eLene4work: Learning to learn for new digital soft skills for employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

eLene4work: Learning to learn for new digital soft skills for employability

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 addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits)

Project Summary

Many reports issued by the European Union, by University researchers and human resources experts point out that the so called “soft” skills are closely connected with employability of young people entering the labour market. Further studies argue that companies are in vital need of the digital skills the generation that grew up with the internet have.
OERs (Open Educational Resources) and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) can play a crucial role in facilitating lifelong learning for all learners and in improving the quality of content and the distribution of both formal and informal education providers, and a digitally inadequate education system can hamper the development of learners’ knowledge and skills.

eLene4work helps students develop the soft skills mostly required by companies and helps companies exploit the digital talents of new employers and young workers.
eLene4work then proposed a strategic partnership whose goal is to test and monitor the possibility offered by MOOCs and OER to fill the gaps between the university and the labour market.
The aim of the eLene4work project is to allow students to:
• autonomously identify their own:
o gaps in soft skills and competences, in order to develop or improve them;
o their potential in digital soft skill, to bring them into the companies/labour market;
• autonomously learn how:
o to fill their skill gap using MOOCs (and other OERs)
o to include in their cv their soft skills and their digital soft skills in order to enhance the opportunity to enter the labour market.

The project involves:
• for the Focus Groups (Output 2)
o students and young workers in Focus Group 1
o teachers, HRs, managers in Focus Group 2
for each country
• in the validation of the Self Assessment Tool (Output 3):
o students involved
• training activities by MOOCs involved students from different countries.
• the preparation of the Guide (Output 4) involved a group of students, the careers guidance unit, the university’s community manger and the learning technology unit.
Furthermore the project will involved associated/networking partners (including both Large companies and SMEs entrepreneurs).

The main activities of this project could be described as follows.

Sharing knowledge activity about the themes of the project among the different partners to put together studies, previous projects and researches on soft skills/ soft skills 2.0.

Qualitative data gathering (on soft skills and digital soft skills) through focus groups. The focus groups have been organised in each country with the participation of HR/Manager/Teachers, on a side, and with the participation of students (closed to graduation) and young workers, on the other side.

Development of tools to support student soft skills and digital soft skills development:
• Creation of a tool for the assessment of soft skills and digital soft skills in students, validated by Companies/HR/Manager;
• Creation of a MOOCs Orientation Guide for students and young workers;
• A personal Journal to support student learning and the evaluation of their experiences.

Students Training Activities. We developed a set of training activities with different student samples
1 – a country-based sample of student (students for each institution involved);
2 – an international sample, transversal to all the institutions, belonging to EUCA network (students coming from different countries).
This sample will follow any kind of MOOC available (on soft skills and soft skills 2.0).
The evaluation and the training will be the same, using the same standard of evaluation (O5 Personal Journal), and the same methodology of (O6 Field evaluation of the students learning and experience).

The projects builds on an innovative methodology, i.e. the use of MOOCs and OER to help students develop soft skills and digital soft skill. The project recognises the importance of traditional ways of teaching and learning, and contributes further research into the question of whether and how OERs and MOOCs can enhance individuals’ learning outcomes in addition to, or as an integral part of, traditional teaching methods. The lessons learnt have then be reversed into a Toolkit (LLK, Lesson Learned Toolkit), with a set of publications targeted to different groups.
The project furthermore contributes to the change/improvement of teaching/learning approaches connected to soft skills and digital soft skills in the involeved countries and in other countries in the long term.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 410713 Eur

Project Coordinator

FONDAZIONE POLITECNICO DI MILANO & Country: IT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAET BREMEN
• POLITECNICO DI MILANO
• FUNDACIO PER A LA UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA
• UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE
• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
• SOMATEIO EPIXEIRIMATIKOTITA NEON/ JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT GREECE
• UNIVERSITE PARIS NANTERRE