REVEAL – Reconstructing an Environment for continuing professional development and Validation for Educators in Adult Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

REVEAL – Reconstructing an Environment for continuing professional
development and Validation for Educators in Adult Learning

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition, transparency, certification; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

REVEAL – Reconstructing an Environment for continuing professional development and Validation for Educators in Adult Learning

The REVEAL project was based on a series of successful projects in the field of VINFL and will be carried out by a consortium of partners with a long experience in European project collaboration from DE, GR, IT, BE, SK, LT, IE and NL working in Adult Education and bring in substantial expertise to support the implementation of VINFL as cross- sectorial approach.

The project aimed primarily on the professionalisation in Adult Education, a sector which is rather heterogeneous in structure and joint approaches and which lacks a truly European approach to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of educational staff working therein.
The ERASMUS+ Key Activity 1 is certainly the flagship of European funding for CPD in European mobility and the amounts for staff mobility have been substantially increasing over the last years, with an ever rising tendency in future.
However, as the REVEAL project found out in its stocktaking phase (IO1), there is a lack of clarity among the AE sector where to find high quality CPD offers on the one hand and how a high quality CPD should look like, since European validation systems and instruments have not really been implemented in the KA1 system and in CPD for Adult Education in general yet.

KA1 courses ought to be a source of professionalization on the European level but there in the past there was no central platform where professionals could find high quality Continuing Professional Development courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards.
As the REVEAL project found out in its first IO, most of the professional stakeholders such as grant owners, course providers and also staff in the National agencies and at the European Commission are concerned about this fact and would want a tool which tackles this challenge.

There is also a lack of a comprehensive, high quality CPD approach including learning and teaching materials for the professionalization of adult educators. Until 2018 there was also no systemic approach based on a sound competence taxonomy that interconnects Continuing Professional Development for Adult Educators to the EQF system – which hampers a systemic approach to a true European validation of professionals in adult education in these EU-funded courses.

REVEAL combined existing approaches of frameworks for professional competences for adult educators and compiled a CPD system which relates to an ECVET based qualification. The core output of the project is the REVEAL Implementation strategy for the Professionalization of Educational personnel in Adult Education (O6).
It compiles a fully-fledged European qualification for educational professionals for Competence Oriented Learning and Validation (COL&V), which was designed, developed and piloted with a group of 22 professionals in blended learning methodology (O5). The COL&V learning programme was delivered in blended learning including the REVEAL learning suite – a rich open, web-based CPD environment consisting of OER learning technologies, namely mahara e-portfolio, Moodle LMS (also as mobile app device with a badging mechanism and the LEVEL5 validation software, all combined with seamless transfer between the systems.
The a combined learning and validation environment (O3+O4) was developed on the basis of a sound technical ECVET specification (O2).
The specification is grounded on a research survey (O1) that addressed KA1 course providers, KA1 educational institutes, KA1 learners (professionals), their requirements and experiences on competence development and validation.
REVEAL learning technology partners also developed the PROVIDE platform (O4), which is an attractive showroom for KA1 CPD offers, sending organizations and individuals as participants of European KA1 mobility.
The PROVIDE platform is a place where professionals find high quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards.
REVEAL created for the first time a system that allows the European educational community (sending organisations, course providers and the learners):
– to communicate and manage their European development plans online
– to match sending organisations and course providers along quality criteria
– to integrate validation of competences and competence developments
– to set up personal qualification profiles for each individual learner and to connect these to EUROPASS, ECVET and LEVEL5 instruments.
Therefore, the REVAL project will strongly contribute to the professionalization of educational personnel in adult education and will ensure a quality check for KA1 courses based on European standards.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 299105 Eur

Project Coordinator

BLENDED LEARNING INSTITUTIONS COOPERATIVE & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Deutsches Institut fuer Erwachsenenbildung eV Leibniz-Zentrum für Lebenslanges Lernen
• CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
• Centrum vzdelávania neziskových organizácií
• VYTAUTO DIDZIOJO UNIVERSITETAS
• PLATform Opleiding, Onderwijs en Organisatie BV (PLATO)
• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• VLAAMSE GEMEENSCHAP