The project BADGES has aimed at valorising the huge lifelong learning potential of European cultural and natural heritage sites.Nowadays the concept of lifelong learning is strictly connected with the validation of non-formal and informal learning and the relevance of recognizing the entire scope of knowledge and experience held by an individual, irrespective of the learning context is widely remarked. Despite the growing interest and the European institutions’ strong commitment to promote validation systems in different learning situations, there are contexts, such as the heritage and cultural sites, where concrete experiences of competence validation are rather few and scattered.BADGES developed a fully fledged methodology to support both cultural and natural heritage sites in offering learning enhancement experiences to their visitors, and the opportunity to have the new knowledge and skills acquired during the learning experience recognised and validated.BADGES developed:•a methodological frame for competence based informal and non-formal learning in cultural and natural heritage•a CPD Programme for cultural and natural heritage staff capacity for developing and organizing validated informal and non-formal learning at their sites•a European system for issuing electronic badges as a certificate for competence development•and eventually created a community of interest around this topic and support the creation of a ‘badging culture’ as part of an approach to personal and professional development and to employabilityThe main target groups of the project are:-Professionals working in museums, other heritage or cultural organisations, natural parks, archaeological sites that will be able to issue the badges linked to their mission.-People visiting cultural sites, nature parks, historical sites, etc. that can be invited to make the most of the experience by getting a badge.The project started with a research on:•Good practices in European cultural and natural heritage sites•Heritage professionals’ needs in terms of educational methodologies•Successful examples of electronic badges usageThe results of this study laid the basis for setting up the core components of the BADGES methodology.An inventory of relevant competences was identified, relating to transferable social, personal and organisational competences (SPOC) that may be acquired in the specific learning contexts and also field competences connected to the cultural and natural heritage topics. The description of the competences followed the LEVEL5 validation system, a well proven methodology to validate social and personal competences acquired in informal and non-formal learning. For each competence, a framework will be set up along the dimensions of knowledge, skills and attitudes. A validation system was set up considering the stages: Identification, Assessment and Documentation of competences and their Certification with Badges.The Badges issuing system is based on an open learning space (the LEVEL5 learning suite) consisting of different OER components Mahara (e-Portfolio and Moodle as open source Learning Management System. The system is connected to the LEVEL5 software which issues certificates as qualified badges since it is build on a specific taxonomy.The BADGES approach creates a transferrable learning system that connects the competence framework with individual learning pathways in heritage contexts.All the components of the BADGES methodology were transferred to a group of recruited professionals working in the field of cultural and natural heritage that will be invited to attend a European short-term course. After the course the participants designed and offered a competence based learning pathway to the visitors of their heritage sites. Though this activity was not funded anymore the application of the BADGES methodology in real-life cases gave important feedbacks to fine tune the products developed.The project main outputs were wrapped up in the BADGES Toolkit which is freely available. In order to maximise the impact of the project the partners put in place a structured valorisation strategy which is based on the coupling with the REVEAL network to ensure the continuity of the activities, the exploitation of the BADGES products. The valorization strategy includes the mission of the BADGES community, descriptions of the products and services and the network strategy and organisation. This way the qualified badging system and the whole CPD approach shall be valorised for cultural and natural heritage institutions throughout Europe in promoting the learning experience among their visitors.During numerous national and European events the project was highly recognized by heritage professionals and was widely disseminated to the European Community of professionals working at cultural heritage sites and those stakeholders who consider cultural heritage education as an enrichment of their adult education.

An increasing number of European countries is implementing online civic and commercial services to enable easier, cheaper and faster administrative operations for citizens. The future trend is obvious: the demand of such services will increase significantly and so will the implementation by governments and businesses. Even though e-Government and e-Commerce offer a myriad of benefits, taking advantage of such services requires a certain amount of digital skills and know-how, which disadvantaged groups of people often lack.The objective of My e-Start is to equip disadvantaged groups of people with skills necessary for using the most common e-Government and e-Commerce services in their countries and ensuring a positive (first) e-experience as well as a sense of digital achievement. My e-Start is focusing on a group, which is particularly vulnerable to digital exclusion, namely the elderly, those with low levels of education and training and those with a migration background.The main output of the project is the development of an extremely simple online course and a user-friendly e-platform adapted to specific needs of the target group. Both the online course and the e-platform will put a particular emphasis on the use of ‘easy language’, simple instructions, clear visual elements and well-structured content to avoid confusion and overstress of the target group. The aim of the online course is to provide disadvantaged groups of people with very basic knowledge about common e-Government and e-Commerce services in their countries (e.g. e-banking, tax declaration, e-card) and how to use them. To ensure an implementation of the course in different contexts and environments, My e-Start will design and develop a comprehensive manual for adult educators and/or training providers working with the target group and intending to implement the online course into their curricula. The explicit aim of My e-Start is to contribute to digital inclusion of disadvantaged groups of people and address the increasing digital gap by designing, developing and promoting sustainable and tailored products, which are widely applicable and highly impactful. The project consortium consists of experts, who have vast experience in areas including adult education, digital competence and the inclusion of disadvantaged groups. During the whole duration of the project and beyond, partners will ensure an extensive dissemination and valorisation of the project through established national and international networks of key stakeholders to guarantee high visibility and a widespread effect.

