SWOT

New digital skills for low-skilled adults

Objectives:
1. Familiarize participants with SWOT techniques and approaches in order to support the enhancement of adult education;

2. Increase educators and participants’ knowledge and understanding of the role of Smart Working inside companies as far as in education;

3. Improve the digital intelligence and skills of participants oriented to distance learning;

4. Improve the confidence of adult educators to support the effort of Adult Education providers in developing new methods and tools for adult education;

5. Promote cooperation and partnership among local stakeholders and adult educators from different European Countries to further embed the Turkish/European Union Dimension.

The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated that low competencies in SWOT go in pair with the difficulty or the impossibility of maintaining normal productivity. In normal times, low competencies in SWOT go in pair with poor job opportunities, which become poorer in normal time and poorer if we consider that Europe and the Middle East is changing the structure of employment, leading to the automation of “routine” tasks and to the creation of new and different types of jobs. It is leading to the need for digital skills and smart working methods for nearly all jobs where ICT complements existing tasks. Even a high qualification job requires increasing levels of digital skills. They change the way we learn by fostering online communities, enabling personalized learning experiences, supporting the development of soft skills such as problem-solving, collaboration and creativity, and making learning fun. All this is leading to the need for every citizen to have at least basic digital skills in order to live, work, learn and participate in modern society. The enhancement of digital skills strengthens human capital, employability, and competitiveness.

Innovation

The innovation lies in the fact that in the last years an ever-growing number of organizations have asked their employees to limit business trips and work in Smart Working, using the collaboration tools available to them. Today, following the subsequent implementation provisions of various government authorities launched to contain and manage the epidemiological emergency from COVID-19, almost all the realities of large companies have now adopted forms of Smart Working while the education system is still lagging behind in training workers’ future ability to carry out their work remotely.

In this scenario, to help organizations to introduce Smart Working as an opportunity to experiment with new working methods, new tools and digital channels, despite its complexity, numerous organizations have made available solutions and services. So, in the project, we intend to work with the criterion of “Digital Solidarity”, where different subjects are expected to appear in the realization of the tasks of other workers not directly involved in their realization, in order to facilitate the performance of work tasks.

Thus emerges with the “Smart Working Desk” with the aim of allowing fast support in the correct adoption of agile work, from an organizational and technological point of view and with ad hoc training courses to help people improve the way they work remotely.
In fact, the Desk provides a survey to check up on the processes, work methods and interaction between people; online consultancy support for HR departments and multidisciplinary crisis committees (ranging from processes to change management to security); an online course with multidisciplinary videos on smart leadership, smart behaviours and attention to be had on the Coronavirus theme, interactive webinars.

All partner institutions operate in the sector of adult learning / lifelong learning (also in vocational training), targeting broad target groups (unemployed, employees, enterprises). Partner institutions implement their activities in the field of general education, the labour market, supporting entrepreneurship, social inclusion and ecology.

From 2020 all partners started working together for implementing the project “OWN from being a learner to being an owner”, which includes the development of practical enterprises for learners involved in VET education. results for adult staff such as Interactive reports: environmental challenges and climate action; e-learning adult program; adult Sustainability kit. The currently submitted project is the next step in the cooperation between both institutions. Due to the larger scale of the project, new institutions joined the consortium, which will bring their experience and solutions in the field of ecological training/education.

LIBA actively participates in EU-funded projects as an applicant and partner organization, also in several projects and initiatives related to digital literacy. E.g.: the web platform and mobile application “Digital Entrepreneur Academy” (2021), Digital Guide for VET teachers and trainers on how to foster team building, leadership and influence skills an online quiz (2019) and others. In addition, the organization has developed and is constantly improving a platform of online services for learning and improving entrepreneurial skills.

MUSEV has a cooperation agreement with the Mamak District Directorate of National Education which makes it possible to reach over 300 schools in the region, including 30 Adult/Youth/VET centers in the region, and has also Centers that provide Adult/VET Training to individuals has various disabilities. This kind of cooperation was managed in previous projects, and it was possible to reach a high number of individuals in the training activities. MUSEV is also a Training org.

The project meets both criteria.

(1) It will increase the synergy between the various sectors of the Program (especially the adult and VET sectors) and

(2) it will have a significant and long-term impact on the area of lifelong learning and training.
Ad. 1 Because partner institutions operate not only in the adult sector but also in VET and Youth, thanks to the implementation of the project: exchange of experiences / good practices, transnational cooperation on the results of the staff of several institutions from several different EU countries, the project will have a positive impact not only on the adult sector but also other Program sectors. The staff of partner institutions working in various sectors will transfer the acquired knowledge/skills / achieved results also to sectors other than adults. The Methodological model, the PLW and the WP4 will be used in all different fields of E+.

Ad. 2 One of the goals of the project is to implement new results in the adult sector to the offer of partner institutions and other entities. The implementation of the project and the results achieved will have a strong and long-term impact on the adult sector. Training institutions, employment agencies and their staff, representatives of city offices, and local and regional authorities will have access to innovative tools, including online, tailored to the current needs of the European labour market, taking into account the green transformation host Europe and the impact of the covid pandemic on the EU labour market or market training and consulting services.

The project will create synergy between several sectors of the Program also because its assumptions are in line with the current EU legal acts relating to the VET, Youth and Adult sectors, for example: “Recommendations of the Council of 15 March 2018 on pathways to skills improvement”, “European Pillar of Social Rights” or the “EUROPE 2020” Strategy.

In this sense, partners aim at overcoming the observed gaps in the action of every single partner, by developing an educational alliance to consolidate approaches, methods and tools developed by the Project Partners in previous and ongoing research, innovation, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building activities. Through their systematization, testing and evolution within partners, they will become strategic tools to form a new generation of smart working leaders able to navigate the complexity of the multi-disciplinary interconnected knowledge domains, in order to define the new working places and able to validate the SWOT processes in the big and medium-sized firms. Theoretical studies will be complemented with practical planning and design workshops in different working contexts, jointly developed with local authorities and communities, to experiment with job-resilient solutions. The scientific background of partners will support the development of innovative educational practices, including the production of open/digital education tools like interactive ones.

2022 REEP 2022-1-FR01-KA220-ADU-000085411