“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.

TITAN project contributes to the EU goal of leading the implementation of the 2030 Agenda by supporting individuals and SMEs in acquiring relevant Sustainably Leadership & Innovation skills to be implemented in working context, for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals while maintaining their value proposition. This project focuses on SMEs since they “are the backbone of Europe economy” and represent 99% of all businesses in Europe (EC). TITAN objectives are a) to develop and implement an innovative competence matrix and learning materials on Sustainably Leadership & Innovation focused on management & leadership emergent and complementary topics such as Emotional and Spiritual Intelligences, Responsible Innovation (RI), workplace innovation, ethics, environment sustainability, intercultural teams management and cooperation, and others; b) to develop and implements two complementary Sustainably Leadership & Innovation assessment tools; c) to develop a video guide (OER) with helpful tips and tools on how to support workers on gaining Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation skills, at all levels.Learning course pilots are expected to have at least 60 participants overall, who are a) employees on executive and management level and intrinsic leaders inside the company, b) skilled or qualified adults who want to upskill into Sustainably Responsible Leadership and Innovation areas, c) unemployed qualified people in need to start a reskilling path. Tools will be tested among 6 SMEs and their workforce. The video guide for training target groups are workers on management and executive level, as well as senior workers, HR staff and other workers inside the organisation.TITAN will implement a Pop-up Session: Adopting and holistic approach in leadership & innovation (C1) with 12 trainers and staff from the partners organisations who will engage in multiple exercises where the skills present on Sustainably Leadership & Innovation will be trained.Five National Conferences (E1-E5) will be organised in Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Greece and Cyprus to enhance TITAN products exploitation potential, at the end of the project. One Final Conference (E6) will be organised by the project coordinator to maximize the project impact at national and European levels.TITAN will impact at local level: a) Involve Education and training providers, SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovation hubs, businesses accelerators and incubators, associated partners and entrepreneurship education networks; b) Make the project results available to Education and Training Providers to guarantee the exploitation of results; c) Increase learners achievements; d) Increase SMEs value proposition; e) Increase the skills of the local/regional workforce; f) Increase the skills of educators/mentors within companies; g) Contribute to SDG, in particular 4. Quality Education, 8. Decent work and economic growth, 9. Industry, innovation & infrastructure, 11. Sustainable cities and communities, 12. Responsible consumption and production, 13. Climate action and 17. partnership for the goals. At National level: a)Raise awareness of education and training opportunities within the Erasmus+ programme, with a special emphasis for lifelong learning in the field of Adult Education in Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation; b) Encourage stakeholders to promote a more digital learning approach, specially microlearning, with a tailor made approach which will, in time, reflect on their skills and competencies and, consequently, on the workforce performance. At European level: a) Adoption of the project results; b) Promote educators and trainers key digital competences; c) Encourage self-development and lifelong learning opportunities for all; d) Increase the opportunities for sustainable growth within European SMEs; e) Promote European Cooperation among different organisations; f) Promote a mindset change in the way the learning experience is designed and delivered. At International level: a) Position European SMEs has leaders on the pathway for sustainable growth.Long term benefits include a better prepared European workforce to deal with the uncertain scenarios Europe will face and the kind of leadership skills European citizens need to create value inside SMEs while taking into consideration an holistic approach to sustainability.Intellectual Outputs:IO1 - TITAN Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation curriculumIO2 - TITAN Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation e-learning materialsIO3 - TITAN Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation assessment toolkitIO4 - TITAN Sustainably Responsible Leadership & Innovation Video Guide for Training

The project “To SWITCH – Towards Senior workers’ Innovative Training Challenges” – gathers a network of eight partners from seven European countries and is intended to create three intellectual outputs (IO) aimed at the innovation and improvement of training processes as well as at the updating of trainers and professionals involved in the training of adult workers, particularly those aged over 50.Over the last years, professionals involved in adult education have faced the challenge to reconsider their way of working in terms of approaches, methods and tools. Increasingly, they have been requested to introduce learner-centred paradigms in training (to include learners’ background, motivation, expectations, inclinations, critical thinking skills, perspectives). With the profound transformation in pedagogical paradigms, tailor-made approaches have proven to be central to tackle the training of older workers with outdated skills, approaching the end of their career. Such intense changes are combined with the current demographic emergency. The increasing number of workforces aged over 50, combined with a very low labour substitution rate make it a huge challenge to secure market productivity and competition as well as social cohesion. Even more so, with the negative and unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 emergency. Public policies and businesses struggle to implement programmes to foster inclusion and sustainability within the market and business organizations regardless of the workers’ age. The skills demand by the labour market has been rapidly evolving, thereby dismissing some competencies because outdated, in favour of more modern ones, such as critical and computational thinking and problem solving, all to be applied to high-tech scenarios. In this framework, the To SWITCH project sets as objective meeting all these challenges by enhancing the role of lifelong learning especially among 50-year olds and over.To meet this objective, the project will focus on the definition of frameworks of competences, tools and methodologies to the benefit of all professionals addressing the training of older workers. Thanks to a hands-on lab-based approach, professionals from the different countries will share a new theoretical and methodological framework of reference (IO1) based on an updated andragogical model for the training of older workers. They will collaborate on the development, implementation and experimentation of the digital platform (IO2) for the training of trainers and on contents development (methodologies, tools, etc.) and will finally design training guidelines (IO3).To meet the aforementioned objectives, the project will develop over 5 work phases (WPs). WP1 and WP5 will be cross-sectional phases as they will focus effective project management and dissemination of results respectively. WP2, starting from the analysis of existing scientific literature and best practices, will focus on the definition of a new andragogical paradigm, which, together with the identification of new social, psychological and pedagogical profiles of senior workers professionals, will lead to a theoretical and methodological framework of reference. This work phase will be preparatory for the design of the rest of the innovative outputs. WP3 will be focused on the development of an open source digital platform for the learning and mutual sharing of professionals and institutions dealing with senior workers’ training. This tool will make the most of the collaborative learning holistic approach, which will be useful to adapt the andragogical model to a technological context (theory). The model will influence the digital infrastructure (container), the training resources (content) and the way of using them (method). After an experimentation stage of training courses addressed to trainers/training supervisors/coaches/mentors across all the countries involved in the project, WP4 will focus on designing guidelines (IO) with recommendations and suggestions for all professionals and institutions dealing with the training of adult workers.