The year of application 2015 was the International Year of the Soils (IYS). On this occasion the project EELLSS was set up to offer a “European Experiential Learning Lab on Soil Science”. The aim was to:o interlink natural sciences with “soils” as a practical, concrete and “living” lab and innovative learning fieldo combine scientific knowledge and skills with state of the art learning technologyo create an entrance to soil science in European schools both for teachers and for the studentso introduce a competence oriented learning approach in which students from different regions in Europe work and learn togethero establish a growing open and cooperative learning and development space for teachers and learnersThe EELLSS proeject was implemented by partners with complementary expertise from DE, NL, TR, LV, SE, IT, ES; five schools, a teachers’ training University, formal and informal training institutes and networks and a school maintaining authority.Soil is one of the most important spheres (pedosphere) of our planet, combing biosphere with atmosphere and the rocky underground. Most of the life processes take part in the soil. As such soil is a living lab for all kinds of biological, chemical, physical processes. Hence it is more than any other substrate a rich source for natural science learning. In addition, it offers a huge creative potential, which makes it ideal for interdisciplinary learning projects.Soils are highly influenced by human action (land-use, pollution, sealing of soils etc.) and thus have a high potential to serve as locations for a problem and needs driven education which fits to our complex world where interdisciplinary competences are of utmost importance.All these aspects and properties make soils an ideal field of learning and study.In an educational situation when Europe is confronted with phenomena like:• early school leaving,• decreasing attractiveness of learning in schools and natural sciences and• low achievement of basic skillssoils (and the connected soil sciences) offer rich and contextualised learning environments for basic and science education, for practical and problem based learning and for interdisciplinary learning projects. As they also differ from region to region and influence the local and regional environment and climate, soils are an interesting field for practical comparative research for students (and teachers) in joint European learning projects. For this reason, the soil is the “biggest and most practical learning laboratory” for a large range of subjects.The consortium regards the International Year of the Soils (IYS) as a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive, versatile and extendable approach to integrate soils as a substantial learning field in European school education.EELLSS firstly connected relevant contents from natural sciences to aspects of soil science. For this purpose a competence matrix for soil science in schools was established in order to facilitate competence oriented teaching and learning on soils, both in discrete sciences and in interdisciplinary learning projects.Didactics and specific instructional design approaches for different settings (e.g. age groups, subjects, curricular/extracurricular) related to soils as learning filed were developed, mostly based on experiential learning principles.A rich open learning environment that connects e-portfolio, learning management system and planning and validation software was established as learning and collaboration environment for European schools, teachers and students.A specific teachers’ training was developed and delivered in blended learning methodology and delivered as 5-day course for 29 teachers including an extended transfer phase as practical project at the workplace (in the school).These pilot projects involved approximately 200 students at the partner schools and in other interested institutions. They were either subject related or interdisciplinary projects and consisted of soil related learning units, lessons, practical activities, field works, and mutual exchange between EELLSS schools. Some of the participating schools also established joint transnational learning projects on regional soils in which students exchanged with their transnational peers about specific aspects and scientific properties of the soils in their regions.The learning projects and outcomes were thoroughly evaluated internally and also externally.EELLSS has been embedded in the nework of climate friendly and environmental schools (GREEEN) that will maintain the project results, tools, teaching and learning opportunities also after the project lifetime.EELLSS has disseminated its approaches and findings to the European School Community and beyond. It offers a lasting knowledge pool and a repository for materials and tools for schools working with soils as learning field.

