<< Background >>The European event industry faces several sector specific circumstances which create unique conditions for employees and employers to find one another. There are two main reasons: innovation and mobility. First, being both subject to and a driver of technological change, the event industry is perceived as extremely innovative and inherits extremely short lifetimes of knowledge. This is especially true for the field of event technicians. Learners are often required to update their knowledge immediately after being rewarded their qualification. The continuous restoration of knowledge and skills yields the current situations that employees acquire manifold competences throughout their working life which are neither certified nor validated. As a result, event technicians have difficulties to prove their mastery of latest technology. Employers on the other hand have difficulties to ensure the suitability of their personnel for certain types of jobs. Second, event technician labour force is extremely mobile, working often on international projects or foreign employers. With different understanding about job profiles in European member states, the match of competences of employees to the expectations of employers poses a large obstacle to employment process. These labour market rigidities have excelled with the COVID-19 pandemic and the complete stillstand of the event sector. The shutdown of the industry is putting great pressure onto the business model of established firms and companies. Due to the complete standstill of the industry and the proximity to other industry branches, many professionals have assumed new responsibilities. These workers won’t be available by the time events will take place again – limiting the capacity of the entire industry to deliver high-quality services once events are being planned again.A common denominator of these shortcomings is the importance of non-formal and informal learning. The high degree of learning-on-the job and self-education throughout the working life are inherent to the biography of most employees of the industry. A clear need of the industry is therefore a more flexible education system which takes count of prior learning and which provides for certification processes to make non-formal and informal learning visible. Finally, a common language needs to be established concerning skills and knowledge across national education systems. The answer to these shortcomings must therefore be established on a European level, providing for a structural solution to this systematic problem.<< Objectives >>In order to address these labour market rigidities, PACE-VET will provide significant contributions to the validation of competences in a European context. A common denominator of the shortcomings on the event labour market is the importance of non-formal and informal learning. The high degree of learning-on-the job and self-education throughout the working life are inherent to the biography of most employees of the event industry. The validation and recognition of prior, non-formal and informal learning on a European level via micro-credentials would therefore contribute to a more inclusive, resilient, mobile, and sustainable labour market in a fragile working environment. Following the Council Recommendation of 20 December 2012 on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (2012/C 398/01) as well as the Council Recommendation of 24 November 2020 on vocational education and training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness, and resilience 2020/C 417/01, the enactment of transparent recognition processes in vocational education and training supports strongly the intentions of the European commission’s objective to strengthen VET in the EU. The PACE-VET project provides a significant contribution to these objectives by illustrating the practicality of a validation methodology and the provision of digital tools to equip both learners and assessors with the necessary means to credibly and reliably support the validation process. Specifically, PACE-VET aims to implement a validation process of acquired skills through the implementation of a digital, blockchain-based database solution (the Learning Record Store (LRS)) and the use of micro-credentials. This will provide a transferable solution on the example of the event technology labour market, which was particularly affected by the COVID 19 pandemic. The project recognises the importance of lifelong learning in the special labour market of event technology. It complements and extends the two former projects TeBeVAT 1 & 2 and the ongoing project TeBeVAT 3 with the end to pace-up the work done so far: the implementation of a validation process supporting partial certification of competences and the connection of associations and institutional partners from the field across the EU. Ultimately, the project contributes to increases learning opportunities, labour market mobility, structuring and planning of lifelong learning and broadens the perspective on partial certification for VET in the EU.