<< Objectives >>IN-WORK addresses the role of the university within its reference region as a driver for an inclusive culture, by developing and testing a model of intervention focused on relations between inside and outside the university, and engaging people involved. The project adopts the work-integrated learning method, which includes work-based learning (internships and traineeships), to support people with special needs to undertake meaningful learning experiences with the world of work.<< Implementation >>IN-WORK works inside and outside the university, by strengthening the links with the place of the higher education institutions, through an interlocked set of activities which includes research, stakeholder engagement, training for academic and support staff, learning activities with companies, internships and traineeships, events.<< Results >>- Report on the needs and resources for youths with special needs- Methodological guidelines - Training programmes and OERs to train supervisors and support staff on work-integrated learning for inclusion- Open Educational Practices- Guidelines to implement WIL for youths with special needs in Higher Education

The “Inclusion Box” project aims at ensuring more inclusive education and training organisations, more inclusive education approaches and actions, through a capacity building process to better face and respond to current and future societal challenges.The project consists of an interdisciplinary, bottom-up process, involving key stakeholders in the design of innovative training resources collected in an online platform with the goal of supporting the digital transition, access and participation in learning processes and inclusion and diversity strategies in the sector. These are key issues the consortium will work on to foster inclusive and innovative management methods and pedagogical approaches among educational staff and managers. Partner organisations will: identify inspiring practices on these three main areas, disseminate these practices through online and in-person training and exploit them through further training and educative actions in different contexts.The consortium involves 5 partner organisations, ensuring impact from the international to the local level through their extensive network of members and partners in several EU and non-EU countries. The primary target group of the project are the adult educators and staff working in the education and training sector; this group includes different profiles: managers, officers, volunteers, educators and trainers.The project is structured in 6 work packages. Thanks to their pan European membership, the training and project results will be utilised by national, regional and local educational providers. The new pedagogical approaches implemented within their target groups, the alternative management strategies put into practice in their inclusive education initiatives and the participatory methods applied, will all make educational staff and managers of Civil Society Organisations more aware and willing to practice inclusive educational approaches also at internal level.

Much research has been carried out on the digital divide in the labour market, most notably the gap between the demand for employees with high level ICT skills and the low availability. However, in today’s labour market, it is estimated that 90% of ALL jobs require ICT skills (www.idc.com) since rapid innovation in ICT is leading to “the need for digital skills in nearly all jobs where ICT complements existing tasks.” (EC Digital Single Market texts) Nevertheless, 47% of the EU population is not properly digitally skilled and this is even more noticeable in Poland, where 54% of the population have no or low digital skills. (EC Digital Single Market publications). Indeed, Poland ranks last among OECD countries with less than 20% of all workers using office software daily. For these reasons, the Digital Skills Accelerator (DSA) project aims to put students in the driving seat of their own skills development. The goal of the project is clear: define the digital skills that should be prioritized by current and future cohorts of HE students, and create a self-directed multi-media learning system that students can access to bolster their skills in specific areas. In order to achieve this goal, we will: - Produce a DIGITAL SKILLS REPORT (IO1) identifying the most valuable digital skills required professionally and for civic engagement. - Create an ONLINE SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL (IO2) enabling students to identify their digital skills’ profile and map a personalized learning pathway. - Develop the ESSENTIAL DIGITAL SKILLS TOOLKIT (IO3), an open, online modular training course allowing students to update their skills in the key areas. - Produce a series of MOTIVATION AND RECRUITMENT VIDEOS (IO4) as an essential component of the recruitment and learning process. - Rigorously test and optimize the resources before disseminating them widely to ensure strong use among the target groups. The DSA model is based heavily on the concepts of user based design and so it is only reasonable that our project should integrate as much user participation as possible at all stages, from design to execution to evaluation, specifically: - 50+ HE institutions, VET institutions and wider stakeholders will participate in the DIGITAL SKILLS RESEARCH REPORT - 36 teaching staff from HEIs &VET institutions and 60 HE students participate in USER TESTING - 12 + Students and/or other organizations will have their video CASE STUDY developed - 250 HE and VET institutions and wider stakeholders will participate in MULTIPLIER EVENTS On completion, the DSA project will have produced the knowledge, resources and social capital (commitment from key actors) to enable the introduction of the Digital Skills and Competences model to our HE and VET institutions, and through them to present and future generations of digital confident citizens. In order to achieve this overall impact, the project will produce 4 intellectual outputs (IOs) which each focus on producing a tangible result or output. 1 Digital skills research report (IO1) identifying and prioritize information for digital competences 1 Self-Assessment tool (IO2) students will use this interactive self-assessment tool to identify their current digital skills profile. 