CONTEXTWing in 2006 recognized Computational Thinking as a fundamental competency that all literate citizens should develop through compulsory education, to complement the three other core skills, that is, reading, writing and mathematics. Computational Thinking (CT) is a thought process (or a human thinking skill) that uses analytic and algorithmic approaches to formulate, analyse and solve problems. In recent years, Computational Thinking (CT) have also been promoted by most educational stakeholders as a skill that is as fundamental for all as numeracy and literacy and is considered a universal competence, which should be added to every child’s analytical ability as a vital ingredient of their school learning.PROJECT OBJECTIVESThe goal of the project CTApp is to spread the learning of Computational Thinking Skills. Specifically the project has three aims:a) A State of the Art on Serious Gaming & Computational Thinking.b) The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Mobile Serious Game in Computational Thinking (CTApp)c) Teacher Training Courses & Materials development on using the CTApp mobile game (e.g. handbooks & insturctive videos) TRAINING TEACHERSWe will train teachers through an LTT event in Poland with 15 teachers from 5 project countries (PL, IT, CY, UK + GR) into teaching Computational Thinking skills with the CTApp mobile serious game. Trained teachers from each country will serve as multipliers and will train teachers in their own countries through training sessions all partners will organize.SERIOUS GAME EVALUATIONOnce the software development is finished we will run a large scale trial in which we will involve at least 200 students and observe their learning success with our mobile game. We will then finilize our mobile game and share it on an EU-wide scale. Scientific publications will be published to renowned international scientific journals & conferences with the results of the evaluation.The OPEN SOURCE ACCESS to all project outputs will be guaranteed for at least 5 years after project end.A TRANSFERABILITY of the results is guaranteed since all information gathered and developed can be transferred to primary and secondary schools as well as to Universities.PARTNER ORGANISATIONSThis initiative gathers 5 partners from Poland, Cyprus, Italy, UK and Greece.WYZSZA SZKOLA EKONOMII I INNOWACJI W LUBLINIE (Poland): A non-state higher education institution offering full university degree programmes in a range of academic disciplines with over 6 000 students.CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET(Cyprus): A leading research and development center in the Mediterranean region with global expertise in project design and implementation, capacity building, and e-learning being independently affiliated with universities and institutions from around the world, such as the Yale University, the University of Nicosia and the International Council of Educational Media. INNOVA SRL (Italy): A private technology and business accelerator offering incubation and acceleration services to startups and innovative companies operating in cutting edge disruptive technologies in ICT (AI, IoT, machine learning, Industry 4.0 technologies).ASPIRE-IGEN GROUP LIMITED (UK): A vocational and training organisation with 22 years great experience of supporting young people into employmentINNOVATION FRONTIERS (Greece): An educational technology & research company expert in the design, implementation and evaluation of educational software.

ContextEuropean labour markets and societies face various challenges and transitions such as the refugee crises, demographic change and future jobs, having a big priority e.g. in the EU Horizon 2020. Guidance practitioners play a key role in adressing these challenges successfully. Their tasks comprise individual career guidance and client counselling for unemployed as well as employed persons who want or need to reorient themselves, profiling, skills assessment and training delivery. Furthermore, they match people to job profiles, and offer services to employers, as well as care catering for those furthest removed from the labour market. To perform this range of tasks competently, a high-level qualification and transnational training as well as state-of-the-art information on effective concepts and approaches and networking of practitioners on a Europe-wide level is essential.ObjectivesOn this basis, the Academia+ project supported the exchange of experiences and transnational trainings of counsellors in Europe. To do so, the project partners developed, piloted and evaluated 3 research-based online Counsellors Study and Training Exchange Programs (C-STEPs) for qualified career counsellors that reflect a transnational, European perspective and meet the needs of the target groups.Each of the C-STEPs focused on a current key challenge, and combined theory, research and practice of guidance: Counselling migrants and refugees, Future jobs, Demographic change.Through the trainings and a learning environment, the project supported provision of better services and guidance on competencies and qualifications and helped to raise the profile of international cooperation within guidance.Undertaken activitiesThe topics of the C-STEPs and their units built on literature and resources reviews from all partner countries, a transnational synthesis with recommendations, online questionnaires answered by counsellors, practitioners and experts regarding the topic from several European countries as well as reviews of the unit structure plans. All C-STEPs were transnational online trainings integrating the knowledge and experiences from a variety of experts and speakers, coming from different European countries with different personal and professional background, providing specific knowledge about several approaches, perspectives and innovation on career guidance.The project developed an innovative and detailed media centre and learning environment based on course units containing all presentations, videorecordings, group work tasks and results, discussion protocols and further material. The project also created a website in four different languages for course participants and trainers including different outputs from the C-STEPs.To promote and disseminate the project and to support international networking the projectteam connected to several networks with the focus on counselling/guidance, published information in frequent newsletters, on websites and in journals, hosted a LinkedIn-group for discussion throughout the project timeline and organized a multiplier event at the end of the project timeline.ParticipantsIn total 257 persons from 22 different European countries (Belgium, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain) and 13 Non-European countries (Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijani, Australia, Egypt, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Russia, Uganda, UK) participated in the trainings. The project partners acquired 47 participants for C-STEP1 (EU-countries: 11; Non-EU: 3), 89 participants for C-STEP2 (EU-countries: 16, Non-EU: 10) and 70 participants for C-STEP3 (EU-countries: 12, Non-EU: 5).The participants had a wide variety of professional backgrounds e.g. professional career guides from local, governmental and non-govermental organisations, local private businesses or freelancers, psychological institutions, universities and higher education departments, refugee organisations and small NGO’s, but also students and some unemployed persons with a professional background rooted in Career Guidance.Results/benefitsThe C-STEPs reached 257 participants and involved over 40 speakers. The learning environment and media centre functions as a stand-alone resource for non-participants and trainers who like to multiply the event. Email, newsletter, website information and articles in journals addressed more than 10.000 persons.Professionals directly participating in the training or recreating it from the learning environment benefit from the training, so they can better advise and integrate the workforce, unemployed and jobseekers. This enables their counselling organisations to focus strongly on the problems of the respective countries.This has a positive effect on the national labor market, which strengthens the EU.

