With the 2006 European Recommendation on Key Competences, all EU Member States have agreed on a framework of eight Key Competences for Lifelong Learning. Digital Competence is a transversal key competence which, as such, enables acquiring other key competences and is a very relevant and necessary skill to equip people more competitive on the labour market and overall digitally competent. Europe is also facing a skills deficit and, during a time of economic crisis, highly-skilled individuals have a better chance of finding a job. With an estimated 90% of jobs requiring digital skills in the near future, it is thus essential that education and training systems provide individuals with the required skills (EU2020). The current level of unemployment is unprecedented in the EU27 (over 25% in Spain and Greece) in 2014 (especially higher in young people). Promote inclusion and social welfare of people to combat unemployment.In the twenty-first century, learning takes place almost everywhere, at all times, on all kinds of paths and at all kinds of paces. These learning opportunities break wide open the traditional confines of school walls and school days, and provide more options and opportunities for lifelong learning. Individuals have the ability to develop content knowledge as well as skills such as critical thinking, communication, and collaboration that are essential for productive employment and effective citizenship in the twenty-first century. Students also have the ability to develop specific workforce skills and build on their own interests. We have identified 2 interesting profiles for employment and digital competences offering opportunities for employment and employability next years and we're going to define the competences profiles based on DIGCOMP: entrepreneur and ‘virtual office workers’. We are focusing on non-formal and informal education and thus want to adress the target group of people taking part in activities outside a formal education environment, for example people in volunteer services or people with a lack of formal education.Project aims to foster the assessment of digital competences by supporting the recognition and validation of skills and qualifications: taking the DIGCOMP framework as reference (to ensure that skills and qualifications can be more easily recognized 'crossing borders'). The project will impact on one of the priorities of the programme: Transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications to facilitate learning, employability and labour mobility. An assessment web tool will be developed to assess and recognize the digital competences of people. Also the project plans to use Mozilla Open badges, because they meet needs not currently being met, not only for learners ranging from Kindergarten through college, but for lifelong learners, or for people adquiring skills in non-formal and informal activities, for example, volunteering. The patchwork way our learning is currently recognized means that many of our abilities are unevenly recognized or not recognized at all. There are skills, abilities and knowledge acquired outside classroom walls that lack the necessary credentials to verify what they know and can do. Project contributes defining the recognition pathways focused on employment and employability at European level and how to display expertise and abilities gained in ways that employers find relevant.The focus on digital competence in non-formal and informal education is recent and still insufficient. The importance of learning about digital competence in non-formal and informal settings becomes a central aspect of education of the EU population with an employability perspective. However, formal validation and recognition of competences acquired in such ways remains an issue for job-seekers (whether unemployed or already active in the job market) to be able to demonstrate to prospective and new employers their competence portfolio. Project is going to face this necessity developing a web assessment tool that will allow users to assess their digital competences aligned with the DIGCOMP framework, implementing a digital competence portfolio. The platform will provide a self-assessment tool that will present an initial digital competences portfolio. Then users will be able to assess their digital competences of the profile selected using the assessment tool updating their update their digital competence portfolio with the digital competences obtained. Assessment modules will be designed directly connected within the five Areas of DIGCOMP; and will evaluate the different components of the digital competence (knowledge, skills and attitudes) using digital ICT based methodologies. Accreditation pathways defined will support formative assessment. This project goes one step further by offering embedded assessment with instant feedback and targeted support.
In 2006 there was a European recommendation on key competences for citizenship. All EU member states have agreed on a framework of eight key competences for lifelong learning. Digital competence is a key transversal competence that allows acquiring other key competences; it is a relevant and necessary skill to prepare people for the labor market and, in general, they are digitally competent. On the other hand, Europe faces a skills deficit and in a time of economic crisis highly qualified people are more likely to find a job. In the near future it is estimated that 90% of jobs require digital skills. Therefore, it is essential that education and training systems provide people with the required skills (EU2020). In this context, the Pathways for Employ project is included, taking as a reference the DigComp framework to assess the digital competence of citizens and whose main objective is that skills and qualifications can be more easily recognized. The objectives of the project are: -To promote the evaluation of digital competences, specifically for two competences profiles: Entrepreneur and Teleworker - Practically apply the international reference framework DigComp -To facilitate the recognition of digital skills and their qualification Seven organizations participated in the project: Tecnalia (project leader and consortium), DMG, Guadalinfo, Telecenter-Europe (now All Digital), FIT, IED and Basque Government (through its KZgunea network). The consortium has different profiles that complement each other to achieve the objectives set. Tecnalia is a research and innovation center with a specific line for digital competences; In addition, Tecnalia has been offering a service for the evaluation and certification of IT competencies in the Basque Country for over 15 years, in collaboration with the Basque Government and its network of KZGunea centers. On the other hand, there are organizations with telecentre networks whose main mission is to improve citizens' digital skills and help the digital transformation of society. This is the case of: Telecenter-Europe (now All Digital) at European level, Guadalinfo in southern Spain and KZGunea in northern Spain. In this way, the project guarantees a remarkable impact and diffusion thanks to its power of capillarization. Finally, the project has entities that have a high knowledge of the needs of society's IT skills as well as relationships with private and public educational entities in their countries, such as DMG, FIT and IED. The main activities of the project have been: -Analyse the needs of entrepreneurs and virtual office workers through surveys (83 respondents for the entrepreneurial profile of 11 different countries and 63 respondents from 9 different countries) -Define the competence profiles of these two profiles taking as a reference the DigComp framework, the result of the surveys and the knowledge of the consortium -Analyze and define an Open Badges ecosystem as well as integrate a tool that allows its issuance with the Pathways for Employ platform -Develop a free Web platform that allows the evaluation of digital skills and the recognition of these skills through Badges -Design evaluation modules for the two competences profiles (327 questions of knowledge, skill and attitude) -Pilot the tool in 5 different languages: English, Spanish, Euskera, Latvian and Greek -Diseminar the results at the international and regional level The results of the project have been: - Free Web platform (http://pathwaysforemploy.eu) to evaluate the digital competences of two competences profiles (Entrepreneur and Teltrabajador) in 5 different languages: English, Spanish, Basque, Latvian and Greek -Design of an Open Badges ecosystem, integration of an Open Badges issuance tool with the Pathways for Employ platform and identification of the path of improvement to achieve recognition of competencies -Design and implementation of two evaluation modules corresponding to the profiles of Entrepreneur and Virtual Office Worker The Pathways for Employ platform has been used by 1,019 users from different countries (Belgium, Latvia, Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc.). These users have been both experts in digital skills and users who have wanted to know their level of digital skills. 88% of these users would most likely recommend this platform, which is an important indicator of the outcome of the project.