Digital Adult Educators: Preparing Adult Educators for a Digital World Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital Adult Educators: Preparing Adult Educators for a Digital World

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

As digitalization speeds up, the demand for digital skills is growing fast in Europe and thus all citizens need to develop adequate digital skills to be empowered in the digital economy and society (The Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition). However, a recent report published by the European Commission revealed that 44% (169 million) of Europeans aged 16-74 do not have basic digital skills to fulfill relevant jobs (European Commission, Report ‘Digital Single Market’). This is equivalent to 40% of EU workers that have an insufficient level of digital skills (EUROSTAT, digital skills of the labour force 2015). Surprisingly, more than half of adults in the EU (56%) have no ICT skills at all or have only the skills necessary to fulfil the simplest set of tasks in a technology-rich environment. The above hurdles are calling for collective transnational efforts to educate adults and prepare them for the digital world we live in (European Commission Communication, Digitising European Industry Reaping the full benefits of a Digital Single Market, 2016).

Therefore, to meet the abovementioned needs, the DigitALAD project focuses on building the capacity of adult educators to face the digital challenges and opportunities of the technological world by providing them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and competences to be able to use them in their daily practice and in extend with the adult learners to empower them for employability.

To address the gap and needs of the field, the DigitALAD project’s objectives are to:
• Build the capacity of adult educators to become digitally literate in their teaching practices
• Build the competencies of adults to use digital tools for employability
• Develop innovative quality resources for adult educators/ trainers and adults
• Promote awareness on the importance of digital skills for adults in Europe

By cooperating in a transnational adult oriented participatory context, we will be able to develop innovation and exchange practices and ideas to expand adult trainers’ knowledge, capacity and practice on adult education and to improve the impact of their work. For this reason, the DigitALAD consortium is comprised of seven partner organisations coming from different countries across Europe: Latvia, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Belgium, and Spain.

The target groups of the project are adult educators and trainers, and adult learners. Additionally, adult education organisations, academics, researchers, and officers from relevant public and private authorities in the field of adult education will be targeted and engaged during the project’s lifecycle.

The outputs of the project include the following:
– The development of the DigitALAD Training Programme for adult educators which will serve as a valuable resource for adult educators in order to learn and advance their digital
– The design and development of an E-learning space and gamified online modules, competences and skills which will serve as a one-stop-shop providing instant access to the full suite of a gamified digital learning modules, and other OERs that will be identified as useful in the preparation phase.
– An impact assessment study and practice recommendations to measure the impact of the project and will include blended learning trainings to 140 adult educators, implementations with adult learners and impact assessment on learners, adult educators, project staff and organizations will be conducted using the IMPACT+ toolkit developed by ECORYS.
– A policy recommendations report which will include recommendations derived from the implementations with adult educators and with adult learners and from a focus group that will be formed in each partner country (with 8- 10 people each) with people from the DigitALAD Committee and relevant stakeholders as participants who wish on contributing in the recommendation report.

The project will be designed, developed, implemented and evaluated with a user-centered design approach with the participation of the DigitALAD Committee. The DigitALAD Committee will be established in each partner country by participants who are eager to be involved in the project and support the definition of needs, the production of material and the finalisation of it.

The DigitALAD will overall contribute to the advancement of the field of adult education and spread awareness on the importance of digital skills and competences, lifelong learning and active citizenship.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 259822,2 Eur

Project Coordinator

LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE & Country: LV

Project Partners

• INNOVADE LI LTD
• EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF ADULTS
• The Rural Hub CLG
• PANEPISTIMIO AIGAIOU
• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET
• JAITEK TECNOLOGÍA Y FORMACIÓN SL