Social Innovation Academy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Innovation Academy

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Research and innovation

Project Summary

SOCIA has brought together five experienced partners from Luxembourg, Greece, Poland, Slovenia and Spain to develop and test the Social Innovation Academy concept. The Academy is the first European, fully online VET training programme focusing exclusively on social innovation.

It targets directly the managers at NGOs/civil society organisations and intermediaries (hubs, incubators, labs etc.) as well as aspiring social entrepreneurs willing to learn how to set up and run social innovation initiatives to solve the most pressing societal challenges of our times.

Concrete project objectives were to:
– Develop the social innovation skills and competence framework, based on research involving both successful and aspiring social innovators > DONE
– Analyse the current social innovation VET supply and compare it with user learning preferences, identifying gaps > DONE
– Develop and test the Academy’ content and learning environment concept > DONE
– Draw broader recommendations for various stakeholder groups relevant for social innovation VET (aspiring innovators themselves, trainers/experts, intermediaries, policymakers and impact investors) > DONE
– Build a community of stakeholders around the Academy concept to ensure wide engagement and sustainability beyond the project duration > DONE
In effect, we aimed to increase access to and level of the practical social innovation skills and competences of our target audience, raise awareness about the importance of practice-oriented social innovation training in Europe and ingrain it in the activities of various stakeholder groups. The project has reached all objectives and outperformed many initially set KPIs in doing so.

The project has produced six Intellectual Outputs using a variety of robust methodologies in related activities:
IO1 Social innovation skill-set and competence framework (mapping; semi-structured interviews; self-assessments; coding and comparative analysis)
IO2 Social innovation training handbook (network & desktop research; mapping; expert group; gap analysis)
IO3 Social Innovation Academy concept & learning environment (User-Centered Design; Robert Mager’s framework for learning objectives; assessment methodology; contents classification and knowledge management through taxonomies, semantics, ontology, descriptors for search and retrieval; prototyping of learning modules and paths using Pelz‘s principles of engagement, presence, and interaction; rapid prototyping of learning environment based on the ‘Checklist for Online Interactive Learning’ and ‘The Components Of A Successful Online Learning Environment’)
IO4 Social Innovation Academy validation & testing (focus group or living lab methodologies and individual monitored testing protocols, quantitative (survey) and qualitative (debriefing sessions) feedback collection)
IO5 Social Innovation Academy guides (desktop ‘digital storytelling’, ‘pyramid thinking’, professional editing & layout)
IO6 Online Social Innovation Academy community (stakeholder mapping & salience model, stakeholder engagement, online community, sustainability strategy)

Nine multiplier events have been organised in five partner countries (5 events have been removed by the National​ Agency) at the project acceptance stage.

In addition to the Intellectual Outputs and Multiplier Events, our project has also resulted in:
1) the very first research- and evidence-based understanding of ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of social innovation training (results of this approach published By LSE Business Blog)
2) a well-grounded, focused but comprehensive and flexible curriculum on social innovation for VET purposes
3) increased awareness of and accessibility to social innovation know-how in Europe.
4) different stakeholders besides the learners themselves increasing their understanding of how they can benefit from and better support practice-oriented social innovation training in Europe
5) some parts of the IOs as stand-alone results transferrable to other projects
6) extended cooperation among project partners leading to further synergies and opportunities (some already in progress)

We are proud to have achieved all project objectives and surpassed many KPIs, some of them many-fold. The Academy’s website has reached 4,564 people from 187 countries, 33,988 unique pageviews and 390 unique downloads. Our project has gained 80+ official project Friends and organisational supporters. We have received 104 applications to join our Advisory Board and official Friends communities. 9 global Advisors have supported the project. 746 people have subscribed to our newsletter. 50 co-creators contributed to content creation. Besides, we have reached 5,355 followers on Twitter, 432 followers on Facebook and 264 followers on LinkedIn. Our social media posts (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn combined) had a reach of more than a million (1,122,221 by Limitless alone).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 221506,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

LIMITLESS SARL & Country: LU

Project Partners

• Found.ation Maker’s Place Private Company
• EOLAS S.L.
• We4You, Zavod za izobrazevanje
• ICAN Spolka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia sp.k.