1 Essential Digital Skills Toolkit (IO3) - a comprehensive training course of circa 18 modules to assist students to updates their skills in the key areas. 1 set of Motivation and Recruitment Videos (IO4) The tangible results will lead to the following outcomes: - TEACHING STAFF in HE institutions in 4 regions will grow in knowledge and skills, being able to integrate digital skills into their courses. - HE STUDENTS, will develop digital competences and skills for application in their professional lives. - HE AND VET INSTITUTIONS AND WIDER STAKEHOLDERS will demonstrate greater commitment to support its implementation in education - WIDER STAKEHOLDERS AND POLICY MAKERS will gain greater awareness, knowledge and integration of Digital Competences as a new and important aspect of education. - PROJECT PARTNERS will acquire in depth knowledge of digital competences The impact of the project will be felt most at local and regional level through the strengthening of digital skills teaching and the ability of thousands of students to engage with the outputs of the project, thereby advancing their own digital literacy and competences. However, it also provides a reliable means of advancing systemic changes in approaches to digital skills education at national and international levels given the high relevance both of digital skills to the demands of our contemporary European economy, but also of digital literacy in these #fakenews times. Moreover, it demonstrates that there are many new and innovative ways to increase the social inclusion and civic engagement of young people, while also contributing to the overall European goal of social cohesion.

The iPEAR project combines collaborative expertise of technology-enhanced learning researchers, computer scientists, and educators to build a strategic partnership to streamline the adoption of Augmented Reality (AR) technology in educational practice. The project will create innovative open educational resources for educators that help implement and integrate active and collaborative learning pedagogical approaches supported by AR. This will enrich the teaching practice and support inclusive, peer to peer learning relevant to the requirements and preferences of the students. The iPEAR project is an extension of two ERASMUS+ projects ViLi and AR-FOR-EU. The ViLi (https://www.viliproject.eu/) aims to improve the visual literacies of educators, making learning more visual through static, dynamic, and interactive visuals. The AR-FOR-EU project (https://codereality.net/) aims to train AR-development skills of software developers and media designers. The iPEAR project further develops visual representations in learning and participatory learning approaches.The main objectives are to:1. Map the educational use of AR, focusing on collaborative and peer learning approachesThe consortium will map the existing research results and available applications, supplementing these results and validating them in case studies following the research methodology of Informed Grounded Theory. The focus on peer learning and collaborative learning approach is within the inclusive education framework, as defined by the United Nations – taking into account personal requirements and preferences. In 2016, the United Nations released General Comment No. 4 to explain the right to inclusive education, focusing the new definition on providing all students with an equitable and participatory learning experience and environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences.2. Facilitate the adoption of AR in education by creating open access teaching and learning material for educators. The new materials will include a toolkit of educational AR apps and platforms supplemented by teacher guidelines, a compendium of best practices, and a competence framework for AR educators all available as independently as OERs and delivered as a MOOC with professionally designed audiovisual material)3. Create and maintain a community of experts in educational AR and other stakeholders that will ensure sustainability of the project and keep the most useful results up-to-dateThe design of the project is guided by the European policies, strategies and tools.The project aims to improve the digital competence of educators and subsequently their students by developing a comprehensive set of educational resources that are open and accessible online worldwide (EU initiative “Opening Up Education”). The project supports the “Digital Learning & ICT in Education” 2018 and “Digital Education Action Plan” 2018 by promoting innovative technology-enhanced learning practices with both the content of the materials and by making all materials designed for and available online as OERs and as a MOOC.The project supports the European skills frameworks: “Digital skills framework” and the “Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu), by extending them into a framework for specific skills educators need to integrate AR in their teaching.The project supports the ”EU Cohesion Policy”, focusing on social inclusion according to students requirements and preferences based on the UN definition of inclusion. The project plans to communicate and disseminate the results via a range of online activities, reaching the major stakeholders, educational organisations and individual educators. These activities will culminate in a final project conference on the topic of educational AR planned for 100 participants, targeting educators, practitioners, researchers, and students. The outreach and impact of the project will be extended via a massive online open course for educators, delivering all project results structured in a course format.We will strengthen the skills of educators in higher education and other educational settings by designing new content within the case studies, linking visual approaches to peer to peer learning to facilitate more socially inclusive education. As the dropout rates in the universities are increasing and students become more and more mobile internationally, digital skills and inclusive teaching methods are key competences in Higher Education and global migration. Long-term benefits include enhancing the digital competence of educators, stimulating further use of visuals in education, enhancing competitiveness and modernisation of HE, promoting education for all.

