PATHWAYS4EMPLOY • ALL DIGITAL

01 Sep PATHWAYS4EMPLOY

01 Sep, 2016

Posted at 10:35h in Employability and Entrepreneurship, Projects by Andrea Bedorin

We have identified two interesting profiles for employment and digital competences offering opportunities in the coming years: entrepreneur and ‘virtual worker’. By virtual worker we understand anyone working remotely for more than 20% of their time.

90% of jobs in the near future will need digital skills at least at basic level, but entrepreneurs and virtual workers are particular profiles – they must rely on their own competences more than others. What are the digital competences needed to be autonomous, safe, productive, creative? How can we assess our knowledge and identify our gaps? Are we ready to be entrepreneurs and virtual workers in a digital age and to make the best of digital technologies?

PATHWAYS4EMPLOY was a project that wanted to define their competences profiles based on DigComp. Project was focusing on non-formal and informal education as we wanted to address people taking part in activities outside of formal education environment (i.e. people in volunteer services or people with a lack of formal education).

Our objective was to foster the assessment of digital competences by supporting the recognition and validation of skills and qualifications: taking the DigComp framework as reference to ensure that skills and qualifications can be more easily recognised across.

An assessment web tool was developed to assess and recognize the digital competences of people. We used Mozilla Open badges to give visibility to those competences, because they meet the needs of lifelong learners and people acquiring skills in non-formal and informal activities, for example, though volunteering. The patchwork way of learning is currently recognized meant that many of our abilities are unevenly recognized or not recognized at all. There are skills, abilities and knowledge acquired outside classroom walls that lack the necessary credentials.

The project contributed to defining the recognition pathways and how to display expertise and abilities gained in ways that employers find relevant. We did this by developing a web assessment tool that allowed users to assess their digital competences aligned with the DigComp framework, implementing a digital competence portfolio. The platform provided a self-assessment tool that will present an initial digital competences portfolio. Then users were able to assess their digital competences of the profile selected using the assessment tool updating.

PROJECT INTELECTUAL OUTPUTS

1. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE OPEN BADGES ECOSYSTEM
– Public report of Research on good practices establishing Open Badges Ecosystems;
– PATHWAYSFOREMPLOY Open Badges Ecosystem;
– Recognition Pathways Design.

2. PRODUCTION OF ONLINE PATHWAYS4EMPLOY PLATFORM – e-assessment and acreditation platform

3. ASSESSMENT MODULES DESIGN
– Entrepreneur assessment module
– ‘Virtual office worker’ assessment module

PARTNERS