COMPETE! has as general objective the development of relevant and high-quality skills and competences supporting graduates in acquiring and developing soft skills and key competences, to foster their employability and socio-educational and personal development, in order to help them be actively involved in work and social life and overcome also the problem of recent graduates that enrol for jobs for which they are over-qualified in order to get into the labour market. To reach this objective the consortium wants to create a serious game, that will train graduates and young people at risk of unemployment to acquire the so called "future skills", which are a combination of cognitive, methodological, social and digital skills. The choice has been done because different institution at international level (e.g. The New Media Consortium), that have mapped innovation processes in education and training systems, highlighted the strong potential of games in education. COMPETE! has the aim of tackling skills gaps and mismatch through design and development of an educational/serious game involving directly students and other stakeholders, mainly universities and enterprises, in the elaboration of relevant learning outcomes and design of adapted learning, teaching and assessment approach. Project activities can be divided into 4 steps: - Step 1: field research (O1). Project partners will elaborate data collected through questionnaires and interviews to students/graduates and entrepreneurs to detect which are the key soft skills for accessing the labour market; - Step 2: desk research (O2). Study on gamification and serious gaming for education and training, that will give information and indications on how to develop an effective online game with educational purpose. - Step 3: game design, development, testing and validation (O3). - Step 4: COMPETE! training package and game manual (O4), that is a toolkit dedicated to professors and trainers, to support graduates and students approaching closure of their academic carriers in acquiring "future skills" to enter labour market in a proper way, being them also interested in developing their own enterprise. These steps will all generate a project Intellectual Output, that will be free and accessible to everyone interested in using tools and materials produced. Some of the numbers that describe COMPETE! project: - No. of graduates/students involved in O1 and O4 - 300; - No. of professors/trainers involved in O3/O4 - 30; - No. of enterprises involved to implement O1 - 450; - No. of university and VET organisations involved - 10; -No. of public administrations, local authorities and non-governmental organisations - 9 Futhermore, the following RESULTS will be achieved: - Creation of a serious/edugame that will allow a more intuitive acquisition of soft skills from graduates and teachers/trainers to have a tool that will support them in teaching this particular subject and assess the acquisition of these skills by graduates; - Create a system of work/ a best practice for the future implementation of a wider network among university, VET organisations and enterprises to make them work together and produce effective impact for quality employment and to give a contribution in the decrease of youth unemployment rates, especially in South European countries; - Increased capacity to work in European contexts, furthermore creating a network of organisations that could work beyond the lifecycle of the project itself by activating local/national and EU networks and exploit tools produced to be integrated in universities, VET organisations and enterprises daily work and stimulate research and work in the field to promote a more “good and equal” labour market especially for young people; - Enlarge the opportunity for graduates to raise their skills and as consequence get aware of what are the needs and expectations of enterprises and to enter the world of work as active participant and achieve as much independence as possible; - Favour the acquisition of soft and entrepreneurial skills by young people trying to support those who wish to make their innovative entrepreneurial ideas become a reality by increasing their skills and proximity to market. The consortium operating in this project is composed by 9 partners (plus various associated partners) and strongly enriched by their diversity, they represent different background and countries, size, type but all joining because of the willingness to support young people in finding their way in work and social life. Project partners have been selected mainly in 3 different sectors: university, VET organisations, enterprises and their representation organisations. The choice reflects the objective of developing a network to reinforce cooperation between higher education institutions, VET organisations and employers or social enterprises on real-world problems, contributing to the increase of youth employment.
COMPETE! had as general objective the development of relevant and high-quality skills and competences supporting graduates in acquiring and developing soft skills and key competences, to foster their employability and socio-educational and personal development, in order to help them be actively involved in work and social life and overcome also the problem of recent graduates that enroll for jobs for which they are over-qualified in order to get into the labour market. COMPETE! main aim was that of tackling skills gaps and mismatch through design and development of an educational/serious game involving directly students and other stakeholders, mainly universities and enterprises, in the elaboration of relevant learning outcomes and design of adapted learning, teaching and assessment approach. An additional and integrative aim was that of strengthening the cooperation between the world of education and training and the world of work, to detect the skills need and to find common solutions on how to overcome this skills gap to support the development of quality training and education for young people to accompany them in their path for employability.
When the project has been presented the severity of youth unemployment across EU and working poverty drawing attention to the need for high quality, relevant youth skills development, with a focus on increasing skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. The factor that unites all professions and on which to work to facilitate access to the labor market for young people was and is that of soft skills. In fact, combined with technical and academic achievement, soft skills are critical to young people’s success in the workplace and their development in all domains of life. Despite a proliferation of terms and frameworks for describing these skills, much was still to be learned about which interventions work best for youth populations in specific country contexts. Youth transitioning from education, and vocational training to the workforce was facing, and still is facing, many challenges finding and keeping a job. In addition to education and experience requirements, employers were increasingly demanding for new hires with “soft skills”. As they become more important to employers, it was necessary to include soft skills acquisition as an educational priority to ensure greater preparedness for the workplace.