Open IT Up: Boosting Adult Educator Competences to Upskill Pathways of Adult Learners Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open IT Up: Boosting Adult Educator Competences to Upskill Pathways of Adult Learners

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The Council Resolution on A New Skills Agenda for an Inclusive and Competitive Europe (21/11/2016), reflects a common vision about the role of skills for jobs, growth and competitiveness. Skills can help to secure jobs and enable people to fulfil their potential; they promote social cohesion as well as determine competitiveness and the capacity to drive innovation. To equip people with the skills that are needed – to help them find quality jobs and improve their life chances – our society needs competent adult educators able to meet the needs of the diverse group of adult learners. The project “Open IT Up” dealt with developing educators’ competences in order to improve the quality of basic (linguistic and digital) and entrepreneurship skills formation in adult education. The direct target groups of the project were educators who teach to vulnerable groups of adults (low-qualified/low-educated, NEETS, unemployed, refugees, migrants, etc) and adult learners from these groups who have benefitted from better-equipped and trained adult educators.

Under the situation of unemployment that many adults face in different European countries, when work seems nowhere to be found, one of the options to enter the labour market is to start your own business. It is quite a challenge for low-educated adults to start their business without basic skills, such as literacy and -in the world of global digitalization – digital skills as well as basic knowledge of entrepreneurship concepts. The Open IT Up project aimed at supporting and empowering adult educators who teach vulnerable groups of adults ICT and English (or a language of the country of the residence) providing them with an attractive and high quality LLL opportunity: a course “Start Your Own Business” to reinforce the basic competences of their adult learners, such as language and digital skills, and at the same time, provide them with effective instruments for employment/ self- employment. The course has a “hybrid nature” and uses the CLIL approach teaching both the language and the ‘field-specific content’ (ICT notions and business-related content). The course was developed based on a collaborative model, in which both language and field-specific teachers had joint input into the development and/or teaching of the course. The course is available on the Open IT Up website www.openitup.eu in two versions: teaching materials for adult educators and learning materials for adult learners.

By developing the project transnationally, it was possible to create a self-enriching synergies of the approaches, methods and tools used by adult educators around Europe which was reflected in the open educational resource aiming to support educators and learners through: 1) design and development of teaching and learning materials for the course “Start Your Own Business”, 2) videos about EU start-ups with subtitles in partner languages – based on real stories which the project team members found in local communities or at the communities of their partners; 2) elaboration of an ICT (innovation – communication – technology) Tool Kit for educators, which includes a series of webinars on the use of digital tools and technology in adult education in partner languages; 3) creation of an interactive database of Business Idea which describes ideas of businesses taken as an example those created in the partners’ communities. Within the project, there was organised the piloting of the developed courses with adult learners, transnational meetings, and multiplier events.

“Open IT Up” has greatly promoted cross-sectoral and cross-cultural cooperation between partner organisations and their communities, involving in the project not only associated partners, but much wider public, inlcluding start-ups, Chambers of Commerce, educational centres and public authorities on local and regional level. Due to the developed materials and an extended cooperation network, adult educators reinforced their professional competences, including digital ones, and adult learners got an opportunity to improve their basic skills as well as facilitate their integration into the labour market.

Thus, the project “Open IT Up” has promoted the development, transfer and exploitation of innovative practices in adult education through elaboration and piloting of teaching and learning materials and tools and extending of educators’ competences who will be able to improve the basic skills of their learners to upskill their pathways.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 176970 Eur

Project Coordinator

DOMSPAIN SLU & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Szczecinska Szkola Wyzsza Collegium Balticum
• AINTEK SYMVOULOI EPICHEIRISEON EFARMOGES YPSILIS TECHNOLOGIAS EKPAIDEFSI ANONYMI ETAIREIA
• NIKANOR LTD
• edEUcation ltd
• Les Cultures
• WISAMAR BILDUNGSGESELLSCHAFT GEMEINNUTZIGE GMBH
• UNIVERSITY OF USAK