D'Ahoy project is an Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership to support Innovation. Its name should be understood as “DecisionShip Ahoy!”, a reference to A. G. Bell, the Scottish-born scientist who patented the first telephone and originally suggested 'Ahoy' as the standard greeting when answering a call. Its purpose is to investigate, over 3 years, innovative educational ideas around Decision Making, with a view to deeply reinforcing Decision Making skills for renewed and rejuvenated integrative educational programmes in Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Education & Training (VET), and promoting the internal exploitation and intensive dissemination of such framework, for continuous development of HE and VET practices. The nature and dynamics of change creates unpredictability in the European society. Professional life environments are more than ever Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA). This context makes decisions even more strategically critical. Entrepreneurship and Leadership skills have been extensively investigated during the last decade to meet EU Modernisation Agenda strategies It is now time to explore “Decisionship”. Yet, decision is not only about knowledge, it is also about skills. Whether they are to act as experts in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths (STEM) or other fields, future Decision Makers should also be specifically prepared to making decisions in VUCA environments. This is the responsibility of HE and VET institutions: training future graduates, through a transversal skills approach, in Decisionship, so that they are able to turn knowledge into skills, and provide the best professional answer when faced with VUCA circumstances. The first innovative aspect of D'Ahoy is to support the coherent inclusion of active and engaging pedagogical models. The second is to investigate Decision Making as a transversal skill, in association with three complementary dimensions: * Maths-based Decision Making, with rationality; * Social-based Decision Making, including people’s interdependencies and social identities; * Career-based Decision Making, to better choose owns career path. D'Ahoy is grounded in a clearer understanding of the perceptions and expectations of students and fully aligned with the strategic challenges of the partners to accelerate pedagogical innovations and nucleate their HE and VET systems. Through an exchanges of best practices among Schools, in the STEM and Business fields, D'Ahoy seeks (i) to share and confront HE educational innovations, practices and methods, in light of professional needs, (ii) to catalyse the engagement of learners with innovative courses, integrated in existing but evolving programmes, through novel educational initiatives, (iii) to develop and disseminate tools for assessment of such skills, via the learning outcomes approach, and (iv) to assesses their quality and achievements. D'Ahoy exploits and complements prior EU and national project results (FP7, H2020, LLP, Erasmus+ KA2, or French-like ANR) to create inclusive, active and experiential pedagogies for Decision Making skills, so as to render education systems more accessible and attractive. D'Ahoy aims at defining and evaluating innovative Teaching and Learning activities to be integrated in educational frameworks at a systemic level, in line with the Bologna processes and quality assurance purposes, as ENQA and EQAVET recommendations for accreditation and quality enhancement. D'Ahoy will bring positive and long-lasting effects on the participating organisations and their staff and learners, and on other regional, national and European Institutions as formalized in its 8 target groups. It will output 3 guides, a Youtube channel, several publications and conference presentations. The guides include: 1. a taxonomy of Decision skills requirements and unified learning outcomes syllabus; 2. innovative models and kits for Decision skill training, transferable in many educational fields; 3. a D-SKILLS Framework, continuously integrative for programmes renewal. The D'Ahoy partnership consists of a consortium of 7 top level expert partners (in France, Scotland, Spain, and Iceland) with a complementary expertise in Decision and specific expertise in HE and VET educational development, to produce high quality outputs. Including a national qualification framework partner, D'Ahoy promotes solutions for the recognition of competency acquired through innovative courses. With regard to the Career Decision Making dimension, as regional uncertain employment contexts exist, D'Ahoy should facilitate transitions between education and the labour market, and reinforces labour mobility. As a horizontal priority, D'Ahoy makes it possible to respond to the achievement of transversal high skills and relevant competences, in line with ET 2020 strategic objectives "Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship" and "Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training".
The DAhoy project proposes a Decision Skills Framework for Higher and VET Education to face VUCA situations: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. The world became VUCA early 2020 . Higher and VET educational institutions faced, and are still facing, the crisis. It’s now time to prepare for the future of educational systems and support new skills: "good decisions at right times". A. Bell, Scottish-born scientist who patented the first telephone, originally suggested ‘Ahoy’ as the standard greeting when answering a call. DAhoy project, to be understood as “DecisionShip Ahoy”, invites with methods, processes and tools, Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Education & Training (VET) stakeholders to integrate decision-making skills in their curricula. DAhoy organised 6 training weeks for teachers, staff and students in 2018 and 2019. During these mobilities, participants experienced about 30 different situations of learning decision-making. These training weeks were the source to define an educational framework and reflect on curricular integration at micro to macro levels, thanks to the qualitative and quantitative analysis conducted in with faculty, educators, teachers, industrial, and students all along the project. DAhoy members recommend more emphasis on transversal decision-making skills in educational pro- grammes, flexible curriculum structure, and career and employability concerns. For teachers and faculty or educational specialists, the DAhoy teaching & learning resources, learning kits and VUCA toolbox are trans-ferable to other institutions. The 3 DAhoy reports may guide university leaders and STEM programme mana-gers, so as accreditation and quality assurance bodies, in revising existing measures and processes to prepare for the VUCA future of higher and VET education. The 7 decsion making skills characterised as transversal in the project are: * D1 Recognise and qualify the VUCA-lity of a family of situations * D2 Analyse VUCA situations * D3 Make judgement in VUCA situations * D4 Face complexity of VUCA situations * D5 Organise and implement actions in VUCA situations * D6 Take responsibilities in the Decision process in VUCA situations * D7 Learn from his/her experience of VUCA situations These D-Skills provide a set of statements (in VUCA environments) that will help to create a common basis of skills that could potentially be linked to National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs) and other European Tools. They promote reference to decision skills and/or VUCA-capabilities in programme outcomes or in graduate profiles. The DAhoy project actively encourages systemic integration of decision-making skills into existing programmes. To support continuous improvements in the HE and VET sectors for transversal decision-making skills, maturity models from quality assurance and quality enhancement processes were followed on their methodological foundations. Capacity and rubrics were formalised accordingly, with hierarchical scales of maturity. Rubrics with process maturity measure the program’s progression against the DAhoy reference models. All 6 DAhoy Reference Models (RM) form a constellation which permits enhancing systemically educational programmes: * RM1 VUCA D-Skills Programme Vision and Strategy: to fix the decision-making skills principles, foster an explicit agreement of faculty to transition to integrated transversal skills, and ensure support from program leaders to sustain reform initiatives; * RM2 VUCA D-Skills Learning Outcomes: to emphasise the importance of decision-making skills and/or VUCA capabilities inclusion in the learning outcomes and the alignment and/or inclusion in the relevant NQF for recognition of these skills; * RM3 VUCA D-Skills Learning experiences: to underline the importance of working at different levels of intensity the VUCA criteria from the identified D-Skills; * RM4 VUCA D-Skills Learning Assessment: to highlight the importance of fair and accessible assessments, to ensure that the learners have achieved the VUCA skills; * RM5 VUCA D-Skills Enriched Curriculum: to emphasise the importance and quality of decision learning in programmes and courses, an HE or VET institution must commit adequate methods and processes for decision skills curricular integration; * RM6 VUCA D-Skills Teacher competence: to reinforce the pertinence decision skills in HE and VET programmes and the quality of decision learning with accurate assessments in various pedagogical styles, HE and VET institutions are to commit adequate resources for faculty staff development.