The project aims at promoting and validating social, personal and organisational key competences such as entrepreneurship, civic competences and learning to learn with the help of an innovative, self-directed learning approach at the interface of higher education and business.Social and personal key competences are hardly to be acquired in lectures, frontal teaching and self-learning.The ideal learning contexts to develop these competences are informal/non-formal learning contexts such as learning in mobility and in traineeships.However, up to now only singular attempts have been made to assess these competences, to give evidence of their development in the learning activity, to connect them to existing certification systems and to offer a European wide validation approach.PROMOTE has developed and piloted an approach to tackle this issue based on a long term partnership of academia, business and educational partners from all over Europe.The traineeships involving learners from 15 institutions, including universities, businesses and public authorities has been piloted in different EU member-states. The innovative momentum of these internships was that they work along a project management structure; each trainee had to plan, develop and assess his or her project, which lead towards at least one of the key competences described above.In the framework of the project well-proven evaluation approaches (6 LEVEL5 projects, EDUCCKATE) were applied to assess and evidence informal learning in different mobility learning environments and traineeships.

Social sustainability in present multicultural Europe is a challenge. Mutual understanding, communication & cooperation between (ethnic) groups, participation, equal opportunities and feelings of unsafety are issues in many societies, stirred up in recent years by migration & refugee peaks and terrorism. Inclusion, sense of belonging, identity building are the result of meaning and value making processes of individuals and groups trying to relate to their environment. Heritage and heritage identification processes play a crucial role in this. They can be used to revive nationalistic narratives and to sustain barriers by focussing on its traditional, ethnic, territorial elements or it can be used to revive inclusive narratives and to build bridges by focussing on participation & contemporary meaning making processes of all people feeling related to the heritage. The latter is the core of this project. The 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage established a societal cross-sectorial cooperation to increase the awareness of the crucial role of culture and heritage for social inclusion and European cohesion. Heritage (cultural, natural, tangible and intangible) is put forward as a vehicle for addressing social challenges and as an ideal ground for sustainability-development. In this view cultural heritage is not seen as a ‘valuable relict of the past’, it does not only relate to our cultural and historic roots but it also relates to present habits and to our value frameworks, as a group of resources which people identify as an expression of their constantly evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions. The FARO Convention Action Plan (Council of Europe, 2018) emphasises the new roles of cultural heritage in society: to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European social & cultural space, to integrate heritage into social, environmental & economic processes, to develop heritage as a rich & meaningful interdisciplinary learning environment. All these roles crystallise in one of the key concepts of the Convention: heritage communities. “Heritage communities are self-organised, self-managed groups of individuals who are interested in progressive social transformation of relationships between peoples, places and stories, with an inclusive approach based on an enhanced definition of heritage.” They are the ideal context to develop key competences such as cultural awareness, civic competences and learning to learn.Therefore the People, Places and Stories (PPS) project focuses on the capacity building of heritage communities as a socio-cultural space for creativity, learning, participation & inclusion. The project wants to raise the civil society capacity to exploit heritage as an environment and resource for sustainable development. PPS will analyse what competences are needed for heritage community capacity building and develop a training curriculum for the stakeholders involved in order to improve the number, quality and impact of these communities on society as foreseen in FARO. The project targets heritage professionals, community mediators, participatory planning facilitators, adult educators, policy makers, citizens and communities. Outputs will be: a good practice overview, a set of competences to implement FARO for stakeholders at grassroot level, Continuous Professional Development (CPD) modules in a blended learning modality for the target groups, competence validation at the level of the facilitators, a CPD blended learning course, a heritage community-based (competence oriented) learning model, an open badges system to validate the learning of the participants (community members).Thanks to PPS heritage professionals/facilitators and policy makers will be better prepared to encourage and support an integrated & participatory approach to cultural heritage, adult educators will gain deep understanding of the competence-oriented training and validation potential in heritage settings and will be better prepared to exploit cultural heritage assets as a rich learning environment for competence oriented place-based learning, citizens and participants will gain personal and social competences for a successful engagement in socio-cultural processes.The heritage sector is still stuck in CPD approaches aiming at safeguarding, protecting and presenting heritage. For the first time CPD will focus on the implementation of the new concepts and roles of heritage as in Faro. Its key concept: ‘heritage communities’, encompasses a rich bundle of learning opportunities and a great potential to address socio-cultural issues. Peoples, Places and Stories combines this with an innovative CPD approach focusing on competence-oriented training offers, blended learning and validation of non-formal learning, using a state of the art approach & online suite of instruments.