An Adult Digital Education Skills Kit to Foster Employability (DESK) Erasmus Project

Project Title

An Adult Digital Education Skills Kit to Foster Employability (DESK)

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Recent studies have shown that digital literacy in Europe plays a crucial role in their selection when an individual is a candidate for a job opportunity. In the meantime, a huge portion of EU’s population remains digitally illiterate, and as such, an unemployed person has fewer job opportunities, and a working man has fewer chances of bettering their position. As time progresses so does the technology penetrate our everyday life, be it in the house or in work. Such is the growth of digitization, that EU adults need to be encouraged to engage in life-long learning in order to acquire the skills necessary to catch up with the needs and opportunities of modern digital life. In addition, traditional training techniques have started to wane, and more modern teaching tools and skills are needed to increase the level of skill/information absorption by the Adult Trainee. This need can be addressed by using Augmented Reality technology in Adult Training and Life-Long Learning, and the first step would be to prepare the trainers themselves, by introducing them to the use of Augmented Reality in the Classroom.

An Adult Digital Education Skills Kit to Foster Employability
To achieve the aforementioned goal, the project partners have collectively created a “Digital Toolkit” under the name DESK (the adult Digital Education Skills Kit to foster employability) by which an Adult Trainer can learn how to create content for his class as well as use it to promote Life-long Learning to Adults and help them increase their skills towards the labor market.
During the project lifetime, the following intellectual outputs have been developed:
-a relevant curriculum based on an analysis of the training needs of adult learners according to the digital skills needed to improve and foster employability;
-courseware and e-Learning content based on the established curriculum of courses focused on engaging adults to improve their employability and digital literacy;
-a set of case studies serving as examples of successful use of Augmented Reality (AR) for training adults;
-an innovative “Digital Adult Trainers Toolkit” which provides EU Adult Trainers with a set of digital resources including e-learning content and AR-case-studies which they can include in their training sessions to help increasing the interest level of adult learners;
-a group of Adult Trainers to evaluate the aforementioned “Toolkit”
-the results of this project across Europe and openly distribute the resultant “DESK Toolkit” to a minimum target of 1,000 Adult Trainers

The Adult Digital Education Skills Kit will be made by a consortium of 7 partners from 7 different European countries. It includes Life Long Learning Centers (Adult Training, e-Learning), a University (Higher Education), a Digital Media expert and Technical Experts (Augmented Reality, 2D&3D Digital Model Creation).The combined skills of these institutions will develop a digital tool kit that will target Adult Trainers, Learners and Stakeholders relevant to Adult Education, allowing them the means to integrate Augmented Reality into their teaching, thus helping Adult Learners to gain Modern-day Skills required in the Labor Market, such as Digital Literacy.

The project followed a work breakdown structure, and each activity’s progress has been monitored through the completion of its subroutines. This allowed for careful planning and coordination of the activities and the total project, and by using the Project Management’s Time Management principles we could stay within our EFT (Earliest Finish Time) and LFT (Latest FT).
As the target groups are widespread (Adult Trainers, Stakeholders, Learners), it is reasonable to expect that DESK’s utilization will not be limited to the participating organizations
While the direct result will be to enable Adult Trainers to integrate Augmented Reality in their teaching, this indirectly results into allowing Adult Learners better educational chances and brings them closer to gaining useful Modern-day Labor Market Skills, such as Digital Literacy.

The main long-standing Output of DESK is the Skills Kit itself, which provides Adult Trainers via a specific Curriculum all necessary content (e-Learning, Case-Studies, AR content, Examples of Sessions using AR) that will enable them to utilize AR technology and more effectively assist Adults in their learning experience.
The project has raised awareness via multiple routes, including a dedicated web-page, Social & Multi-Media Pages, and Multiplier events in all participating countries.

Project Website

http://desk.e-sl.gr/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 199693 Eur

Project Coordinator

MPIRMPAKOS D. & SIA O.E. & Country: EL

Project Partners

• MACDAC ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY BUREAU LTD – MECB
• MEDIA CREATIVA 2020, S.L.
• UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA DIN BUCURESTI
• EURO-NET
• Evropska rozvojova agentura, s.r.o.
• Archon sp. z o.o.