Data Understanding and Communication Knowledge and Skills for Trainers and Teachers in VET and HE Erasmus Project

Project Title

Data Understanding and Communication Knowledge and Skills for Trainers and Teachers in VET and HE

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 2018

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

Understanding and communicating data became critical for companies: lack of data communication and visualization skills, including data storytelling and infographics, lack of knowledge of basic tools to analyses and present data become a serious problem for the modern labour market. Today not only data scientists need data understanding and communication skills, but a wide variety of positions in any industry require this new type of soft skill, that became similar to language skills and digital literacy. The partnership has developed a modular course on Data Understanding and Communication to be implemented in CPD, VET and HE environments. The three modules of 30 learning hours (theory and practice) consists of a problem analysis module, a data analysis module, and a communication modul. Each modul covers 3-5 skills that are thought through units. One unit is between 25 and 60 minutes of self-paced studying. The acquisition of a skill is tested through self-assessment: unit level self-evaluation and skill level self-tests. The full course is available in English, Spanish, Polish and Hungarian. Validation workshops and piloting ensured the relevance and the quality of the course.

It is based on a detailed needs analysis and best practices report on the state of the art in DUC (Data understanding and communication) and especially DUC in continuous professional development field. The partners organised 4 focus group meetings with 27 selected participants, conducted 14 expert interviews and used the data collected through 95 completed online questionnaires. For desk research they collected the data and referenced at least 5 sources as requested and provided 2 case studies per country. The full report is available to download from the project website in English. Executive summaries are also made available similarly in English, Spanish, Polish and Hungarian.

Our initial survey showed a great need of easily applicable examples that facilitates understanding and provides a good example of data understanding and communication close to one’s own field of work. For this reason, every module of the DUCK course has three mini-project activities. These follow the content structure of the course and provide examples of the different skills on different educational sectors (this way learners and teachers can identify the mini project closest to their professional interests): activities and examples for VET teachers and trainers; for Secondary school teachers in-service training activities and; for continuous professional development (CPD) in the corporate sector and for adult VET trainers. These examples are build in the course structure but can be accessed separately as well, through the Resource Center. All activities and examples are available there as OERs to be freely used, adapted and translated.

Participating organizations have all benefited from the teamwork itself which has proved to be productive and very positive for all. Partners have shared knowledge on all the project topics, and shared different ways of critical thinking skills development. All partners have also successfully tested the proposed educational tools, strategies and methodologies being able to reproduce and apply them in their daily activities.
Finally, some partners (the Institute of Continuing Education of Engineers of BME and the Faculty of Economics of WUT) are already made steps in applying the project’s results in their organizations in order to promote a new program for VET teachers, university teachers, Engineering further education and intra-university CPD offer via short term training for trainers.

An Implementation Guideline was written to help teachers and trainers to plan and implement their own course offer with the use of the On-line content, Resource center, evaluation and methodological tools, written based on the O1 report, development plans and piloting results. A complex methodology is introduced multimedia on-line course content production on DUCK topic, descriptions on how to use the different on-line course elements in the classroom and by using other methods, with special emphasis on blended learning methods like flipped classroom, project work, mini project and collaborative learning.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 214507,95 Eur

Project Coordinator

BUDAPESTI MUSZAKI ES GAZDASAGTUDOMANYI EGYETEM & Country: HU

Project Partners

• POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA
• Innovation Training Center, S.L.
• HASKOLINN A BIFROST SES