"Time4Society Europe aimed to develop innovative methods and tools that link ‘Continuing Professional Development’ (CPD) with ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).Based on the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the project developed ways to make Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Educational Professionals more attractive by addressing attractive, meaningful and socially relevant topics and linking them to internal training topics. In doing so, the project placed a strong emphasis on the topic of Sustainable Development (SD) and a modular learning programme for staff, as this sub-topic showed the greatest acceptance, the greatest feasibility (within the framework of the UN SDGs) and also the greatest adaptability in times of limited meeting opportunities in social projects.The project pursued the idea of qualifying educational staff from adult education institutions as facilitators for CSR and SD. In this context, 27 persons were trained, who in turn developed projects for further training. These implementation projects could also be carried out under Corona conditions in all partner countries.The project proceeded according to plan until winter 2020. By this time, an inventory of possibilities and limitations of training in the field of CSR/SD had been carried out. The project follows a competence-based learning approach; therefore, a competence framework was developed, which describes the potential competences to be developed by the staff and trainers and divides them into competence levels along the LEVEL5 taxonomy. This enables both the competence-oriented development of learning modules (O3) and the corresponding piloting and validation in O5.Still in 2019, a first training of 11 staff members was carried out in Turin, some of whom were still able to carry out pilot projects in face-to-face CSR projects. Due to the limitations of the COVID situation, the T4S Europe concept had to be adapted and part of the pilots had to be carried out online. For this purpose, an SDG Explorer self-learning programme was developed on the T4S platform. This gave interested employees the opportunity to work out the topic of Sustainable Development Goals online as a tool for CSR projects in the field of sustainability. Another group of 16 educational professionals joined the second online CPD in 2021. As integral part of the CPDs, design thinking workshops were held in the pilots, from which concrete ideas for CSR and SD projects were developed. In the process, the adult educators were qualified as ""Facilitators of Design Based Collaborative Learning (DBCL) for Sustainable Development and CSR"".The T4S Europe learning platform (O4) served as a common development space (via mahara groups), LMS for app and trainer training modules (moodle) and validation tool LEVEL5. The platform was used in combination with synchronous and collaborative tools, creating not only real interaction but also a productive learning environment online. This powerful combination of asynchronous, synchronous and collaborative tools and actions was the main reason why the project was successfully completed with more participants than originally planned, despite the pandemic.Through the adaptation processes (learning modules, and the online methodology), the intended goals regarding the qualification of the adult educators and the pilot projects could be achieved. As an additional ""product"", the SDG Explorer was developed, which enables employees to initially educate themselves in the area of the SDGs. With the help of the acquired knowledge, employees can initiate projects and activities themselves that contribute to increased sustainability and CSR in companies. For the trainers (we call them ""Learning and Development Facilitators""), this gives them the opportunity to access an upstream learning programme. In combination with a self-validation, the participants receive an initial profile of their acquired knowledge in the 17 SDGs. The subsequent development phase, which was carried out for the first time over up to seven synchronous modules in combination with the learning platform, clearly showed that transnational cooperation projects can also be facilitated online, and can then be concretely implemented in local initiatives..This is ultimately the greatest impact of the T4S Europe project - the further development of a successful face-to-face format for CSR projects into an approach that makes it possible to develop relevant social and sustainable projects in European cooperation online. The experiences and concrete projects were presented in the context of two online conferences with more than 100 participants each and have already been implemented in the context of one KA1 course."

In spring 2020 the globalised world has been severely hit by the pandemic spread of the Coronavirus. In particular, Adult Education and cVET institutions suffer from shutdowns and hampered direct learning opportunities. Not only the classic offers from Folkhighschools are affected by the crises. Also, large numbers of unemployed persons have been facing problems to participate in qualification courses for a longer period; as well as integration courses.Neither public or private AE institutes nor the employment agencies are prepared for “alternative” online training methods. Online learning and collaboration was simply not foreseen as a standard working and learning mode in AE and cVET programmes.In this situation, it turns out that for Adult Education institutions, digitalisation can be a key factor for success and maybe even for survival. Digitalisation and online collaboration in teaching and learning could be a means to buffer some of the negative effects.Digitalisation plays an increasingly important role in all educational domains. However, there is a special responsibility and meaning in the Adult Education sector since it reaches citizens outside educational institutions in non-formal or even informal learning contexts, and those citizens who are particularly vulnerable regarding digitalisation and who need to acquire “digital literacy”.Adult learners, independent form their age, need to develop knowledge, values and a wide range of critical thinking, communication and information management skills to cope with our digital societies.This includes a large variety of knowledge, attitudes and complex skills (technological, cognitive, learning, social and emotional) which people need to function effectively in contemporary digital environments in order to create, adapt and share information and knowledge in multiple formatsIn order to bring about these competences Adult Educators need expertise related to digital literacy and appropriate digital adult learning approaches to create innovative learning scenarios in which their target group acquire digital competences.However, it is a challenge to set up learning pathways that facilitate the acquisition of relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes in this very heterogeneous field. Only singular attempts have been made to systematically include the development of these competences in Adult Education courses and/or modules. The validation (here the assessment and documentation) of these competences requires an appropriate competence framework system to give evidence of students’ development, to connect them to existing certification systems and to offer a European wide validation approach. DEAL will develop and pilot an approach to tackle this issue based on a long-term partnership of educational partners who have either worked in digital literacy and digital education projects or on competence oriented learning and validation of non-formal and informal learning.Based on a robust stocktaking of the successful approaches deployed in digital literacy and digital education modules and courses, it will set up a framework of competences on digital literacy and digital education. It will make use of the LEVEL5 validation system which has been largely applied in previous EU-funded projects on the professionalisation of Adult Education personnel and which comes with a powerful digital learning environment.A modular learning and training approach will be developed using high quality blended learning approaches combining face-to face, e-learning and practical learning on the job.The learning and training offers will also be delivered on state-of-the-art learning technologies which will offer contents, courses, e-portfolios and validation interfaces as open educational resources (OER).The DEAL courses and modules will involve more than 20 professionals and at in the piloting more than 100 adult learners from adult education institutes from six EU member-states.AE professionals will design, plan and deliver projects on digital literacy and digital education along an innovative blended learning concept based on transferrable study units that can be integrated in the offers of their home AE-institutes.Competences will be validated and connected to European validation and certification instruments.In this project experienced project partners work together in a new combination: 5 Adult education institutes (from DE, UK, IT, SE and SK) collaborate with CPD institutes for AE professionals (DE, NL) specialised on blended learning, digitalisation, learning technologies. The AE institutes represent different aspects of AE: the typical Folkhighschool portfolio and integration courses, andragogical approaches, health education and political education, cultural heritage and intercultural education. Hence the partners are covering a wide range of AE sectors and a large geographical scope.