Learning Map Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning Map

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Recognition, transparency, certification; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits)

Project Summary

Learning Map was a long term project implemented by 4 partners from different backgrounds and countries. Ha Moment from Portugal, dedicated to non-formal education for adults. Badgecraft from Lithuania, a technical partner dedicated to the use and accessibility of Open digital Badges as a tool for recognition of competences. UPB from Germany, an university that also works with adult education and VET schools. Pina from Slovenia, expert in communication and media development, and also working with Adult Education.

Education is evolving constantly and the organizations and staff working on that field need to develop competences and methods to keep track of this evolution. The lifelong learning is an important part of that process and needs to be empowered and become attractive for the learners.
Adult Education is an important part of the lifelong learning, in complement of other fields of education and youth. The European Commission traced some priorities and conducted research which intends to lead improvement and effectiveness of all policies and provision, and so a report was done stating the following:
“Despite these potential benefits, the EU is far from attaining its benchmark of 15% adult participation in learning by 2020. Indeed, there are major challenges to be confronted. At European level, challenges are:
· Significantly increasing rates of adult participation in learning, especially for economically inactive, unemployed, older and less skilled adults;
· Substantially reducing the number of adults who have only a lower secondary qualification.

With this project we worked towards and contributed as organizations to meet the benchmarks and priorities delimited by EU, by creating and developing a tool which tracks the learning process in all educational fields and provides a better way to present training offers and what the learners can gain with it.

The objectives of the project were:
– To create and develop a Learning Map a web tool and adult education method to map, track, monitor, evaluate and recognize the learning and competences of adult learners and lately to adult educators and educational staff . The features of this tool will include be as described in Output 1:
– To contribute to the development of the quality of support systems and the capabilities of adult educators.
– To increase the motivation of adult education providers to train and develop themselves by investing in their own learning;
– To foster the cooperation between different entities from 4 European countries, representing different sectors: university, NGO’s, company.
– To introduce new approaches to adult education programmes and strengthen cooperation on how to help educational providers to be more sustainable, and better able to serve the learners needs.
-To foster the use of ICT tools in adult education

During the project we had 3 transnational meetings, created and developed 4 intellectual outputs (Learning Map, Methodological Guidelines, Promotional Videos, Research Documentation), and implemented local activities and research.

Besides the work of each partner individually we will reached a wider public with the website, the promotional material and different events and activities.

The impact obtained cross with the ones for participants, organizations, target public and other stakeholders. We achieved:
a) Improved assessment and validation of competences and learning outcomes,
b) Increased synergies and links between the different sectors of education and training and business,
c) Increased use of learning outcomes when describing and defining qualifications, parts of qualifications and curricula, in support to teaching and learning and in assessment;
d) Increase of motivation towards the use of ICTs and open educational resources (OER) in education and training systems;
e) Reinforced interaction between practise, research and policy, using all intellectual outputs of the project.
f) Open access to all the results of the project with the plan to keep developing further adapting it according to the needs, comments and suggestions provided by educators and learners.

At long term we hope that this project can contribute for improving the Adult Education and other fields of education with a new method and tool to present and recognize learning paths and competences acquired. We expect with that to help not only educators, but also organizations and learners, since they already showed interested and started using the tools developed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 53252 Eur

Project Coordinator

HA MOMENT CRL & Country: PT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAET PADERBORN
• Kulturno izobrazevalno drustvo PiNA
• Badgecraft, UAB