The project responded to the PRIORITY: "Improving the competences of educators and other adult education staff" because it aimed at increasing the partners' ability to offer effective learning solutions to their target audiences, such as adult learners. The objective was also to positively impact their personnel, who carried out the organisation's tasks and duties in terms of increased transnational project management skills, cross-cultural teamwork and communication skills, remote- work and communication expertise. The three partners were also looking to learn new skills and investigate topics that were part of their everyday work. By working with the other partners, we wanted to increase their predisposition to handle their workload thanks to their better ICT skills and ability to manage their work more efficiently. In addition, we also wanted to improve the way coaches and trainers offered their services to their audiences with positive effects on their work patterns and on the services offered in general. More importantly, we wanted to check what elements worked better to foster participants' engagement in the coaching sessions and were effective in creating social bonds that are usually lost while communicating online.
The idea for the project proposal came during a training N&P (the coordinator) and FRM-IT staff attended in Germany in September 2021, where the experts and the two partners shared the challenges they had faced during the pandemic and with online learning in general. They found that while E-learning and online lessons can be extremely useful to build a strong foundation of knowledge for adult learners, the online environment was not necessarily appropriate to let teachers and students connect, preventing the building of the emotional connection they would develop during face-to-face classes. Communication specialists and coaches found the ‘human contact-less element stressful and inadequate to develop social/transversal skills. The partners, from 3 EU countries, Germany, Italy, and Hungary, talked about the difficulties they encountered in using ICT tools to develop, in particular, soft skills in their learners and decided to use their expertise to come together to exchange knowledge on techniques used to foster personal/professional development, and create a toolkit they can use directly with their staff and key stakeholders,