Core Skills for 21st Century Professionals

Project summary

Name of the Project: Core Skills for 21st Century Professionals Project Coordinator: Universitat Politècnica de València Type of Project: ERASMUS+ (Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education Project Lifetime: 2nd of October 2017 until 1st October of 2019 (24 months) Partners: P1 – Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) P2 – Turku University of Applied Sciences Ltd TUAS (Finland) P3 – Instituto Politécnico do Porto (Portugal) P4 – Hogeschool Utrecht (Netherlands) P5 – Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich – WIN (Austria) P6 – Integra Institute, Institut za razvoj clovekovih potentialov (Slovenia) Priorities: Higher Education: Enhancing the quality and relevance of student’s knowledge and skills Supporting innovation and creativity, through partnerships and inter-and transdisciplinary approaches and strategies Horizontal: Achievement of relevant and high quality skills and competences Aims and Objectives: The first intellectual output is the development of a common framework (including a method do detect) Core Personal Skills required by companies. The creation of skills maps, both in universities and in companies, are important to adapt the core skills selected to labor reality adapted to the socio-economic environment. The second intellectual output closely linked with the common framework, designated by Core Skills Assessments set for level of proficiency considers and valorizes the experience of the person, such as learning process and personal growth, especially in the acquisition and strengthening of those core skills. The development of an assessment tool valid for both students and organizations is essential on the Project. The third intellectual output of the project is a E-Platform will serve as the concrete bridge between Higher Education Institutions and companies. This IO produced for members of the Project, based on universities and companies survey and further research, prepared in a form adjusted to active methods of learning. The fourth intellectual output devotes attention to the promotion and self-promotion to consolidate and give visibility to the student’s core skills, properly evaluated, through instruments of empowerment by encouraging the search for a job suitable to their own profile. The Promotion and Self-Promotion Tool willprovide a detailed description of the intervention in all its phases and activities. The fifth intellectual output aim to provide improvements to the CoSki21 Project, through suggestions coming directly from the end users and through the implementation among trainers in soft skills training measure during the testing period. Results: Project achievements: The results coded in the following summary have been achieved in the project: http://softskills.webs.upv.es/coski21/results/Results.pdf. Among the achievements shown above, the following can be highlighted: • Method of obtaining the needs in Soft Skills of organizations, both universities and companies. This method involves the following achievements: o Study of the main Soft Skills used in the maps of competences of the socio-economic environment of the partners. o An analysis of the most necessary soft skills for entrepreneurship. o A innovative taxonomy of Soft skills from a personal point of view o Questionnaire for the detection of the most important and necessary soft skills in companies. • Development of a tool for the delivery of soft skills, both in universities and companies. Based on this tool, called “skill box”, different units have been developed for the delivery of soft skills such as “leadership” or “decision making”. • Development of a platform in which the results obtained by the project partners have been grouped, as well as examples of student results. • Development of the guide for the empowerment of students and employees based on their Soft Skills. • Validation of the project by the companies attending the multiplier events. Intellectual outputs: All intellectual products have been fully developed. The corresponding reports can be consulted in the project results: http://softskills.webs.upv.es/coski21/results/Results.pdf. Regarding each intellectual result: The first intellectual output was focused on the development of a common framework including the design of a method to detect the needs on Soft Skills both in companies and universities. A method was developed for the creation of maps of specific competences for each company and organization of the socio-economic environment of each partner. The second intellectual output was based on the previous common framework and focused on implementing how to assess each person's personal skills. For this purpose, the units for the learning and evaluation of Soft Skills in people were designed. This tool can be used both in students and workers of interested companies. The third intellectual output of the project consisted of a platform that has served as a bridge between higher education institutions and companies. This result, produced for the members of the project, contains the surveys of universities and companies and research carried out and the most outstanding results. The fourth intellectual output was dedicated to creating the guide for the promotion and self-promotion of the Soft Skills of students or employees, duly evaluated, through empowerment instruments by encouraging the search for a job appropriate to the Soft Skills profile. The fifth intellectual result provided the validation of the project results. This validation was carried out through the partners in the initial phase. Subsequently, through the university partners. Finally, through the multiplier events the companies of the socio-economic environments of the partners validated the results of the project. Impact indictors in participants’ partners: The project has involved several groups: higher education students, higher education teachers, managers and experts, and staff in organizations, etc. The core of the participants consists of two groups: professors and experts from associate partners and students in the participating partner universities. There was a remarkable interest expressed in learning and evaluating Sof Skills. In each associated university, interest different groups of 10-40 professors were formed who were, both initially contributing the ideas, and using the materials developed in their teaching sessions. The students were active and involved in courses and seminars. The total number of students who participated in study periods was more than 400 students. The number of students that the partners reported participating in the events was more than 900 students. The number of students that partners reported participating through the electronic platform was more than 3000 students.