Wellbeing Coaching for Adult Educators Working in Blended Learning Environments

<< Background >>In early 2022, adult education providers faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting both educators and learners. Despite the difficulties, our project partners, skilled adult educators, adapted to new training formats amid personal and professional stress. Notably, our core activities, including coaching, remained resilient, gaining attention from learners unaffected by the pandemic. Recognizing the potential, we formed a partnership to explore integrating coaching into adult training, extending its benefits to other professionals. The WellBE project aimed to enhance the quality of adult education in blended environments by incorporating coaching principles. Our goal was twofold: to support educators coping with pandemic-related stress and to democratize coaching by making it accessible to a broader professional audience. Through this initiative, we sought to contribute to the evolution of adult education and create a lasting impact on training methodologies.<< Objectives >>Our main objectives as we formulated were, that with this project we want to:- Improve opportunities for continuous professional development of adult educators across Europe by creating a tailor-made online training programme in coaching skills;- Improve competences to provide quality and inclusive adult learning in blended learning environments by equipping 30 adult educators from Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria and Serbia with relevant coaching skills and tools;- Improve learning outcomes and motivation for learning of 60 adult learners engaged by trained in coaching adult educators;- Raise awareness across adult educators' communities in Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia and beyond on the benefits from adopting coaching mindset, competences and tools in their work.<< Implementation >>WP1: Project ManagementOngoing management and monitoring.WP2: Development of online coaching training programme for adult trainersA1 - Programme Development - learning outcomes, lesson plans and learning materials;A2 - Internal validation of the first draft of the programme with staff members, who are adult educatorsA3 - Finetuning, internal academic review and producing final version of the programme's handbook. WP3 Piloting of the programme with adult trainers and adult learnersA1 - We trained 33 educators from 4 countries in May 2023. A2 - Mentoring adult educators in applying coaching with 100+ learners (claimed by the adult trainers) June- Oct.; provided total of 27 mentoring rounds, and 5 individual mentoring sessions A3 - Evaluation of learning outcomes and motivation of educators and learnersWP 4 Promotion of the coaching training programme for adult educatorsA1 – We set up project website and social media profile A2 - Produced and published 20+ info items on the website and many more in social mediaA3 - Produced 11 WellBE Video Series with adult educators: A4 - Participated in thematic external events to promote the WellBE project A5 – Organized international final event in Brussels with 50 guests<< Results >>In the course of the project duration our concrete results we achieved: - 1 training programme (curriculum, lesson plans and learning materials);- 1 handbook “Coaching for Traners”, 167 pages - 33 adult educators trained in the pilot edition of the programme with improved their competences in comparison with baseline level; number reached in the 4 countries of the project- 104 adult learners engaged by trained adult educators with improved motivation; number of learners engaged, is claimed by the adult trainers in direct feedback during the mentoring. - 450+ adult educators informed about the benefits from integrating coaching in their daily practice (mix of communication channels). * NB: Materials, testimonials, photos, evidence and instances of the work under the WELLBE Project in WP 1 to 4 is available in the Project’s shared folder:Direct link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lSIaBTbVledY8vyPtvdSo7etNcWlnWQH?usp=sharing