This Erasmus+ - MOOCs IN BASIC SKILLS TRAINING - is based on the valuable experiences gained through a previous Erasmus + project - BASIC SKILLS IN WORKING LIFE (2016-1-NO01-KA204-022071). The new project is a continuation of this project with the same partnership.The partnership consist of FONIX from Norway (leade partner), BEST from Austria, STEP from Slovenia, CITEVE from Portugal and CONFAPI from Italy.One of the main outcomes the Erasmsu+ project BASIC SKILLS IN WORKING LIFE consisted of a large number of quantitative and qualitative data collected from eight different branches in six countries. All results and reports are thoroughly documented on the project's website: http://www.basicskillsinworkinglife.no/From the data collected, we observed that across all countries and branches the need of soft skills was more valued than the need of technical skills. By soft skills, we defined the “character traits and interpersonal skills that characterize a person's relationships with other people, they are to do with who people are, rather than what they know. Therefore, they encompass the character traits that decide how well one interacts with others. In workplace they are considered a complement to hard skills”. In this new project MOOCs IN BASIC SKILLS TRAINING we plan to take these findings to a higher level and take into account for further discussion and development the following issues: 1. Soft skills are more needed than occupational skills in the “new” industry. The question is how these will enhance low skilled employees, and how we can prepare a curriculum for better training for the target group. 2. If common training framework for low skilled employees is to be put in place; how to accommodate all partners’ needs?To answer these questions we will conduct a project that produce curriculums for practical training courses on the most important social skills in working life, supporting digital learning maps and combined and incorporated with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The target groups in the project MOOCs IN BASIC SKILLS TRAINING are low skilled workers with a demand for new skills and / or formal coalification in terms of soft skills in working life. In this project, we are specially aiming for employees in companies / branches where the demand for the new skills are generated as a result of technological changes and / or new digitalized production methods. The project MOOCs IN BASIC SKILLS TRAINING will work in three phases that each are covered and defined by an Intellectual Output:IO1 First we will create concrete curriculums for training courses based on the results from our previous Erasmus+ project. We have a lot of materials since we already explored and developed this with practical training and pilots in each partner country, as well as a Teacher-Training-Event in Portugal in 2017.IO2 Secondly, based on the curriculums we will produce digital learning maps in accordance with each curriculum for employees with low basic skills. The learning maps will both function as individual “skill checkers” and important motivation tools as well as concrete learning material for online courses.IO3 At last – and as the major output from this project - we will produce three different Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to support the online training. The main outcome of this project is practical focusing on producing minimum three MOOCs that can be presented and distributed on many different platforms throughout the partner countries. Each MOOCs will be minimum 30 minutes long and will be produced in English with subtitles in each countries language. The MOOCs can also be linked to “classrooms” inside the companies as well to other national and international digital learning platforms that are used by providers all over Europe.This offers a multi-perspective and practical view on how and why providers should implement basic skills training in communication and soft skills as an important strategy for training for employees in a modern working life.

LEARNINGTEX MOOC aims to support textile companies through employees training and skills updating. A need on the sector has been detected and textile companies demand more experienced and trained workers on topics like woven fabrics and quality control of defects. In this sense, during this project more than 70 OER will be created which will be shaped into a MOOC about woven fabrics and defect detection on woven fabrics.LEARNINGTEX will export the successful work-based learning system of Austria to Spanish and Portuguese companies, countries where this type of education is not so common. The idea to develop a MOOC oriented to work-based learning will contribute conciliating working and family life. The MOOC will be addressed not only for textile outdated employees but also for unexperienced workers who have just finished their studies. The course will be oriented to textile employees and students interested in updating their knowledge about woven fabrics, machinery and the application of new technologies to improve quality control processes and reduce costs. The course will consist of 2 parts strongly oriented to the sector and target group’s needs; both based on an innovative methodology developing OER shaped into a MOOC. The first part will be focused on woven fabrics’ OER structured into sections, lessons and tests to evaluate the learning process and the second will be OER about advanced processes of quality control and defect detection in woven fabrics.The novelty and innovative aspects of LEARNINGTEX will concentrate on the exclusive textile approach and the unique and original methodology of the Work Based MOOC. Another innovative aspect will be the open and flexible learning methodology, fully exploring the potential of MOOCs to improve education, training and WBL systems, aligning them with the current digital world.The textile industry requires technical staff with new and updated skills able to use new machines, equipment and with wider knowledge of the textile processes. For this reason this project proposes a MOOC which helps companies to have more qualified staff and hire new employees with updated skills. LEARNINGTEX promotes flexibility and adaptability combined with active work, satisfaction and motivation for the trainees by means of a MOOC on an e-learning platform conciliating social and family life. This will help to have a close relationship with work life, adapting to the needs of on-going training and self-learning in the labor market improving student management strategies and promoting companies competition and internationalization. In terms of impact, students of LEARNINGTEX will enjoy a richer collaborative experience, through MOOC with OER of the project avoiding some of the growing limitations of traditional classes, such as the lack of enough work area, expensive instrumentation, lack of personnel, time assigned to the course, and their availability in non-working office hours. Teachers will enjoy a reliable remote MOOC system that presents learning resources for an educational process, that is characterized with providing just-in-time, just enough and at the point of need support to learners in order to deal with complex authentic tasks in the context of problem-based learning. Finally, textile companies will benefit providing its workers with an effective MOOC to update their skills conciliating working and family life. Companies will take advance of LEARNINGTEX having and promoting high quality products with great added value. This will help them to compete against third countries. To summarize, this project contributes to a Europe of Knowledge through the development of new learning approaches (combining WBL, MOOC and OER) using innovative ICT technologies that allow streaming attendance to the course. LEARNINGTEX will use modern learning systems and methodologies that support and promote lifelong learning plus the acquisition of knowledge and skills to enhance companies’ competitiveness while reducing unemployment rates. LEARNINGTEX supports the creation of an information society training and exchanging knowledge in Europe developing a MOOC about textile technology, woven fabrics and defect detection on woven fabrics.

