Europe was built on foot. During the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage routes to Compostela were the first element to unite a fragmented Europe. Similarly, the current European Union emerged after the Second World War from a broken and confronted Europe in search of values that would allow it to restore its sense of unity. The choice of the theme of the Way to Santiago (Camino de Santiago) goes hand in hand with the need to find common elements and values that reinforce ties with Europe along with the sense of belonging in a context in which European values are questioned. Heritage education based on the cultural assets of the Way initiates an intercultural dialogue concerning what we have in common and allows us to rediscover heritage, not as something static or from the past, but as a legacy that evolves through our commitment to it. Therefore, to interact with heritage is to interact with our identity. To convey the idea of the importance of its conservation is to contribute to the construction of an integrating, cosmopolitan and universal future. Thus, the CompostEVA project disseminates the learning opportunity represented by the Way and use it for the benefit of the objective pursued: Heritage Education in Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) to promote the acquisition of basic skills, especially social and digital skills as well as self-regulation among the adult public. With this premise, we created a strategic partnership in which the participants brought together their complementary knowledge in the fields of pedagogy, ICTs associated with education and the rich cultural heritage of the Way to Santiago in an attempt to respond to the main challenges of the WP2025: to increase the participation of the adult public - especially low-skilled learners - in lifelong learning, to improve the ability of learning to adapt to the rapid social and occupational changes of today's world and to promote media literacy to all citizens. The participants, a total of twelve professionals who belong to the different sectors of formal and non-formal education (teacher training, adult education centres, universities and associations) specified the objectives established in the creation of a virtual platform of educational resources around the core theme of the Way to Santiago and a toolkit for teachers. The materials were organised in learning itineraries conceived with an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach and differentiated by levels of competence. These materials range from those oriented towards the acquisition of basic skills, such as reading and writing or digital literacy, to other more complex ones that require a greater concept and competence mastery, aimed at an adult public that, although they have access to an intensive and creative use of ICTs in informal contexts, are unaware of and fail to take advantage of their educational use. Adopting a task, problem or challenge-based approach, as well as including innovative tools such as Mobile Learning, Immersive Virtual Reality or Gamification, aim to promote learner motivation in order to commit to the progression of their own learning and improve their competences while reflecting on the processes of building culture and the relationship between society and the objects it builds. The sequence of activities leading to the development of the final product involved actions such as a needs analysis among the target groups (trainers and learners), content identification at local and European level, the designing of the virtual platform, the selection of ICTs tools, the making of methodological decisions, the piloting of materials, the dissemination plan and the development of Teaching Guides and Best Practices conceived to favour the usability and transmission of the materials to other contexts and topics. The entire process of training and material creation has been the subject to continuous evaluation established by a model based on ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation), ASSURE and KEMP, to guarantee the rigour and quality of the training processes. The dissemination of the results of the consortium has contributed to the international implementation of new pedagogical approaches and innovative digital tools, has promoted networking and broadened the perspectives of the target audience of the project (immigrants, refugees, seniors, disadvantaged and, in general, adults seeking a second chance in education) in order to continue learning throughout their lives in innovative environments, thus enabling them to be an active part of society to avoid exclusion and promote mobility and social cohesion.
The first objective was to create a strategic partnership to bring together the knowledge of the five partners in the fields of pedagogy, CAT and the cultural heritage associated with the Way of St. James in order to develop a virtual platform of educational resources and a toolkit for adult education that would allow the discovery of the cultural assets of the Way of St. James. The second objective was to increase participation, especially of low-skilled learners, in lifelong learning through OER. The creation of OER facilitates the overcoming of common obstacles such as the reconciliation of training needs with work or family obligations, and makes learning times and processes more flexible. The third and last objective, closely linked to the previous one, was to meet the needs arising from the transformations of the Knowledge Society, digitalisation and new patterns of communication and relationships in social networks.
This project was requested in the framework in the spring of 2020 with a view to the celebration of the Jacobean Year in 2021. This event was seen as a learning opportunity for people living in the places along the Pilgrims' Routes to Santiago to learn more about the rich cultural heritage associated with the Routes and to understand their powerful contribution to the construction of a European identity. Furthermore, a gap was noted in the field of adult education, which has always suffered from a lack of its own platform of resources for this fundamental area of education and social cohesion, given that adult education is the most powerful tool for combating the social exclusion to which many people from outside the EU, or from certain age groups who, for one reason or another, find themselves outside the labour market, are exposed. Although initially conceived as a project for adult education, it soon became clear that the resource platform generated within the framework of the project was also valid for Compulsory Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, or teaching Spanish to foreigners.