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On the move - Best Practice in Outreach Educationa..
On the move - Best Practice in Outreach Educational Counselling and low-threshold learning opportunities
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
Central to the project is the question of how to reach those remote from education – i.e., people who for whatever reason have had little or no formal adult education - to improve their participation in further education and to design and provide low-threshold learning opportunities. Studies show that only about 10% of the low-qualified participate in further education – among graduates of universities, the participation quote is four times as high. Education experts agree that being remote from education is not due solely to the individuals themselves. Often the institutions, too, are distant from the target audience. This is why experts suggest outreach educational counselling as well as further alternative approaches to increase participation in further education.
Our project ON THE MOVE has its foundations in European Policies and in recent research done within the PIAAC programme.
The goal of the Europe 2020 strategy is smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Lifelong learning and the development of skills are important factors in this strategy. The European Agenda for Adult Learning (EAAL) is directly linked to this and therefore puts emphasis on the necessity for increased participation in adult learning. Whilst participation rates vary considerably amongst EU countries, the rates for low-skilled adults are generally low.
Aims
The goals of this project are identifying, testing, developing (further) and disseminating successful approaches improving the integration and support of the educationally remote. With this project, staff in counselling and educational institutions in Europe will learn about alternative approaches (predominantly of the outreach kind) bringing educationally remote and low-qualified people to further education and will implement these in their countries. This project will increase the chances of the educationally remote to find (better) work, as this is directly correlated with the level of qualification.
Outcomes
- Research from all project partners on suitable best practice examples in Europe for reaching educationally remote people. This also includes previously conducted European projects, whose results we will disseminate further.
- Assessment matrix which we will use to evaluate the identified counselling projects and develop new approaches.
- Website including an Open Educational Resource with at least 30 projects of outreach counselling from different european countries. The site will be available in all partner languages.
- A professional publication (ebook and print) which will contain 30 descriptions of the identified best practice examples. Like the website, this will offer didactic instructions which will enable the implementation of outreach educational counselling and other alternative approaches to reaching the educationally remote at other institutions, too.
- 6 Video interviews in which we will interview skilled personell from best practice projects and accompany them at their work: how do they reach people, how do they counsel them, what are the topics etc.?
- In our main product, the best practice publication, we will also include recommendations for the use of "easy language" better reaching the target groups needs.
- For internal use we will produce and regularly update a dissemination and a quality plan, draft a project management handbook and a project agreement.
Activities
During the investigation phase, each partner will form an assessment group consisting of 5 people active in the area of further education/adult education, which will evaluate the project examples that were researched in the first (research) phase using the assessment matrix and make recommendations for (further) development. The members of this group can be counsellors, trainers, managers, or political decision-makers. The groups will be put together in such a way so as to ensure the necessary specialist expertise to evaluate the projects as well as guaranteeing a widespread dissemination from the start.
Towards the end of the project, each partner will organise a public event and invite educational institutions, representatives of charities, those active in adult and further education, representatives of umbrella organisations (e.g. the Volkshochschulverband (Adult Education Association) in Germany), political decision-makers, representatives of the press, and everyone who is interested in the subject. Each event should reach at least 30 people resulting in 200+ participants. During this event, the best practice approaches that were identified and developed will be presented and the publication will be distributed. In addition we will deliver the project publication to at least 150 university libraries and lecturers across Europe.