EASIE project purpose is to foster and explore a new pedagogical method within the digital frame of e-sport to address both objectives of the Digital Action Plan and its priorities.This approach proposes to increase social inclusion and creativity as well as digital and entrepreneurial competencies by developing a new e-sport-in-education pedagogical methodology. The use of e-sport as a pedagogical method in learning situations related to general adult education and VET educations is innovative and requires cultural changes on an organisational level as well as on a teacher level as their professional and pedagogical competencies would be challenged and therefore, in need of continuing professional development. Together with an advisory board the project and partners will evaluate, validate, and disseminate the project results and make these transferable and scalable to other educational organisations. We will be focusing on research and needs of cultural changes in the educational organisations when presenting e-sport as a pedagogical. It is essential to have the management level of the organisations involved in the project to secure the organisational strategy, infrastructure etc. Teachers will learn about - and be trained in e-sport, this to enhance their own digital and professional competencies. If those are developed accordingly the possibility to be able to acknowledge, define and explore the possibilities of using e-sport as a pedagogical strategy and method when teaching youngsters, young adults and games in the adult and VET education sectors are highly increased. On a student level students will through e-sport gain digital social inclusion, digital competencies and entrepreneurial competencies while being educated in one of the three participating educational organisations.EASIE seeks to foster a wider openness about project results by inviting organisations to participate in activities during the project.

"<< Background >>The project focuses on social inclusion of vulnerable young adults between the ages of 16 and 27 at a distance from the labor market and education. It is a follow-up to two projects; ""Move"" and ""Move Beyond"". This project should be the final piece of this trilogy, aimed at developing 21 century skills. The framework from which we want to design the project are Ludodidactic and Epimistic framing. We realised that in the MOVE BEYOND project we focus mainly on the content of the training using instruments and tools form Art Education and physical activities and on the role of the trainer from the point of view of constructivisme ( the learner in the centre) But what we left underexposed was to look at the learning behavior and learning processes of the participant. In other words no matter how well we make a training substantive and how we look at the role of the trainer as sender of the content, we are also dealing with the recipient of the content and what is needed to really touch the end user (recipient) to to bring him into a particular experience. Ludodidactics, designing education and learning behavior on the basis of game principles, was the answer to our question. The principles behind Ludodidactics do not focus on technology, but on people. Traditional education is often based on the content, the material. Ludodidactics is based on learning behavior and the learning experience of people. That is why it fits well with thinking in terms of learning outcomes. The l;udodidactics development program focuses on the application of new learning methods in both an online and an offline learning environment.Epimistic framing is an effective way of guiding the behavior of young people by giving a specific role. Addressing a student as an engineer will result in the student acting as a professional engineer towards the subject matter. A certain type of profession is associated with archetypal skills, knowledge and an identity that the student will imitate.<< Objectives >>The project result will strengthen the outputs of project ""Move Beyond"", but also existing processes within organizations where we focus in particular on the role of the trainer, supervisor, coach. The philosophy behind this approach is rooted in design thinking. Making a statement about the perspective from which you approach a problem and about the process you go through to go from problem to solution. Central to this is the user and in particular the user's experience (in the learning situations, both the trainer/teacher/coach and the learning user of the solution). Leading in this is the aesthetic of this experience. It is important to make trainers, teachers, educators aware how they can transfer content through tool mechanisms to rbe be able to really reach the (young adult) participants in their training, lessons, etc. To let them experience that instead of putting all their energy in the training, they should let the participants become an active user and as trainer, teacher,educator be more an observer than a transmitter of content.<< Implementation >>We will implement the basic principles of Ludodidactic, how to redesign existing trainings and create new trainings with re-integration, education, Art education and training institutions as an extra tool for trainers/educators/teachers to reach better their target group of young adults<< Results >>the product results will also be useful for other disciplines and otner target groups because the essence of the ludodidactics is focused on learning behavior and learning processes and this is applicable in a general way."