Digitalization and automation cover increasingly large areas of economics, also providing opportunity for both companies and workers, as long as they’re prepared to change. In Europe is widely widespread the belief that through a more pervasive digitalization within companies is possible to give birth to a fourth industrial revolution in which the "cost of labor" factor loses importance, for the benefit of the workforce cultural factor. In other terms, instead of cheaper labor costs we should have robots, sensors, equipments and software applications, with workers, technicians and managers culturally prepared to handle them. A change of paradigm that effectively opens new scenarios in the production of goods and services and in the labor market. A revolution that hinges on a stock of competences to which workers and citizens need to be trained on, in order to be prepared for the change. These new capabilities are related to the so-called "Computational Thinking", that must be deeply connected to the "Critical Thinking", so that is possible to synthesize them into critically-computational skills (CCT). We must not confuse CCT with computer skills necessary to perform the ICT professions. It is rather using some of those skills, to create a culture which incorporate some proven mental processes of that discipline- such as the definition of algorithms – in order to reuse them in any other fields. Despite some authors consider Computational Thinking as a key competence, we could almost think to it as a cross-sectoral learning with respect to the 8 key competences, particularly those related at least to (#3) science, technology and Mathematics, and (#4) digital competence. Whereas young people at schools are (recently) trained on these skills, little or nothing is done to prepare adults to this transformation. It follows that workers who are not able to participate in the few training courses on these issues, are likely to meet a cultural gap which reduces opportunities and professional openings. The project aims to help reduce this gap through a training action on the issue of CCT competences, addressed to trainers professionals and adult workers, project’s final recipients. The goal of the project is to create a Common Methodology for approaching to teaching/learning of these skills, addressing adults and actually implementing a digital platform, accessible from desktop or mobile through which teachers can find a guide on how to teach CCT, and an actual “gym” to train and integrate their own digital culture before forwarding it to the students. On the same platform there will be realized 3 case studies by the project partners in which the CCT is applied to the field of environmental sustainability, social responsibility and sustainable development. These enable trainers, businesses and citizens to understand the added value of CCT applied to real problems, and learn a methodology to teach/learn its sub-skills. Actions: 1. Study, exchange of experiences and development of a Common Methodology, connected to existing models with proven effectiveness, suitable to teach/learn the CCT to adult people. It comprises the breakdown into sub-skills and learning evaluation criteria; 2. Identification of the ICT tools for teach/learn CCT such as app, web app, coding and data analysis tools, to be integrated in a software solution based on open source LMS platform type. 3.Realization of training courses on eco-sustainability, corporate social responsibility, sustainable development and submit them to a test with a sample of adults; 4. Train a significant number of teachers in their own national territories through multiplier events addressed to training agencies, institutions, and scientific communities. 5.Dissemination to a wide audience of learners and operators of the project results by providing access to the outputs for 3 year period beyond the end date of the project. To achieve these results, the project relies on the contribution of Universities, Technology partners and qualified training agencies, of the four partner countries: Italy, Spain, Poland, United Kingdom.
The "New Adults' Competences for Skills Revolution" NACSR project stems from the awareness of the coordinator and the partners of the revolution taking place in the world of work and in the skills that this world requires: these capacities in fact revolve around critical and computational skills, key skills that are not only connected to the ICT, but linked to mental processes related to them, such as the construction of algorithms, which can be used in various fields. Computational thinking is in fact linked in a transversal way to the officially recognized key competences, namely science (# 3), technology, mathematics and digital competence (# 4).The common methodology of NACSR (IO1) starts mainly from Bloom's Taxonomy in its digital revision, which was implemented by Vanek's Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments (PS-TRE). In this re-elaboration was created a methodology that fits the learning levels of the taxonomy into five stages of the PS-TRE, for the achievement of the sub-competences of critical and computational thinking. Thanks to the development of the methodology, the Skillbook platform (IO2) has been structured and it allows the construction of training courses with different themes and which train the various sub-competences of the CCT or CCrT (critical-computational skills). The courses were structured by the training partner agencies of the project (IO3, 4, 5) and tested on an audience of people.The founding idea of the project is related to the gap between young and less young people regarding critical and computational thinking skills and the importance that these skills have today in the world of work and in general in every personal and professional area of individuals life. In fact, only in primary schools this type of pathway has been developed, while at an adult level there are very few opportunities and they're very localized, especially in countries that have a higher digital capital (such as Great Britain, with reference to the NACSR partnership, which has courses for the CCT). Furthermore, there is often a tendency to confuse CCrT with some competence related to the world of computer science, while it is instead a matter of using some paradigms of this subject to apply them to teaching methodology and learning, such as algorithmic thinking, which is basically a thought that implies a well defined logic. CCTs are in fact connected to the development of logical thinking and to the transversal competences that the EU considers as priorities, such as creativity, computational and algorithmic thinking, problem solving, the ability to cooperate (EU Recommendations May 2018). These skills are the specific object of the platform design, and the template used for the realization of the courses presents a model and tools that allow them to be trained and evaluated on an objective scale. Project activity: 1. Study, exchange of experiences and development of a Common Methodology, linked to existing models of proven effectiveness, suitable for teaching / learning of CCT to adults. It includes the subdivision into sub-abilities and criteria for the evaluation of learning; 2. Identification of the ICT tools to be considered to teach / learn CCT for adults, such as App and Web App, a tool for data encoding and analysis, to be integrated into a software solution based on an open source platform; Implementation of the Skillbook platform. 3. Realization of educational paths on the themes of eco-sustainability, corporate social responsibility, sustainable development and subjecting them to a test with a sample of adults implemented within the platform; 4. Training of a significant number of teachers in the respective national territories through multiplier events aimed at training agencies, institutions, and the scientific community. 5. Dissemination of the project results to a wide audience of users and operators, guaranteeing access to the results for a period of 3 years beyond its completion date. To achieve these results the project makes use of the contribution of university, technological and qualified training agencies from four partner countries: Italy, Spain, Poland, United Kingdom. The partners are: Per Formare srl Impresa Sociale (IT, leader), Entropy Knowledge Network (IT), University of Zaragoza (SP), University of Edinburgh (UK), IUNTIR (PL), CFA (SP).