eLene4work: Learning to learn for new digital soft skills for employability

Description:

Soft skills such as communication, teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurship are more and more in demand in today’s labour market and these competencies may prove to be the distinguishing factor between two candidates with equivalent qualifications and experience. But how can we measure these skills? How can students and young workers demonstrate these skills on a CV or e-Portfolio? What are today’s and tomorrow’s employers really looking for? The eLene4work European project is tackling the definition of these soft skills, including digital soft skills, and proposes a series of actions and practical tools to help young talents better understand the expectations of employers, to assess their own level of competency and to further develop these skills through open education initiatives such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and OERs (Open Educational Resources).

eLene4work is supported by the ERASMUS+ programme (Key Activity 2, Strategic Partnerships) and brings together 11 partners from 9 European member states. The project will be of great interest to students, young workers, teachers, careers’ advisors, human resources managers and employers in general. It is the fruit of over 10 years’ collaboration between members of the eLene group (eLearning network).

In concrete terms, the project partners will carry out the following actions:

• Comparative analysis on the state of the art of soft skills and soft skills 2.0
• Confronting the points of view of students, young workers, teachers and employers through focus groups in 9 European member states
• Creating a Self-Evaluation Tool for soft skills and digital soft skills
• Creating an Orientation Guide to help students and young workers develop soft skills though MOOCs and OERs
• Supporting and accompanying learners in keeping a personal learning journal
• Organising a final conference in France (2017)

What do we mean by soft skills?

“Soft Skills represent a dynamic combination of cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, interpersonal, intellectual and practical skills. Soft skills help people to adapt and behave positively so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of their professional and everyday life”.

Local Coordinator:

Dr. Yildiray Ogurol

Partners:

• Fondazione Politecnico di Milano (Coordinator, Italy)
• aunege - Association of Universities for the development of digital education (France)
• UOC - Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain)
• EDEN - European Distance and E-Learning Network
• EUCA - European University College Association (Belgium)
• University of Helsinki (Finnland)
• SEN Junior Achievement (Greece)
• METID - Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
• UMCS - Maria Curie Sklodowska University – University Centre for Distance Learning (Poland)
• University of Dundee (Scottland)

Funding:

ERASMUS+ (Strategic Partnerships, Call 2014)

Lifetime:

2014 – 2017