vocational education

Chatbot Based Career Guidance – 2nd Newsletter

June 2023

The CareerBOT partnership intends to implement a chatbot based career guidance methodology and tool, which with the reinforcement of a facilitated blended guidance sessions will provide current Labour Market Information and general tips to Jobseeker. The CareerBOT tool will equip guidance professionals with an AI-based chatbot that will dynamically generate external data using various Application Programming Interfaces (API) to provide customised Labour Market Information (LMI) and general tips on applying for work based on their clients’ needs. In this way the project aims to empower marginalised jobseekers on their pathway to employment.

We are excited by the development of the CareerBOT tool to date and the finalisation of the ‘’generic’’ English version following the successful preliminary pre-piloting phase. The partnership is now working to translate the Chatbot tool into Spanish, Greek, and German versions for piloting. We invite you to test the EN Version of the Bot. The CareerBOT project strives to provide up to date local and national Labour Market Information and therefore aims to localise the different versions of the Bot to best meet the needs of each client. The CareerBOT partnership attended its Second face-to-face Transnational Project Meeting in St. Pölten, Austria excellently hosted by our project lead Hafelekar. During the meeting partners Active Citizens Partnership (ACP, GR) and Pontydysgu, Bridge to Learning (ES) presented the ‘generic’ EN version and highlighted the improvements made to the Bot that resulted from the feedback given by testers during the Pre-Piloting phase of testing. The partnership further progressed on the development of a blended CareerBot training curriculum for Career Guidance Practitioner and will launch the beginning of its piloting of the training in Greece, October 2023.

To learn more about the project partners follow the link to the partner section of the website. To read more about The CareerBot project  read our recently published article on EPALE (Electronic Platform for Adult Learning), to read more follow the link; CareerBot – Chatbot based Career Guidance | EPALE (europa.eu).

Second F2F Transnational Project Meeting in St. Pölten, Austria

The CareerBOT project aims to achieve four main project outcomes, firstly to research on the content of the Bot and methodology to inform the development of the tool including LMI resources and usable APIs to embed within the tool. This project outcome is ongoing and will continue to inform the future of the project. Secondly, the development of the CareerBOT tool, which is now in its piloting phase as mentioned above. Thirdly, the development of a blended CareerBOT training for Career Guidance Practitioners which is now well underway with the aim to deliver the training in October and finally the drafting of a Transfer Handbook for Implementation that focuses on organisational Development (OD). Both final outcomes of the CareerBot project aim to improve the digital readiness of the Career Guidance.

For more information about the CareerBot Erasmus+ project go to our website here.

2_CareerBOT-2nd-Newsletter-ENHerunterladen

The European Commission support for the production of this communication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Flows

Further Learning, Outreach and Working Skills

The FLOWS project aims to create a career guidance framework based on forward thinking and a way of working for guidance practitioners that facilitates quality future focused career plans for job seekers who are already marginalised in the labour market, ensuring their inclusion in a technological and digitalized world of work.

Our main aim is to provide effective career guidance to young people and to assist them in discovering and developing their soft skills in order to ensure their inclusion in the labour market. As a result, we develop project tools and methods centred on the identification of transversal skills that can be used to future-proof the careers of disadvantaged young job seekers and enable sustainable employment, and we implement them with the project’s target group of disadvantaged young job searchers. To achieve this goal, we must build the skills of experts and youth workers in the field through the development of vocational education and training qualifications, which we will do in our project.

Our main results are:

  • Framework Development: We define key competencies required for a future labour market and elaborate on the employability needs of disadvantaged young job seekers.
  • Tool Specification and Content: This output will detail the core elements and project methodology to be adapted in light of technological workplace demands, training requirements, and key competencies of young job seekers.
  • Developing Training module for practitioners and Online Platform: This will enable the project partners to implement training modules with the aim of increasing communication and interpersonal skills and digitalisation skills of young job seekers. 
  • Piloting of the FLOWS approach and Psychometric Evaluation: This step will result in a method for guidance practitioners to facilitate future-focused career plans for young job seekers who are significantly under – represented in the labour market.

Project duration

October 2022 till September 2024

Website: coming soon

Project Partners

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Turkish National Agency. Neither the European Union nor Turkish National Agency can be held responsible for them.

Newsletter Flows Project

Flows project aims to support disadvantaged people, early school leavers, young job seekers, poor educational background, the long-term unemployed, people with disabilities and social, cultural, economic or educational obstacles, individuals, guidance, practitioners, employers, and Youth employment providers.

Flows is a 24-month-long European project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme and coordinated by Çarşamba İşkur Hizmet Merkezi Müdürlüğü. The project activities will be implemented throughout 4 different countries: Austria, Ireland, Romania, and Turkey. The first meeting of the project was held on the 30th and 31st of January 2023 in Samsun, Turkey.

During the meeting, partners got to know each other and the project and set the ground for a fruitful collaboration in the months to come. Lead project partners shared highlights for their work packages. Special time was dedicated to the first work package of the project, developing a framework for analysis and evaluation, which will include desk research and focus groups with young jobseekers and experts working with young jobseekers. The next transnational partner meeting will be in Ireland in September 2023.

