Moving into Soft Skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Moving into Soft Skills

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

<< Background >>

Moving into Soft Skills (MOSS) project was born out of passion for somatics and embodied methods for learning and teaching, and the desire to bring these, at the moment more marginal, methods and tools more into the awareness and use of educators, students and professionals in various fields. Introducing these methods in an approachable manner more into the mainstream awareness could enable many unprecedented innovative applications of the somatic approach in the field of vocational learning as well as other learning contexts.

The project group had also observed the rise of the need for more soft skills in the labour market and since many soft skills develop in different somatic practices, the idea arose for producing material and resources to address this gap between the education and the needs of the labour market. Through all this, there was the aim to contribute to the EU vocational education goals of fostering employability and active citizenship as well as making soft skills training available for groups that would benefit from enhanced soft skills but have limited access to the currently available market alternatives due to economical, social or structural reasons.

<< Objectives >>

The objectives of the MOSS project were to form a well-functioning team of professionals in the field of somatics, dance and education and develop an approach and innovative outputs that can serve a wide range of educators and facilitators in various fields. The aim was also to widen the use of somatic teaching and learning methods, make them accessible and practical to use in various contexts.

MOSS has also aimed at improving the quality of soft skill competencies of the target audiences by creating a method and tool for bringing individuals and groups more awareness of their soft skills and further developing resources with which to address the development needs of soft skills.

Goals of the partner organizations involved were to create an international network of somatic educators to widen their range of teaching methods, approaches and target groups, learn together and share good practices in the process of creating innovative tools and resources together.

<< Implementation >>

Instead of planned 4 Transnational Project Meetings, there was one meeting organized in Joensuu, Finland during the first month of the project in September 2019. The other TPMs had to be transformed into online meetings due to the epidemiological restrictions. There were altogether 5 Transnational Online Meetings organized to plan and implement the project activities.

The two project outputs, Soft Skills Mapping tool and Embodied Soft Skills training, were produced and developed through online collaboration of the project group as well as through local pilotings. Altogether more than 120 persons participated in the in-person or online piloting of the outputs, ie. participating either in a soft skills mapping session or a 16-hour training. Also 7 external evaluators were involved in the development process. There were two international online multiplier events organized. The project website displays all the outputs freely available and functions as a dissemination platform. Social media was used widely in the dissemination of the project’s content, progress and outputs.

<< Results >>

MOSS project’s first output is the Soft Skills Mapping Tool and a 62-page Handbook in English, Finnish, Latvian, Polish and German languages and instructional videos on how to use the Mapping tool. The second output is a set of Embodied Soft Skills Training resources including a 108-page Handbook (in EN, FI, LV, PL, GE); exercise database of 98 exercises for creating a training with an instructional video on using the database; 25 instructional videos of the exercises to be used as supportive material in preparing for classes or using as content on classes; 2 informative podcast episodes to enrich the material with the aim to increase the understanding of somatic learning and facilitation of training courses using the somatic approach. All of the outputs are freely available on the project’s website.

MOSS team organized two international online multiplier events, Moving into Soft Skills mini-conferences. In the 2-hour events there were experiential parts weaved together with information about soft skills and somatic approach and presentation of the project results and produced outputs. The MOSS social media channels have been distributing inspiring and informative content for their followers.

Project Website

http://movingintosoftskills.com

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 166105 Eur

Project Coordinator

Itä-Suomen Liikuntaopisto Oy & Country: FI

Project Partners

• I-DEJAS MAJA
• Fachhochschule Kärnten – gemeinnützige Privatstiftung
• Fundacja Burdag