"For Textiles Sector's companies (especially SMEs), the circular economy provides an opportunity to create new profit streams, increase their resilience to volatile input costs, and support their efforts to become completely sustainable and socially responsible. The market for ""green textiles"" is in an expanding development, reflecting the big change in the consumer behaviour, worldwide, representing a huge opportunity of growth for the Textiles sector in Europe. Global waste and environmental impacts that textiles and apparel production create, can be reduced through the design and manufacturing of products that follow circular economy guidelines or the creation of products with a low carbon impact. That said, a number of barriers will need to be overcome in order for the circular economy in the Textiles sector to become a reality. Skilled and well qualified workers can play a critical role in addressing these barriers and creating opportunities to guide the shift to circularity. Indeed, the Textiles' Sector requires a more qualified workforce to deal with new technologies, stimulate innovation, ensure quality management and develop international strategies and marketing. Therefore, the availability of adequately skilled workers has become one of the major issues for the Textiles industry as the majority of the companies still faced the shortage of trained and qualified personnel in green and circular economy techniques in both design and manufacturing. This segment of textiles is constituted by SMEs without qualified resources in the matter of sustainability, for whom it's important to develop competences and skills in this field. EU Textile industries urgently need a flexible workforce that can respond to the development and the globalized market and the need for sustainable design and manufacturing in order to respond to the global demand for sustainable creative products. Although there is no standardized approach to engage circular economy practices in textiles sector, there are many creative solutions being explored. In this frame the main objective of the project ECO-TEX is to design, develop and piloting a new job qualification profile and correspondent training curricula on the subject of ""How to implement circular economy techniques in Textiles Industry"" able to cope with the visible shortage of vocational skills, potentiating the best use of the outcomes in the field of design patterns, use of recycle materials, machinery, processes, developed in the frame of other EU and non EU funded Research & Development Projects with sustainable purposes, improving competitiveness in Textiles, based on the development of skills and competences of the workforce. As many studies show ""education for a circular economy does not simply bail down to just more time spent on ""economy literacy"" and systems literacy - it's the mindset around why this is important and the vision that underpins this mindset"". The project's specific objectives are the following: - To develop a deep knowledge on occupation and training needs to implement sustainable manufacturing in Textiles Sector and possible already existing learning opportunities; - To develop a new occupation/qualification profile of the expert in sustainability, capable to deal with all the frameworks around sustainability; - To develop a training toolkit able to cope with the identified training needs, according to European Common Framework on Vocation, Educational Training (ECVET); - To develop innovative training units; - To development the e-learning courses; - To develop the digital training platform as an innovative open distance - learning ICT tool - To pilot the results; - To create awareness for the need of a sustainable manufacturing strategy; - To exploit results through European, national and local networks and platforms, enterprises, business organisations, guidance organisations, as well as other relevant media, inside and outside Europe. - To enlarge the networking between the partners."

