Digital Transformation and Employability: acquiring transversal competences in curricular education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital Transformation and Employability: acquiring transversal competences in curricular education

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Digital transformation (DX) is a technology-driven continuous change process of companies and the entire society, it is about adopting disruptive technologies to increase productivity, value creation, and social welfare (Ebert 2018): it entails transformation of business, organisational activities, processes, required competences, and it impacts across society at several levels, from the individual to the collective perspective. Clearly, DX has huge effects on the labour market, which have been largely debated in the past few years. The OECD (2016) has documented that technological change has been a key driver behind the de-industrialisation in OECD’s countries, having resulted in slower job creation. Frey and Osborne (2013) argued that particularly automation had and has greatly impacted on the labour market in terms of labour savings: although this phenomenon has so far affected in particular low skilled workers, new business processes also necessarily affect middle management, management and highly skilled professionals/consultants, which are typical graduate jobs. Being an entrepreneur in the technological era requires a greater level of digital skills and a sound understanding of the digital transformation trends over time, in business and society.
The DiTEMP project therefore proposes an action aimed at embedding Digital Transformation elements, with reference to its impact on field-specific labour markets, in curricular education by providing:

– A methodological reference framework listing learning outcomes for the purpose, and pedagogical approaches suitable to reach educational goals;
– A step-by-step guide on how to integrate in practice the framework in university settings;
– A training course, and related learning materials, for teachers and career counsellors;
– Four modules related to field-specific disciplines (Psychology, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Business and Economics; and Education) related to the impact of digital transformation in reference labour markets, and how to equip students in positively dealing with that;
– Guidelines, both online and offline, to easily take advantage of the project results, and transfer them to other disciplinary fields.

Two levels of intervention will be pursued:

– Towards teachers and career counsellors, to make them aware of the impact of digital transformation in their own reference field markets;
– Towards students, in order to increase their capability to act and manage the complexity and the rapid changes of the market as a result of digital transformation.

The action would contribute at the same time to the evolution of internal processes at higher education institutions to support graduates’ employability, as: increased integration among academic body and support services; improved interdisciplinarity; enhanced capacity to embed the world of work into academic curricula.

Project Website

http://ditemp.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 269266,06 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA & Country: IT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE LA LAGUNA
• FUNDACION UNIVERSIDAD EMPRESA
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MACERATA
• MILITOS SYMVOULEUTIKI A.E.
• UNIVERSITATEA ALEXANDRU IOAN CUZA DIN IASI