Pomote your Soft Skills with Open Badges Erasmus Project

Project Title

Pomote your Soft Skills with Open Badges

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 2018

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Promote your Soft Skills with open Badges (SoftSkills4EU) is a 2 year international project funded by the EU within Erasmus plus KA2 , led by RIC Novo mesto (Slovenia) with cooperation of 4 partners from other EU countries.

The main project result is developed platform for evaluating and upgrading of Soft Skills, which is accessible on https://academy-softskills4.eu/.

The main objectives followed throughout the project were:
• Identify the key soft skills needed in Europe.
• Develop new e-tools for assessment and learning using the concept of ‘digital badges’.
• Develop an evaluation strategy that can also be used by employers, career consellors and other relevant stakeholders.

It is a fact that soft skills are challenging to measure for several reasons, either because of the absence of appropriate tools and the unclear evaluation criteria used in the evaluation of ‘hard skills’. Because of the different types of people, there are also different approaches and views, that is why knowledge, skills and competences are difficult to standardized. In addition, “soft” skills, competencies become visible only after a long period of working in practice.
The main results of the project are mainly useful for the four target groups: jobseekers, employees, employers and adult educators, career counsellors. We gave special attention also to one of the target groups in the labour market – migrants.
One of the main objectives of the project was to support the Europass European tool, namely to develop a European soft skills passport with integrated OPEN BADGES (in line with the standards of other Europass support tools).

Our project had mainly focused on a systematic inventory of soft skills (research done during the project) and the development of innovative tools for the evaluation of soft skills. We have created the so called ‘Soft skills Framework’ for the five main areas of soft skills, namely:
• Organisational skills,
• Co-operative skills,
• Creative thinking skills,
• Social skills,
• Personal skills (coping with stress).
Due to the well-established term “soft skills” in the EU, we, in partnership, have kept the same denomination and in the naming of modules, despite the fact that our elaborate “Soft Skills Framework” includes not only skills but also knowledge and competences. The foundation for preparing the framework is the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and we considered the placing of the knowledge, skills and competence descriptors on three levels (A, B, C). With the levels of knowledge named this way, we wanted the move closer the evaluation system to the Europass tools. The platform provides e-learning materials (base on gathered best practices and creation of new material) from five thematic areas (five educational e-modules). In addition to testing, on the basis of which participants receive “badges”, which represent validation of knowledge and skills, the project also produced a system of validation of acquired knowledges, skills, competence in practice through the acquisition of the “Good employee” badge.

Within C1 activity we trained 15 career consultants (Soft Skills mentors) to use e-tools and award OPEN BADGES and to help to train other potential professionals to gain mentors badge. Project enables also gaining of SOFTSKILLS mentors badge also after the end of the project.

The possibility of using the results of our project is wide:
– For raising awareness among jobseekers and employees about the importance of soft skills and their impact on motivation, career development and personal growth.
– For preparation of better CVs using our results and Europass tools.
– For supporting career counselling (our newly developed tool is accessible to career counsellors in secondary schools’, adult education, to employment services, assessment centres and other organizations. That is why we want to offer them a tool that will make their work easier.)
– This tool (thanks to the integrated e-learning material) can be used in both formal and non-formal programmes in adult education or for young people or with staff in education companies.
– The tool can be used by employers in recruiting new staff or in preparation of development plan for staff, in monitoring it, for organizing employees to other workplace that are more appropriate to their competences.

With implementation of project “face to face” activities we have reached so far more than 1.600 persons from the main target group and stakeholders from relevant and approx. 35.000 via internet-based activities.

Partners:
• RIC NOVO MESTO, Slovenia (lead partner)
• MINISTERIE VAN ONDERWIJS, CULTUUR EN WETENSCHAP, Netherlands
• A&A EMPHASYS INTERACTIVE SOLUTIONS Ltd, Cyprus
• VISOKA POSLOVNA ŠKOLA PAR, Croatia
• PROMIMPRESA SRL, Italy

Project platform and webpage with results: https://academy-softskills4.eu/, website: https://softskills4.eu/, https://softskills4.eu/
Video guides: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh0E4B-O0QxfTbPeukZplJg

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 277749,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

RAZVOJNO IZOBRAZEVALNI CENTER NOVOMESTO & Country: SI

Project Partners

• PROMIMPRESA SRL
• MINISTERIE VAN ONDERWIJS, CULTUUR EN WETENSCHAP
• VISOKA POSLOVNA SKOLA PAR
• A & A Emphasys Interactive Solutions Ltd