<< Background >>Education and culture are essential to develop a more inclusive, cohesive and competitive Europe. Higher education plays an unique role. Demand for highly skilled, socially engaged people is both increasing and changing. In the period up to 2025, half of all jobs are projected to require high-level qualifications. High-level skills gaps already exist. Driven by digital technology, jobs are becoming more flexible and complex. People’s capacities to be entrepreneurial, manage complex information, think autonomously and creatively, use resources, including digital ones, smartly, communicate effectively and be resilient are more crucial than ever.Through its Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 programmes, the European Union supports international exchanges for students, academic staff and researchers, as well as structured cooperation between higher education institutions and public authorities in different countries.The project will support the achievement of the general objective of the Erasmus+ Programme to support, through lifelong learning, the educational, professional and personal development of people in education, training, in Europe. According to the EUA and EHEA supporting documents, one aspect of the drive to modernise higher education is focused on the use of digital technologies to stimulate innovation, personalisation and wider access to higher education. Digitization is in a perpetual growth which inevitably affects all sectors, but though we still struggle to understand its large extent and wideness impact, just few are fully prepared for it. There is a change in the nature of the race between man and machine, and the machine is running faster.The textile and clothing industry is a diverse and heterogeneous industry covering numerous activities. It is an important part of the European manufacturing industry playing a crucial role in the economy and social well-being in numerous regions of the EU-27. Design and creativity of quality fashion products, technical goods of high added-value, smart and technical textiles have been identified as major competitive advantages of the EU textile and clothing industry. EURATEX, the official voice of about 160,000 companies, of whose interests they defend at the EU institutions level, concluded at the end of the project “Digitalisation of the skills related to industrial production in the Textile & Clothing, Leather and Footwear sectors”, that there are large gaps between the current Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Training Offer, so consequently, they identified and characterized the profiles of 9 emerging digital occupations in TCLF (Souce: http://digitaltclf.eu/). In the last decade it was noticed that the fashion industry has shifted from a resource based industry to a knowledge based industry. Preference of consumers of fashion products has shifted from mass produced items to individual customised. The partners conducted a preliminary survey based on a short questionnaire prepared by the coordinator in order to identify the common educational needs in relation to fashion for the textile and clothing industry. The results of the analysis revealed that in partner countries, there are no universities that offer training in digital fashion co-design online, so the need for a new course in digital fashion is mandatory to achieve some competitive advantages in front of expandable/unstoppable growth of digitization. Also, the students' needs for digital skills in the area of fashion design were identified. Furthermore, in the context of the COVID 19 pandemics, fashion has to be virtual. The designers have to be creative and develop fast, and new models by analysing and interpreting the customers’ demands from virtual platforms, digital body features and fashion preferences.<< Objectives >>In this context, we applied for this project to enable education providers to deliver new digital training methods, permitting students and professionals to quickly master key technologies for designing and producing personalized products in a virtual environment and fully make use of the knowledge in the entire supply chain. This knowledge mainly lies on digitization which is both a common and an important topic to all the partner countries.This project aims to:- Bride the existing gap in digital skills in fashion by introducing new teaching and learning methodology of digital fashion co-design in a virtual environment by involving 50 teachers and 150 students until 2023-2024 academic year.- Promote the collaboration within the 6 partners in online international teaching and learning by addressing the digital skill gaps in the fashion and textile programs that partner countries have in common, targeting the textile and clothing industry.- Internationalise the digital skills in fashion and technology by translating the content into 6 languages of the partner countries, by involving 50 teachers and 150 students until 2023-2024 academic year.<< Implementation >>The following activities are foreseen in order to achieve the above mentioned objectives:- Develop the new methodology for a common framework on Collaborative Online International Learning in the field on Digital Fashion. - Develop three databases (library of knowledge) of textile materials, colors and garment styles as well as two fashion knowledge bases that will be built and integrated into the platform- Develop a supportive platform that will permit fashion students and fashion teachers to design together, in an interactive way, a garment for a specific customer.The special requirements of the customer for the garment will also be communicated via the platform and taken into account in the final design- Develop a new joint online module in digital fashion with new training and assessment methods of fashion co-design based on a 3D garment visualization platform. - Training the target group by implementing the new joint online module in digital fashion. - Testing and implementation of the technology based platform for fashion design- Dissemination of the project results and project coordination and management.<< Results >>The project results are the following:- R1. New methodology for a common framework on Collaborative Online International Learning in the field on Digital Fashion. it will consist in guidance lines and required digital skills for the fashion industry for each partner country and the status of the industrial application of virtual fashion technology for each partner country. - R2. Library of knowledge (the three databases) for virtual fashion design and technology, containing a collection of materials, colors and garment styles, fashion design elements and comfort.- R3.Training platform of fashion design by personalized 3D virtual garment fitting. R4. Curricula for Collaborative Online International Learning in the field on Digital Fashion, consisting in training programme of fashion design based on the developed training platform, including learning outcomes, teaching and assessment technologies, general theories, basic concepts, design examples and online design exercises.The textile, clothing and fashion industry is in a continuous movement, characterized by an increased mobility of production factors, rapid delocalization, fragmentation and higher specialization of the activities in the value chains of products and services. Designing affordable personalized garments using computer tools is a new professional skill that is strongly required in European labor market in the competitive situation of the textile/apparel industry. Different from mass production systems, personalized garments are designed and produced in small orders. This change will undoubtedly lead to the necessity of new skills in higher education in fashion to bridge the existing gap.Overall, these new modules in a virtual environment will increase the digital competences in the fashion industry that will have a positive impact on employability and on entrepreneurship related to fashion culture and industry in Europe.The dissemination of this new training system to the general public will lead to the increasing number of fashion design jobs, built on multiple blended fashion concepts, both national and international level. Students will also be trained with the concepts of mass customization and co-design and they will also gain international experience, which will prepare them to become more competitive for the European labour market. In this context, the learning opportunities will be tailored, so that they enhance their digital competences, intercultural relations and networking experiences.