Work packages that will be developed are:

Work package 2 – Framework Development will be led by Mozaik (as it has experience in working on developing framework for analysis and evaluation. The aim of the guidance service is to encourage and assist individuals to make positive changes in their lives and enable them to access education, training, and employment.

Work package 3 – Tool Specification and Content will be implemented by The Ballymun Job Centre as it holds methodology that can be used to discover and develop educational, vocational, and employment potential, to equip individuals to have a clearer understanding of themselves and to direct them towards training and employment opportunities that best fulfil their needs and aspirations.

Work package 4 – Developing Training module for practitioners and Online Platform will be led by Universitatea Politehnica din București as being an experienced IT partner.

Work package 5 – Piloting of The Future-proof Your Career and Psychometric Evaluation will be led by Hafelekar as it is mainly engaged in these fields: Research, Studies, Surveys, Evaluation, Validation of informal and non-formal learning, Development of (ICT) training.

The partnership of the Flows project is composed by:

Project Coordinator: Çarşamba ISKUR HIZMET MERKEZI MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ (Türkiye) 

Project Partners:

STAY TUNED TO HEAR MORE FOR OUR PROJECT!

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DigEnYou

Digital entrepreneurship  for Youth

The DigEnYou project aims to upskill youth in the field of digital entrepreneurship by providing a training programme to develop and improve young people’s digital and entrepreneurial skills. The project addresses the following major needs in the field of youth on a global scale: 1) Digital skill upskilling, including digital literacy and readiness; 2) Enhancement of transversal skills for digital business development; and 3) Development of entrepreneurial skills.

Project Target Groups

  • Young people with limited digital skills and competencies, as well as those looking for opportunities for entrepreneurial learning and education.
  • The actors in digital youth work.

To meet these needs and provide a comprehensive training programme to young people interested in starting a digitally oriented business, the following outputs will be created:

  • Methodological Framework and Digital Market Skills Ecosystem: In the foundation phase of the project, a desk research and study circle will be conducted to define a Methodological Framework and Digital Market Skills.
  • DigEnYou curriculum and model: All partner countries will collaborate to develop curriculum outlines and DigEnYou course content.
  • DigEnYou methodology and piloting: is based on testing a training model in terms of objectives, recruitment and learning process, content, schedule, and timing.
  • DigEnYou Learning Platform: This project milestone aims to create an online platform that will include the above-mentioned results and assist young people and youth workers in improving their skills.

Project duration

September 2022 till August 2024 Website: coming soon

Project Partners

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Turkish National Agency. Neither the European Union nor Turkish National Agency can be held responsible for them.

Chatbot based Career Guidance – 1st Newsletter

January 2023 | 1st Newsletter

The CareerBot partnership seeks to improve Digital Readiness of the Career Guidance sector by implementing CareerBot methodology and tool, facilitating blended guidance
sessions and to use customized Labour Market Information (LMI) to empower marginalized job seekers. We want to put Career Guidance Practitioners at the centre and assist them – and their organisations – on the path of digitalisation so that they can advise their clients in the best possible way.

With the help of our methodology, job seekers will be able to gather relevant
information before and after personal interviews, so that valuable personal services can
be used efficiently. With the “CareerBot project” we propose a pilot that focuses on the
role of career guidance, which became more demanding, and must be adapted more
rapidly and flexible to the changing needs of the new world of work.

The CareerBot project includes 4 main outcomes:

  1. CareerBot Content and Methodology
  2. CareerBot Tool
  3. Blended CareerBot training for Career Guidance Practitioners
  4. Transfer Handbook for Implementation with focus on Organisational
    Development (OD)

Here you can have a look at the preliminary version of our CareerBot/ pre-pilot phase:

Please provide your feedback after you have spend some time interacting with
CareerBot: Careerbot feedback form (google.com)

First f2f Transnational Project Meeting in Dublin, November 2022

Following key virtual meetings, last November 2022 we were able to meet in person in
Dublin, to review the progress of the different Project Results and Activities, develop
stronger bonds within our partnership and update the implementation plans going
forward.

We are delighted with the consultations and baseline analysis carried out up to date,
collaboration between the project coordinators and links with associated organisations
contributing to the CareerBot. We hope to obtain feedback from a diverse range of
Career Guidance Practitioners and colleagues who will be trained to use the CareerBot
with their clients during 2023.

Find out more about our project partners and updates in our website

1_CareerBOT-Newsletter-final_ENHerunterladen

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Probing our fortune

Career Preparedness and Life Navigation with Folktales

In this project we will use the Folk Tale work method to develop sets of self-help and coaching / training tools for young people and their advisers and coaches to think through their choices and motivation to  design their next life and career steps.

Folk tales are a way of narrative therapy. The stories – and the analysis of them – can support learning from the situations portrayed, the behaviour of the characters and the ways of solving problems. Folk tales teach us of trial and error and of not giving up, even when it’s hard. These stories can influence the way we live, and the way we think. Using folk tales from different countries also provides a good opportunity for increasing cultural awareness.

