SkillsUp:Skilling up educators for today and tomorrow’s labor market Erasmus Project

Project Title

SkillsUp:Skilling up educators for today and tomorrow’s labor market

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The knowledge, skills and attitudes of each of Europe‘s 6 million teachers are of great importance. The quality of their teaching has a direct effect upon learner‘s attainment. The demands made on educators/teachers are increasing and changing with every year as they are called on to play a key role in modernizing education. To be able to do that, they need to develop their own knowledge and skills.
Our project’s main objective was retaining older teachers/trainers, who was our target group, in employment through the provision of appropriate educational opportunities supported by innovative learning methods.
Partnership united 5 experienced teams from institutions providing distance and adult education what enabled to ensure high quality of project implementation and its results mentioned below. The coordinator was Plunges suaugusiuju svietimo centras, partners were European University Cyprus, Ostra Grevier Folkhogskola, Sweden, Institute E-seniors, France, BalkanPlan, Bulgaria.
The project created and proposed four intellectual outputs:
O1 – State of the Art Report about Digital and Soft skills Training for Adults.
O2 – Digital skills training course consisting of 6 modules in all languages of the partnership which can be taken by all interested educators or learners at their own pace, convenient time an absolutely free. The Digital skills training course is supplemented with the unit of lesson scenarios, lesson plans or ideas how creatively use the digital tools in education in partner languages and English suggested by learners during the pilot courses.
O3 – Soft skills training course consisting of 6 modules for self paced individual learning of a person in English, Lithuanian, French, Greek, Swedish, Bulgarian languages with theory and practical exercises to train skills and the possibility to self-evaluate the progress.
O4 – Open and Free Multilingual platform for collaborative work online in six languages: English, Lithuanian, French, Swedish, Greek and Bulgarian and on all kind of digital devices: personal computers, tablets, smart phones.
Main activities which were undertaken during the project to attain more impact and get better results in the project were as follow:
The short-term joint staff training in soft skills & use of the collaborative platform (total 12 persons) was implemented in October 2017. The training was validated with the certificates of the institution and mobility Europasses were issued.
1 multiplier event in each partner country was held from April 2018 to October 2018 where over 150 stakeholders from local organizations were presented the Skills Up project outputs and outcomes.
Online international pilot training in digital skills with 12 participants was implemented from November 2017 to February 2018. After the completion of the course the knowledge gained was validated and participants got the certificates with 2 ECTS from the Distance Education Unit of the University.
5 national pilot trainings in digital skills in all partner countries were implemented from May 2018 to September 2018. The total number was 115 participants and they got the certificates of the institutions.
Online and face-to-face international pilot training in soft skills with 12 participants was organized from October 2017 to December 2017.
5 national pilot trainings in soft skills involved 125 learners which was more than we had been planning in the application.
Expected results and impact was visible improvement of educators’ professional competences, intellectual thinking, practical, transferable skills: the ability to plan & deliver trainings using ICT tools creatively responding to the changes of the modern world; increasing educators’ motivation of using languages and ICT in communication and obtaining international experience in professional development; new and modern cooperation between the organizations which led to new project of cooperation & exchanging experiences in non-formal education for disadvantaged groups.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 139582 Eur

Project Coordinator

Plunges suaugusiuju svietimo centras & Country: LT

Project Partners

• ostra grevie Folkhogskola
• Balkanplan
• Institut E-seniors
• EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY CYPRUS