<< Implementation >>The objective of PACE-VET is highly user oriented and is reliant on the active engagement and attraction of stakeholders. The project therefore will involve a series of activities to include end-users, participants, and volunteers in the development process. Further, the attraction of interested parties like educational institutions, chambers of commerce and certifying authorities and the engagement into active discussions and reflection about the needs of the industry regarding the future of education and training in the sector will be a central part of the projects work. To strengthen the involvement and to support the dissemination of these activities, the project will be participating in several international trade fairs from the event sector and hold regular meetings in which experts from the fields of certification and education will be invited. Two major aspects lay out the corner stones of the project:First, the project follows an iterative approach to achieve the outlined objectives. From the requirement analysis (“Pflichtenheft & Lastenheft”), the application development and documentation to the design and conduct of assessment and final credentialization, steps are being planned, conducted, evaluated and repeated if necessary, in order to achieve the best possible result. To ensure that the developed results will meet the requirements and expectations of users and stakeholders close communication and direct involvement. Dedicated activities will be established like expert interviews of learners, educational institutions and certifying authorities, acceptance measurement in the development process, critical analysis in reflection and discussion rounds a supported by the associated partners in a Reflection board.Second, an actual assessment will be conducted. To this end, participants will be brought into the project to test the application, run through the assessment and have their competences in two specific learning fields validated. These assessments will be carried out on-premise in the Netherlands by previously trained assessors, which will prepare and conduct the assessment. Assessors and participants will receive a digital credential certifying the competences assessed. With the assessment carried out, the project will train the first generation of assessors and provide evidence for the feasibility of the partial certification process.<< Results >>PACE-VET will make significant contribution to the validation and certification of prior learning in the context of Vocational Education and Training in the EU. The project will provide substantial advancements in two areas: 1) digitalisation in lifelong learning and 2) providing processes for competence recognition. With the provision of a digital application that is capable to connect to different databases (LMS), ensure unforgeability and trustworthiness (use of blockchain) and integrates features for learners and assessors (via Cloud Computing), large usability potential can be unlocked. The application will provide a currently missing tool that is user-friendly, secure and flexible to use. With a complete front- and backend, that integrate a Learning Record Store via xAPI, learners will finally be provided with means to document their non-formally and informally acquired learning. With the provision of processes that respect a high standard of quality assurance, the suggested recognition process excels currently existing practices. Quality assurance has been proven pivotal in the acceptance of validation processes, rendering the result of the project highly relevant for certifying and educational authorities. The provision of certifications via micro credentials, making use of recent technical and educational innovations, sheds new light into the assessment of partial qualifications.By providing an exhaustive documentation alongside the application and the requirement specification, PACE-VET supports the easy replicability by outside parties and an easier to follow replication of the validation process in other sectors of the economy. Especially the documentation belonging to the application will facilitate developers with an interest to pick up of the LRS to build on existing groundwork, thus lowering the threshold of transferring the process to other sectors and enabling a broader and sustainable usage of the final product. At least the micro-credentials for Light and Sound will not only be developed but also demonstrated and validated in an assessment activity. With the validity of the validation process proven, further credentials can be developed for the event technicians, and the concept can be exported entirely to other sectors. With the finally developed Best Practice Report at hand, other interest groups will have a concise guide at hand to understand the work steps which have been done from start to finish of the validation process.Finally, assessors will be trained and facilitated to carry out on-premise assessments of competences in the realm of event technicians. These assessments will provide participants the opportunity to test the developed app, to record their nonformal and informal learning and to receive support throughout the validation process. In the end, assessors and participants will receive digital badges which are unforgeable and proof the functioning of the certification process. These badges represent the successful award of a micro-credential and proofs the acquisition of skills, knowledge and competences. In general, the project takes count of the needs of an industry that is in a precarious situation. The involvement of several associations as partners and associated partners will contribute to an even stronger cooperation among the event sector on a European level. Steering and disseminating good practices in education and training and collaborating on the enactment of common structures across national borders to improve needed transparency and mobility. With the large partner network, a wide number of stakeholders can be reached, sensitised and sustainably connected.

"Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to support effective learning in informal and non-formal learning environments, in school or higher education and in professional education. Especially in the building/construction industry or in the Event Industry, trainings for safety and security are needed to protect workers at their workplace. One central issue hereby is, that particular elements must be taken in consideration (e.g., teaching and learning elements, design elements, etc.) when developing effective learning applications. Such applications should support responsible persons at the workplace so that they can ensure that each employee has been trained in safety & security, has understood the key elements of the training and has the ability to behave according the instructions.Therefore, Learning Analytics (LA) provides various tools and concepts to support learning, especially for people who are involved in learning processes (trainer, trainee, evaluator). Within the project, a framework was developed based on LA insights, to implement elements of AR learning and to support teaching and learning processes towards a higher efficiency and efficacy. E.g., dashboards integrate aspects derived from LA to provide feedback about handling and ease of use from the apps, as well as measures for learning performance. The consortium of leading European scientist from the areas LA and AR established a strategical partnership with VET partners, in which the conceptualisation of the topics LA and AR are used to apply in the field of professional education, especially in informal learning environments and directly at workplaces. With their work, the partners contributed to the research community and developed new opportunities at workplaces and also for LA and AR to provide an added value and to give answer to current questions from professional education. Partners of the consortium are: i-smART (coordination in LI), IT University Copenhagen (DK), Oxford Brookes University (GB), STEPP vzw (BE), and VPLT (DE). In a first step, a generic, conceptual framework was developed, based on current research results (IO1: paper ""literature review"") and to answer leading questions (IO1: paper ""blueprint""), also to apply the framework in the development stages for AR software applications. In a second step with various iterations, a series of functional prototypes of AR learning applications were developed (IO2: iPhone/iPad and Microsoft Hololens) for analysis and evaluation purposes, which then were applied in various iterations (design science approach) within field experiments (IO3) at workplaces for the Event Industry (e.g., training elements from the Hilversum test as developed by the ERASMUS+ project “ETTE” for traditional training). The source codes are made accessible for the public (e.g., on github and project website ""www.competenceanalytics.eu""). From the results and insights, key questions are answered like: How can AR and LA be used in professional training applications to create more effective learning experiences for learners on their individual path and pace. Additionally, the provided insights from a ""big-data analysis"" of the captured training data demonstrate how to process likewise in a small work environment. The provided methods lead to knowledge about their application for established, large learning environments.Exemplarily, a full session training and assessment (e.g. from the Hilversum test, project ETTE: How to connect trusses) was conducted on the basis of AR learning applications and the use of LA tools and measures (IO3: paper ""collaboration"" and thesis paper). Finally, recommendations were given towards how the transparency of learning services in the understanding of learning outcomes can be depicted with the aid of LA and AR in order to dismiss the responsibility for employers and not only to offer the possibility to participate in safety briefings (consumption) but also to ensure that employees have understood and will behave adequately (see IO1 result ""white paper"").With the Multiplier Event (carried out at the biggest industry fair in Frankfurt) and other dissemination activities of all partners, the project addressed a wide range of organizations that are related with the industry, and scientific audience (e.g., in multiple conference presentations worldwide). More than 500 experts and participants were included into the test and experiment sessions and interviewed within the field experiments and in multiple stakeholder discussions.The LAAR project demonstrates a futuristic idea of education and training with user-friendly training and sustainable learning success. The results are already reused in other E+ projects (e.g., TeBeVAT), scientific research (e.g., design framework) and in practice (e.g., ETTE safety training). In future, the consortium aims to continue with the development of AR learning applications for various devices and additional training scenarios."