CONTEXT: The Europe 2020 goals for a more inclusive Europe with higher social integration and community cohesion are more important than ever in light of increasing societal tension, linked to the economic crisis, immigration & refugee crisis and increasing multi-ethnicity communities etc. INCLUDE ME recognises that by educating migrants and refugees as well as HE providers, community activists and workers, in mediation skills we can play a substantial, positive role in changing social dynamics.OBJECTIVES & ACTIVITIES:The Project aims to empower learners, activists and migrants to become peer-to-peer mediators in their communities and their wider area through:- undertaking EU wide research to identify the skills, opportunities and best practices on social mediation across Europe and publishing a Good Practice Guide of the findings - developing a set of Open Education Resources IO2 to deliver mediation skills training to learners and volunteers in creative, dynamic ways; allowing them to maximise inclusion through mediation. - producing the Include ME MOOC which will engage high number of volunteers, migrants and stakeholders, allowing them to learn in flexible and adaptive new ways. PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: INCLUDE ME will involve Participants from a number of different target Groups:Higher Education providers, HE educators, Community leaders and activists, local community development NGO and migrant support groups will participate in the research and compilation of our Good Practice Guide.Teachers, trainers and adult/community educators will use our Inclusion Through Mediation OERs to deliver innovative teaching and training to individuals interested in using mediation to resolve community tensions.HE & Adult educators, community activists, refugees/migrants and community support workers will use our MOOC to build their conflict resolution, mediation and social inclusion skills and understanding.RESULTS: Output 1: INCLUSION THROUGH MEDIATION Good Practice Guide (UBSF) will introduce the concept of conflict and tension resolution via mediation to stakeholders (HEI providers, educators, community leaders and activists, local support groups) and outline it’s capacity to integrate refugee and other disadvantaged persons into the wider community. Output 2: Inclusion Through Mediation Open Education Resources will encourage teachers, trainers and adult/community educators to use a systematic approach to integrate mediation education into their organization’s continued learning curriculum. As a direct result of the development of this IO and during the project, 12 educators will be upskilled in mediation, they will then go on to train and empower 32 learners, community volunteers in mediation and communication skills as part of the pilot testing. Output 3: INCLUDE ME Massive Open Online Course will be a user-friendly and basic platform (to allow for those with minimal digital competence), it will provide a place for learning as well as peer connection and networking. The MOOC will be piloted tested by 64 users during the lifetime of the project, and this number will increase to hundreds after the project has ended.IMPACT: Through using the INCLUDE ME resources, hundreds of individuals will be the empowered to view conflict resolution as an individual task which we can all take responsibility for. Users will gain vital knowledge, skills and self-esteem, which will be useful for their personal life and career development. Socially excluded groups and their representatives (community leaders and activists), who face diversity and challenges, will be provided with new tools and techniques to encourage understanding and build open communication, thereby enable communities to increase social inclusion and community cohesion in the longer term.