“Early school leaving” and student retention is a challenge amongst educational institutions across Europe. Students who have dropped out of school struggle with lower employment rates and lower participation in adult education for the rest of their lives. This means, that there is lasting and possible devastating effect on the individual pathways in life of early school leaving. Traditionally the approach to student retention has been reactive; when the student has been missing classes for some period of time, the school initiates a plan for “bringing the student back”. What this project consortium proposes is to change this approach from reactive to proactive: Developing a structured way of using data proactively could make it possible to help a given student – maybe even before he or she realizes that they need help. By creating methods described in a Guidebook and developing the Onboarding & Student Retention-app (O&SR-app) that both “onboards” the students to the given educational environment and creates a possible predicative retention approach to guidance counseling by having the students themselves easily indicate how they experience going to school, we could help a lot more students before they drop out, instead of trying to bring them back. The objective of the project is therefore to use data proactively to combat the considerable challenge of early school leaving. The O&SR-project will be carried out by six consortium partners: Fønix (Norway), a provider of HR services and career guidance counseling for adults; North East Scotland College (Scotland), a college which works with digital tools and education; TAKK (Finland), an adult educational institution; Manzavision (France), a digital product developer; Center for Ungdomsforskning (CeFU) (Denmark), a research center located at Aalborg University that specializes in youth, youth culture and youth well-being and VUC Storstrøm (Denmark), an adult educational institution. The Guidebook and the O&SR-app will be developed by testing on approximately 400 students, 24 guidance counselors, 40 teachers and 4 managers at four different European schools. It is expected that as a result of the project innovations the student drop-out rate will be reduced by 10% to 20% in the early school leaving risk group. This could potentially have a widespread regional, national and European impact at educational institution level, but it could also contribute vastly to individual student schooling experience and thereby foster social inclusion.

Fuel Cell and Hydrogen (FCH) technologies hold great promise for energy and transport applications from the perspective of meeting Europe’s energy, environmental and economic challenges. The European Union is committed to transforming its transport and energy systems as part of a future low carbon economy. It is recognized that FCH technologies have an important role in this transformation and they are part of the Strategic Energy Technologies Plan (SET) Plan adopted by the European Council. This is in line with the European Commission’s (EC) Communication “Energy for a Changing World – An Energy Policy for Europe”, the goals of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Strategic Transport Technology Plan.Hydrogen vehicle technology is commercializing rapidly, while the increasing demand for skilled labor in this field contrasts with the lack of training programmes provided to technicians. Denmark is, as far as known, the only country in the world that has nationwide network of hydrogen filling stations (10 stations). Denmark is one of the first countries to get access to the new fuel cell vehicles from Toyota and Hyundai. Thus, Denmark is leading in implementing fuel cell vehicles - and also a leader in system knowledge.The increasing number of hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles will lead to growth in employment in service and maintenance of these vehicles and thus an increasing demand for skilled labor in the field.Education and training in the fuel cells and hydrogen sector is critical for the current and future workforce and thereby supports indirectly the commercialization of the technology. Knowledgeable and capable workforce that understands the functioning of both technology and underlying fundamental processes, but knows also about obstacles and technological restrictions, is essential for successful development, planning and implementation of FCH technology.It is widely accepted that job opportunities for technicians and workers within the fuel cells and hydrogen (FC & H2) applications will emerge in the short term, but there is also a lack of appropriate training for technicians.Hydrogen vehicle technology is commercializing rapidly, while the increasing demand for skilled labor in this field contrasts with the lack of training programmes provided to technicians. This highlights the need for transferable skills and a common training approach for this new sector. It has become fundamental to share European knowledge and experiences to participate in the creation of an appropriate training in order to develop excellence covering hydrogen vehicle maintenance.It is the project purpose to gather experiences and knowledge from three European countries (each of them owning an area of excellence in the FCH technology) and convert it in a training programme for future technicians of FCH vehicles. The project's expected results are: O1: Report: Mapping the necessary content of the curricula and compendium, explore the posibilities for integration of the training programme in the already existing study programmesO2: Training curriculumO3: CompendiumO4: Description of training sessionsO5: Preparation for accreditationThere will be two training sessions during the project period: a training sessions for trainers and a training sessions for FC technicians. The main target groups of the project are:- Auto mechanics (car and trucks);- Organizations providing professional training courses (including VET organizations);- Municipalities interested in introducing i.e. FCH buses;- FCH vehicle manufacturers;- Car dealers.- Auto workshops.

"The aim of this project has been to build solutions for the integration of adult citizens of the EU in the 21st century. Euroscepticism, European citizenship, using digital tools, identity, cultural diversity, integration, economy, history, multicultural, plural, open-minded are the key concepts that address this project.To achieve this aim, we worked through cooperation and partnership among countries using digital tools (Moodle, XERTE, google drive)The partnership has designed and developed an online course called “Getting Ready for European Citizenship on-line” (GRECOL) which is inspired by a previous Grundtvig partnership project called “Digital Classroom”. During the project, we observed, in adult learners across this Grundtvig partnership a notable lack of European identity and a lack of awareness of the wide range of European resources available to facilitate their mobility and develop their sense of shared citizenship. Once this new partnership was created with the participation of 7 adult organizations from ES, GE, LV, IT, TR, DK, UK.European citizenship implies a closer, more emotional relationship that is rooted in shared values, the celebration of diversity, and respect for different identities and the protection of national heritage.The proposed new course, comprised of 5 modules detailed below, may be offered in online and blended-learning formats. In addition, the 5 modules may be independently utilized as stand-alone materials or integrated into other courses according to the individual needs of each educational context. The structure of the subject “Getting Ready for European citizenship” (GRECOL) is:1. M1.Developing a European identity2. M2. European institutions and their functions 3. M3.European mobility 4. M4. Dealing with cultural diversity 5. M5. Final ProjectThe course is offered in 8 languages: English, Catalan, Spanish, German, Italian, Danish, Latvian and Turkish.The methodology of the course is based on a model that develops its activities through the web following the Universal Design for Learning, (UDL). The students become the center of the model and the process of learning. The model is aware of the nature of the potential students. The general features of e-activities are diversity, openness and flexibility and they contain discussions, tasks, quizzes, surveys, and a final project containing study cases using a varied range of digital tools.The course is accompanied by a user guide for the teachers and other support documents: ""module overview"" with detailed information about each one of the modules in terms of competences, objectives, types of activities, resources.The final product is an OER material ready for be used for any adult institution around Europe. During the third year of the project impact and dissemination has been the main goal of sharing GRECOL as much as possible al local, national and international level in platforms, conferences, papers. And of course, using GRECOL as a course, curricula, module or workshop in each one of the partnership' organizations during the following years. After three years of collaborative work, we hope to offer some solutions for the integration of adult citizens in Europe to become e-citizens. Getting involved in joint projects as well as increased mobility helps to develop this feeling of belonging. (For an active European citizenship, White Paper 2011)."