"The project ""EDU4Events - Vocational Training in Transition - Developments and Potentials for the Event Industry"" aims to promote and develop work-based learning in all its forms in a well established consortium and in the event industry. The international partnership follows the European Vision to support the acceptance and implementation of innovative approaches applying digital technologies for teaching and learning. It contributes to addressing the major pan-European challenges in VET and the objectives of the Europe 2020 education strategy, in particular for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and to achieving the key objectives in education, training and employment. The project also supports the European flagship initiatives and ""Agenda for New Skills and Jobs"". In more concrete terms, the project contributes to the development of vocational training in the field of event technology. The current COVID-19 crisis has locked the events industry and at the same time accelerated the trend towards digital teaching. While the changeover has been implemented quickly and largely successfully in universities and schools of basic education, the vocational and especially the adult education sector is lagging massively behind. For example, the seamless provision of security-related further training in the phase of ""contact avoidance"" during the COVID 19 crisis was (or still is) no longer guaranteed. A core question the project discusses will be: ""How can the initial and continuing training of key vocational qualifications be provided in a crisis-proof manner? Which cross-disciplinary skills and competences have to be strengthened specifically for the target groups learners, teachers and educational organisations? In order to provide the required skills and competences in vocational and adult education and in the economy, the actors like teachers and trainers request to get access to specialist sharing their well developed competences and also to efficient systems towards digital education. Through the transnational and professional composition and interdisciplinary cooperation within this project, the consortium wants to discuss the corresponding modernisation and further development using the example of current education and training programmes, in the context of the international recognition of informal and non-formal competences and skills, taking into account existing transparency systems and the European Qualifications Framework. The results from the successful ERASMUSplus projects (e.g. the ECVAET series, TeBeVAT series, ETTE, LAAR, DTW, OiRA, TALQ, etc.) will be discussed within the consortium's circle of experts and against the background of the new challenges for vocational education and training and in particular for the event industry. A catalogue of possible directions for the development of international, continuing vocational education and training in event technology and according to the main topics for the future will be developed. Studies on success factors, formation of country-specific aspects, common qualification level, influencing factors, etc. will be included in the discussion process. A possible direction could be to point out those success factors and possibilities that a master craftsman training in event technology on the basis of distance training and the qualification with international recognition (e.g. between AT/DE/CH/FL) can lead to. Within the framework of three transnational partner meetings with accompanying virtual conferences, seminars (seminars to support learning from each other / from the persons involved) will be conducted and recorded in so-called ""mutual learning"". In all expert discussions, external experts with the respective expertise on the seminar topic are also involved. At the end of the project, the minutes of the working sessions will be summarized in a report, which will be disseminated accordingly.This project serves in particular to develop several sustainable concepts for further vocational training in the industry shaken by the COVID 19 crisis and to design ways out of the current constriction. The joint further work in the European vocational training topics in event technology is also a desirable result of the consortium partners."

"The modern reality of an ever-changing-workplace and the demographics of the EU will soon force job-seekers, employers, educators and their institutions as well as validating bodies and the regulatory bodies involved in vocational educational training to rely on processes for the recognition of lifelong learning outcomes. The speed of change and the explosion of knowledge as well as the quick evolution of technologies requires people to learn at many intervals throughout their lives.The TeBeVAT 3 project within the scope of Erasmus+ focuses on the recognition and validation of non-formal and informal learning outputs in the special labour-market of event technology - a truly international area of occupation, as numerous employees are engaged in cross-border operations. Therefore, this field is of remarkable interest for the present transnational project. This project will be a follow-up to the three former projects ECVÆT (ECVET-system of competences) and TeBeVAT 1 & 2 as well as including results and information gained through the ETTE, LAAR, and TALQ projects.The occupation of event technician can have the function of a role model for the validation of non-formal and informal learning-outputs in other professions. Such models provide valuable contributions to the European Commissions’ education policy since many years. People without a formal certification but with profound professional knowledge, skills, and competences should not only get the chance for a formal validation, but also be empowered with a self-regulated learning process enabling them to have a central asset: A Lifelong-Learning-Document-Tool. The process belongs to the candidate and the identification and recognition of lifelong learning