… So we can all become queens and kings of our own lives, and live happily ever after….

The main objectives are to

  • improve the preparedness of young people for career and life choices by developing their self-reflection, their resilience as well as to encourage them to make active decisions and to take their life and career planning into their own hands;
  • to increase the acceptance of cultural diversities and to develop positive attitudes towards sustainability.

Main results are:

  • Framework and Screening Tool on Carrier Preparedness for counsellors
  • Six Folk Tale Boxes, containing tools for self-help and counsellor work, such as the analysis of the tales, cards on the scenes of the tales and assessment questions for self-help and coaching, instructions for coaching on the specific tales, and also group work schedule and tools to work with the tale in youth groups.
  • Training curriculum for youth workers and counsellors including modules for young people.

Project duration

March 2022 – September 2024

Web

https://www.youthfolktale.eu

Project partner

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

CareerBOT

Chatbot based Career Guidance

CareerBot partnership seeks to improve Digital Readiness of the Career Guidance sector by implementing CareerBot methodology and tool, facilitating blended guidance sessions and to use customized Labour Market Information (LMI) to empower marginalized job seekers. We want to put Career Guidance Practitioners at the centre and assist them – and their organisations – on the path of digitalisation so that they can advise their clients in the best possible way.

By the help of our methodology, job seekers will be able to gather relevant information before and after personal interviews, so that valuable personal services can be used efficiently. With the “CareerBot project” we propose a pilot that focuses on the role of career guidance, which became more demanding, and must be adapted more rapidly and flexibly to the changing needs of the new world of work.

The CareerBot project includes 4 main project outcomes:

  • CareerBot Content and Methodology
  • CareerBot Tool
  • Blended CareerBot training for Career Guidance Practitioner
  • Transfer Handbook for Implementation with focus on Organisational Development (OD)

In addition, a training event for Career Guidance Officers will be held in Greece and ten Multiplier Events will be organised towards the end of the project to share the learning and engage with all the relevant stakeholders to make them aware of the new CareerBot tool and its benefits.

Project duration

November 2021 to August 2024

Web

Website: careerbot.eu
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/eucareerbot

Project Partners

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Digi-Ageing

overcoming loneliness

“Loneliness in old age” is a well-known social phenomenon that still receives too little attention. However, the current pandemic clearly shows us that we need to pay more attention to the issue. Older people are increasingly isolated in this situation:Those in care facilities are secluded for their own protection, others have little contact with friends and family or live entirely on their own. People caring for older people are often overwhelmed by the many safety precautions and challenges in their own daily lives. This is also true for family caregivers.

Since October 2020, the international Digi-Ageing consortium has been working on a comprehensive concept that addresses these challenges and develops appropriate measures to counteract the phenomenon of “loneliness in old age”. One of the main goals is to increase competences in the use of digital tools in the elderly care sector and to create a strong network that develops joint solutions.

What we develop

  • Research reports on the topic of loneliness in old age
  • Creation of a network that specifically counteracts this phenomenon
  • Digital diagnostic tool to be able to recognise “loneliness in old age” in good time
  • Digital intervention tools for education providers in the field of elderly care, for caregivers, for caring family members and for interested older people themselves
  • Curriculum for the Digi-Ageing Training Programme for the Care Sector

How we reach caregivers

Within the framework of the Digi-Ageing project, so-called “pilot trainers” are trained to subsequently conduct training sessions with other interested persons from the field of elderly care. These professionals will then implement the Digi-Ageing method in their own institutions and recruit other interested people.

Project duration

October 2020 to July 2023

Web

www.digi-ageing.eu
Facebook: www.facebook.com/digiageing
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/digi-ageing

Project Partner

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

STRESS-LESS

Well-being and prevention of stress from working

The STRESS-LESS project aims to provide and support the uptake of innovative open pedagogies and approaches in the field of improving the digital competences as well as personal, social, and learning competences of staff of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). The project will be focusing on equipping people with knowledge and teaching them habits how to better cope with digital stress.

Especially as a result of digital transformation and the associated changes in business models, workflows and the use of digital tools, employees are faced with constantly increasing demands in terms of flexibility, accessibility and transparency. As a consequence of this progress workers are suffering growing stress-related conditions.

The project objectives are to

  • develop new training content about prevention and management of digital stress that can be applied in work-based settings or in “home-office” settings by SMEs, their staff, managers and trainers/mentors. The training content will be available online, free of charge via web and mobile based platform;
  • empower VET teachers, trainers and mentors in work-based settings through the development of effective digital, open and innovative pedagogies;
  • provide data from research and feedback from practical implementation of measures against digital stress to scientific organizations, training organizations and policy makers, so that they can build upon the results of the project.

As a result of the STRESS-LESS project in the long run SME staff and other learners will be healthier, less stressed, easier to communicate with, suffer less from depression and burn-out. SMEs staff will take less sick leave and be more productive, efficient and competitive.

Project duration

September 2020 to August 2022

Web

www.stress-less-project.eu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/stress-less-project

Project Partner

Erasmus Logo

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.