ECOM45+
CONTEXT
The structure of the European
society is constantly subject to demographic changes. Ought to a higher life expectancy and a decreasing birth rate, the average age
of the European population is increasing steadily, something that also provokes
the aging of the workforce and the
probably consequently necessity of a higher investment in National Health
Systems to face the increase of illnesses in the population. In spite of the
development of the EU as an advanced knowledge society with greater social
cohesion, it is not rare to find older people that can be doomed to isolation provoked by their physical or
mental deterioration. ICT learning can facilitate to this group of population
the possibility of “active ageing”
not only (1) by improving their social
nets (social groups, blogs, chats, etc) and by learning how to improve
their everyday tasks (shopping, arranging medical appointment, general
information search, etc.), but also (2) by improving
their competences related to ICT in order to enable them to know and
develop a new form of work organisation, such us E-work, very useful specially
for promoting the empowerment of the weakest segments of the society. Examples
of these are elderly people that are willing to share their experience as a
civic service and mature unskilled or unemployed workers that are willing to
defer their retirement by implementing E-work. Much information related to the
E-work is easily accessible on the Internet, but many of these segments can be
excluded from recent ICT developments if they are not properly guided and
supported in how to get used to make the most of what the net may offer.
Moreover, as Information and Communication Technology is of increasing
relevance within
OBJECTIVES
From a general perspective, this partnership aims to improve the existing pedagogical approaches and learning topics in the ICT and E-work Educational Programmes for the target group. Learners and students/trainees are involved actively in the project in order to achieve the general objectives stated bellow attending two main pillars:
1) Interests
of learning by the target group.
- To identify the needs of these people in order to enable them to integrate in the evolving information and knowledge society.
- To explore new ways of using a computer and basic skills for that by these people and from their point of view: e-learning, e-working, e-communication, everyday life tasks and procedures, etc.
- To share viewpoints regarding how to instil in these people self-confidence, improving their self-esteem, their motivation lo learn, their communication and ICT skills and their understanding of other cultures and population segments in the sense of civic engagement.
2) Good
practices from a methodological and pedagogical approach.
- To achieve innovation and improved availability, accessibility and quality of educational pathways in ICT and E-working learning for these people as an instrument to improve their professional skills and personal autonomy.
- To develop and disseminate an exchange of best practices and know-how in ICT and E-working learning and teaching methods for these people.
- To exchange existing approaches applied in ICT learning among the partners involved, like e-learning, peer-learning, intergenerational learning and others.
More specifically, this partnership aims to achieve the following objectives:
- To assess the needs of the students/trainees from all the partners involved related to ICT and E-working learning.
- To share experiences and good practices in ICT and E-working learning and teaching methods performed by the partners involved.
- To achieve common recommendations in order to improve educational pathways in ICT and E-working learning for these people by producing reports and designing a common website for/by both teachers/researchers and students.
METHODOLOGY AND PHASES
To achieve these objectives, we will explore subjects together and share ideas on teaching methods and topics about these people´ future learning needs and difficulties in ICT and E-working learning. The methodology will be based on surveys (opinion polls) to be performed by both students and by teachers. Moreover, participants exchange visits will be organized and will enable the teachers/researchers to experience other teaching techniques and practices. But central to this project is the fact that the students themselves are welcome to play an active role in the development of this project by cooperating to achieve the project goals by nourishing our conception of the state of the art. For this purpose, they will contribute by elaborating together with the teachers some of the contents of the website designed as a result of the project.
PHASE 1: PERCEPTION ANALYSIS (Academic Year
2009/2010).
This cover the following two relevant topics related to ICT and E-working learning for the target group: (1) Main Interests and (2) best methodological approaches. The first phase of the project is devoted to develop an organised specific analysis in each of the partner organisations of the perception that these people have nowadays about the relevance of ICT and E-working in their lives and about the way in which ICT can improve their quality of life and professional skills. To achieve that, we are designing questionnaires and opinion polls. The visits in phase 1 will enable us to know the defining features and to find out the reality of the partner organisations, as well as to establish the first personal contacts among teachers and students from each organisation.
PHASE 2: PERFORMING RESULTS AND IMPROVEMENT
RECOMMENDATIONS (Academic Year 2010/2011).
At the beginning of this phase, questionnaires are designed with the cooperation of an expert pool and sent to all organisations involved in the partnership in order to assess how the project is working. The results are analysed and improvement measurements as feedback resource are performed if necessary.
Once the main interests for these people have been identified and the conditions, resources and methodologies for dealing with ICT and E-work learning programmes in the partner institutions have been assessed, in the next phase we focus on sharing didactic-methodological experiences of all the partner institutions. In a following step, the partners would exchange and implement best practices in helping these people to use ICT and computers for communication and for improving their professional skills. We also evaluate the results by questionnaires. At the end of this phase, we would focus specially in producing all kind of literature related to the project: studies, evaluation report, recommendations, etc., in order to make them widely accessible by means of the own website of the project, including also the contents elaborated by the student/trainees involved in the partnership.
COMMUNICATION AND PARTICIPATION
The group of this partnership project includes professionals such as teachers, researchers and technical personal belonging to all the institutions involved, as well as student/trainees attending ICT and E-working courses in the involved and/or a nearby institutions, so that our partnership deals not only with pedagogical issues, but also with learner active engagement and involvement.
Teachers, researchers and technical personal are working together eagerly in planning, implementing and assessing the project activities, but it is essential for the successful implementation of this project that also the students participate actively in it, as we have already anticipated above, given that they give us the key information of their needs and fears about ICT learning. They hopefully produce some contents for project website as a reflection of their interests and motivations, too.
Visits will are being organised for both professionals and students/trainees and all of them participate in the meetings. Student exchanges enable them to reach common topics of interests in ICT and E-working learning and to produce contents of the project website. In short, an active involvement among all participants (teachers, researchers and students/trainees) is guaranteed by mobility activities and the use and implementation of a virtual platform.
This exchange is being multidirectional both in time and in space: continuous contact enabled by ICT tools, among all the institutions and among all participants in common and specified forums (professional to professional, senior to senior, or professional to senior). As previously told, and to summarise, in order to achieve the aim of this project, ICT-based working and regular meetings is being combined.