outcomes can be the key to employment opportunities and career choices. The development of a valid diagnostic instrument represents a key-challenge to the efforts of including uncertified workers into the labour market. In the previous TeBeVAT projects first an instrument in a partial field (TeBeVAT 1) was tested and then extended to all fields of the event technology (TeBeVAT 2). Throughout this process, the ESCO occupational skill profiles were correlated accordingly. Consistently the process of non-formal learning with a mentor and the informal learning with a own, ""private"" didactic gained increased attention within TeBeVAT 2. To advance these developments, TeBeVAT 3 will provide a clear basis for the identification and recognition of non-formal and informal learning and ultimately complete the TeBeVAT-process. This will be done by defining the last (missing) phase - the assessment and appeals process. The development of assessment strategies in correlation with assessment tools (methodologies) will deliver concrete guidelines and procedures for organisations to fulfil the requirements of EN-ISO-IEC 17024 (Conformity assessment - General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons) in the context of the sector. This includes the application process, rights of candidates and appeal process. Occupational profiles of the TeBeVAT mentor and assessor will be developed based on the ESCO competences and detailed in a sectoral layer in a sector specific environment. In addition, the assessor is responsible and manages the assessment process, which the mentor has to know likewise. To fulfill all the requirements specific training modules (based on the developed occupational profiles) for the assessor and the mentor will be necessary and developed in TeBeVAT 3 with specific event technic related tasks under consideration of social components. This approach enables the further use of the training modules for different occupational areas. TeBeVAT 3 will clear the way for formal certification, whether partial or in full. In a first step the prerequisites and expectations of national authorities like the awarding bodies will be examined and mapped with measured stakeholder (e.g. candidates, employers) requirements and provided as a TeBeVAT policy recommendation. These recommendations will be an aggregation of all contents from the TeBeVAT projects in a concise, readable and accurate way. For wider dissemination and constant availability of the TeBeVAT contents a TeBeVAT Online Handbook will be implemented. This includes the large TeBeVAT Glossary with needed definitions for a common understanding and TeBeVAT Guidelines for the hole TeBeVAT process. By implementing a Wiki, the further collaborative work on the TeBeVAT contents will be made possible and all contents can be accessed and transferred every time.In the end, the TeBeVAT-Process will facilitate an EU-wide recognition platform, that will allow learners to truly own their own lifelong learning perspective that is understood and accepted by the employers, educational institutions and regulating bodies. This will counteract the lack of specialists of the labour market by integration and enabling transnational exchange of professionals."

The acronym TeBeVAT 2 stands for “(Teil-)zertifizierung im Berufsfeld Veranstaltungstechnik“ – which means “(partial) certification and/or validation of informal learning in the vocational field of event technology”. To understand the research interest of the project, the topic must be regarded in relation to its political background: The European Strategy 2020 aims at sustainable growth, inclusion as well as a transparent and stable labour market within the EU. To tackle current challenges of e.g. demographic change, digitalization, and immigration, a large package of measures to improve the labour market situation has been discussed. The strategy promotes transferability of skills between companies and sectors, also with the aim to facilitate mobility on the European labour market.One approach to achieve these goals is to include citizens without formal education and qualifications into the labour market. The vocational background of these individuals is often marked by informal learning. This is learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organized or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support (compare Cedefop, 2008). The outcomes of informal learning and the competences that a person acquired thereby, may be validated or certified (also compare Cedefop, 2008). This means that prior learning experiences are accredited by running through a formal process. It brings prospects of enhanced employability to workers that are currently excluded from the job market. New job opportunities are opened up to individuals that did not complete formal education in their field of labour (like career changers). This approach may in addition have an important impact on addressing skill shortages in fast growing industry sectors and supporting economic growth. Therefore, the European Commission issued recommendations for the validation of non-formal and informal learning in 2012. In the countries, national strategies should be developed.The overall goal of the project TebeVAT 2 was to develop such a strategy for the validation of results stemming from non-formal and informal learning for the industry sector of event technology. Funded with support of the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union, the team with partners from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and UK compared existing national practices and consolidated them in the TeBeVAT approach. The sector of event technology was chosen because it is a prototypic example for an industry field with high numbers of career changers and workers without formal education. There is high mobility and a lot of cross-border employment due to the big productions and shows gathering multinational teams of workers from all over the EU.