCHSCHULEN GMBH
• Adult Learning Wales
• DAFNI KENTRO EPAGGELMATIKIS KATARTISIS