The kick-off meeting of ICARO (Innovative Curriculum for Adult Learners on soft skills) Erasmus Plus funded project, took place on the 21 and 22 of November in Murcia. It was hosted by the Partner Coordinator Servicio Regional de Empleo y Formacion de la Region de Murcia (Spain) and counted with the presence of representatives from all the partners organisations: Tehnikes scholes epimelitriou Irakleiou, Greece, Dublin City University, Ireland, Socialiniu Inovaciju Fondas, Lithuania and Hamburger Volkshochschule, Germany, and EfVET.
The ICARO project goal is to design an accredited curriculum on soft skills for adult education as part of an innovative methodology with a holistic approach of the adult learner (case management) and with customized training oaths taking into account social and multicultural issues of Adult Education learners, which can be achieved effectively only through transnational partnership. Adult learners staff will have the opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge to offer and innovative and collaborative training programme.
One of the core aspect of the project is establishing Local Actions Groups with experts from the different partners countries. These groups will count with of trade unions, local and regional authorities and Government representative. Some of the partners already established their LAGs and started to work on the development of IO1. A list of key stakeholders will be provided in order to keep them regularly inform about ICARO project last updates.
Dissemination and Communications activities
The Dissemination and Communications activities will be coordinated by EfVET with the partners support. During the meeting, they agreed on the project’s logo, website name and setting up the different social media channels. In addition to this, four newsletter will be send, Press Conferences and multiplier-events will be organised by partners.
EPALE
The project will pay special attention to the EPALE platform, as is an open membership community for teachers, trainers, researchers, academics, policy makers and anyone else with a professional role in adult learning across Europe. This platform will be explore by partners, and in principle we will create an account and post relevant information about this platform. Jane O’Kelly (Partner – Dublin City University) Irish EPALE Ambassador will guide partners in this task.
Common definition of soft skills
As the project looks into the development Innovative Curriculum for Adult Learners on soft skills, one of the main aspects was to find a common definition of that Soft Skills. After a research process, partners decided to use as a frame the one given by Skills Panorama “Skills that are cross-cutting across jobs (see Job-specific skills) and sectors (see Sector-specific jobs) and relate to personal competences (confidence, discipline, self-management) and social competences (teamwork, communication, emotional intelligence)”. This output will include glossary with terms of reference for further explanation of the terms use along the different outputs and materials. Then we will identify the different soft skills and finally a needs of analysis will follow.
The training modules will be structured as follows:
You can follow ICARO last updates under the hashtag #ICARO_ErasmusPlus, other communications tools will be shortly provided.
