REVERSE MENTORING FOR IMPROVING E-SKILLS ADULTS FOR DIGITAL COMPETENCES

"<< Background >>The European Commission's initiative ""A New Skills Agenda for Europe"" and the recommendation ""Skills UpgradingPathways: New Opportunities for Adults"" recognized the urgency of the problem of low digital skills among adults inenterprises. MENTORING CHANGE started from the idea of supporting adult educators with an innovative mentoring methodology, focusing on digital competences from a soft skills point of view to foster the inclusion and employability of digitally disadvantaged working adults. The need for the development of transversal competences for a successful transition to the labour market in adults was a need that the project addressed through the point of view of the labour market situation in five European countries ( Cyprus, Spain, Greece,Ireland,Germany) and very different from each other but with the same gap to be solved.The project served as a support to help implement tutoring/mentoring and the promotion of high quality educational services in adult education institutions and companies.The need for the promotion of digital competences from new approaches and innovative teaching methods and based on entrepreneurship in education and mentoring programmes was addressed. << Objectives >>The objectives of this project have been:- Create upskilling pathways, improving accessibility, and increasing take-up of adult education ;- Support for adult educators with an attractive, practical, and innovative methodology promoting high quality in adult education institutions;- Create a better cooperation between educational institutions and companies for a better understanding of the needs of the labor market in the area of soft skills and digital competences; - Develop a methodology for mentoring and training programs focused on learning digital competencies for adults; - To encourage a real support to adult educators with an attractive, practical and innovative approach;- Train mentors who know how to understand soft skills, skills, preferences for job functions, learning styles and are able to teach digital skills in an attractive way so that they can articulate them to improve the employability of adults;- To achieve progress in the development of transversal skills in the digital area for a successful transition to the adult labor market.<< Implementation >>MENTORING CHANGE has develop the following activities in Spain, Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, and Greece :- Research on the needs in the digital area in five prices europe open adult education, how to improve them through a methodology focused on soft skills and mentoring. - Develop a methoodology for focused mentoring with the orientation on recommendations in two areas:a)Digital technical skills such as data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, among others.b) Soft skills, which go in parallel with digital skills and help to better understand digital skills.- Production of a multimedia content and resources to promote adult learning opportunities through platform of easy and free access and use; - Development of training contents for the training of trainers;- Training sessions for trainers;- Development of a scheme for the development of dissemination workshops;- Dissemination and diffusion with stakeholders engagement strategy;- Establishment of cooperation networks with a adult training providers and public and private entities.All the project activities served as valuable resources to support the implementation of the project objectives that we initially planned.<< Results >>The results of the project were :- Website project MENTORING CHANGE : https://mentoringchange.eu/- Guidelines for focused mentoring published on the Erasmus Platform; - Content of training material in an online course for training;- Pilot mentoring developed; - Adult-short-term staff training events with 10 mentors trained;- 5 Dissemination workshops- 140 adults participating in the pilot project acquiring digital competencies through two mentoring courses in two languages (English and Spanish);- 20 mentors carrying out the pilot project;- 13 agreements with public and private education providers and entities to promote the results of the project and continue with its sustainability.There were also improvements such as :- Improved mentor/trainer training through the development of a better understanding of work practices and the application of pedagogical approaches to mentoring;- Creation of digital contents and resources that guarantee the effective development and recognition of soft skills, digital skills and the development of mentoring for adult trainers carried out in collaboration by all the project partners."