In the times of quick development of ICT and growing offer of e-services that we are living, a considerable number of European citizens, notably those with less opportunities (elderly people, migrants, unemployed, young people etc.), require for assistance in order to access ICT. One of the issues at stake is to enable access to ICT so as to develop people's social inclusion and thus reach a level of digital literacy that can develop people's employability, health, democratic participation and well-being.
There already exist professionals in this field: multimedia facilitators handle competences in both IC technologies and social inclusion, which they often develop through their professional experience. The common weakness observed is that in Europe, those actors are not enough recognized as professionals in eInclusion. The common European objective is therefore to create and to recognize a training curriculum of efacilitator for social inclusion.
This statement is at the heart of the project VET4eI: working in partnership to prove that the facilitator profession exists and that there is a common European need for the eFacilitator to be recognized as a professionals. The project actually creates a training curriculum for efacilitator for social inclusion, with a phase of pilot-courses and tests through elearning, reaching more than 400 European learners.
Policy Context
34 European countries signed a Ministerial Declaration in which ambitious policy targets were set for an inclusive Knowledge society in 2006. Know as the "Riga declaration", it set concrete targets for Internet usage and availability, digital literacy, and accessibility of ICT by 2010. It was followed by the "i2010 initiative" that proposed a strategic framework for action. Today, we are far from reaching these objectives. In March 2009, the European council recognised the e-Inclusion remained "overall poor in Europe" and that public authorities had to use "various instruments at their disposal, such as legislation, standardisation and certification as well as public procurement". The partners of the "VET4e-I" project want to encourage public authorities :
- to recognise the role of eFacilitators as promoters of e-Inclusion
- to promote the develoment of certified and transparent training solutions that correspond to their needs.
There are convinced that investing in the professional development of eFacilitators is a key to face these important societal challenges.
Description of target users and groups
This project support the emerging role of eInclusion Facilitators for social inclusion with a VET solution that helps consolidating its professionalism, its awareness and recognition both in the labour market and as a promoter of local development.
Indirectly, socially disadvantaged people (notably migrants, unemployed, elderly, handicapped, women, etc) will increment their chances to acquire Key Competences (digital, interpersonal, civic and learning-to-learn) and become self sufficient and active actors of a Knowledge-based economy and society.
At the same time the project helps consolidating the role of PIC Networks.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The Work Programme expresses a comprehensive work path in order to achieve the expected outcomes and at the same time introduce all the required supervision elements in order to assurance their quality, punctuality and value-for-money.
The transnational work is structured as a matrix where each work package (WP) is led by a different partner, acting the rest as active collaborators and then increasing the commitment of the whole project team. The scarce opportunity to hold face-to-face coordination meetings creates the need to enhance collaborative work at distance, which is at the same time a learning opportunity and for this reason a learning environment has been settled up for use by the project team.
Value-for-money is assured by adequate Quality Assurance and Valorization WPs coordinated by different partners.
Technology solution
Our technology solution is based on a Web 2.0 learning platform which is the Moodle platform. Collaborative and user-centered, the paltform will enable our 300 students to make their apprenticeship in best conditions.
Both tutor and student will be able to interact and provide ressources to enrich the on-line class.
Main results, benefits and impacts
On the basis of a cross-country context analysis, the partners of the VET4e-I project propose to develop an innovative VET solution in order to help European countries dealing with the common challenge of e-Inclusion.
The partners are developing a training curriculum for eFacilitators in social inclusion focused on the development of key competences of users at risk of social exclusion, aiming at their empowerment in the knowledge society. This training curriculum is based on an innovative elearning environment inspired in web 2.0 as well as on user-centred didactics. It notably counts modules such as :
· Working in a network
· Facilitating job seeking in the online center
· Facilitating ICT learning for older people in your online center
· Facilitating ICT learning for migrants in your online centre - Includes job seeking guidance
· Planning a digital literacy workshop
· Resources to support facilitation task in online centre
· Online procedures for bureaucratic issues - Facilitating access to eServices
· Managing projects and funds
· Getting familiar with Office tools [open/MS] to develop digital literacy workshops
· Digital Photography workshop in your online centre
A European e-tutors team is created, so that each module can be tested by 30 eFacilitators.
Expected impact : 200 eFacilitators/100 PICs (short term), 1.000 eFacilitators/500 PICs/year (long term). An eFacilitator typically serves 350 to 500 end-users/year.
Moreover, the products are all developed under a formalised Overall Quality Assurance making sure they match both EFQM* and ECVET** principles, to the extent to design the expected Online Training Content according to the most updated and awarded European VET concepts and items. This should facilitate an effective sharing and recognition of the project's results among the partners' countries and make it accurate on long term on a European level.
* European Foundation for Quality Management
** European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training
Track record of sharing
Other projects aiming at a professional certification, whatever the field, will beneficit from the VET4e-I researches on national pathways towards a professional certification : actors, procedures, documents, duration, criteria, decisionnal process, have been identified in France, Spain, Bulgary and Italy. These guidelines will be used by the VET4e-I partners in their future activities and communication, and lessons learnt through this experimentation will also be transferable. Indeed, the creation of common referentials and certification is at the heart of numerous projects, in various fields of activity.
Lessons learnt
- The eFacilitator for social inclusion profile, activities, backgrounds and training needs both in the technical and didactical fields (see HERE the results of the multicountry analysis) ;
- The professionnal certification pathways in Spain, Bulgaria, France and Italy and their consequences for the efacilitator in social inclusion recognition.