The project aims to promote quality, innovation and recognition of youth work through the platform and outputs, as this is an overarching theme and strategic objective of the 2019-2027 Youth Goals. Increasing and maintaining the quality of Youth work across Europe is key to achieving the Youth Goals, and this can be done by ensuring youth organisations and youth workers are able to learn from each other by recognising and sharing good practices of other European youth projects, increasing the quality of youth work, the skills, competences and understanding of youth workers and in turn, facilitating high quality opportunities and support for the youths engaged with them.To address these priorities, the project will strengthen and support the mandate of the EU Youth Coordinator (to ensure that youth issues are mainstreamed and well connected with all policy areas of the EU that affect young people) through the use of an innovative tool (within the YI+ digital platform), which will increase transnational collaboration between youth organisations, promote “sister project” collaboration, engagement and sharing of lessons learned. The project will support and facilitate the dissemination of project results, outcomes and the impacts of European funded youth projects by connecting the youth work sector, to achieve the objective of mainstreaming youth lead initiatives.We have selected the above priorities, to ensure the project is aligned with several of the 2019-2027 Youth Goals, which also shaped the project's objectives.1. Enhance recognition of Youth Work through European funded programmes across Europe at national and EU level2. Improve sectoral cooperation, including through the EU Youth Coordinator's mandate, to give youth a voice in shaping EU policies3. Support the capacity building of youth workers and youth work practices4. Reinforce links between policy, research and practice and promote better knowledge about the situation of young people and youth policiesProject Outputs:IO1: YouthImpact+ Digital Tool and PlatformIO2: YouthImpact+ Training e-CourseIO3: YouthImpact+ Community of PracticeIO4: YouthImpact+ Tool Assessment and Policy Recommendations

"Work Based Learning (""WBL"") enables vulnerable people to overcome a series of failures and exclusions by acquiring various key skills thanks the development of learning situations based on concrete action. The model stays acclaimed at European level because of its ability to enhance the employability of trainees and thus promote their reintegration both socially and professionally.Highly specialised technical skills are therefore necessary for the trainers, but are not sufficient, since the process of training requires simultaneous hard pedagogical skills. The objective of the 6 project partners was therefore to identify the needs in this area in order to develop new tools to support the training programmes. The aim was also to add an additional transversal dimension of promoting diversity in employment and to conclude this experience with a series of recommendations advocating the cause of ""WBL"", including an institutional dimension.Then the twenty and more trainers involved in the front line of the project have proceeded concretely on this way:> identify and exchange some training materials, > test them with trainees selected by each partner, > develop new materials based on the experiments carried out and informed opinions gathered during the organisation of workshops in the combined presence of more than one hundred WBL experts from 5 different countries, > develop common tools at the European level at the end of a week of training conducted in action, according to the major principle of ""WBL"",> develop some tools adapted to different more specific contexts, then potentially transposable into new ones on the basis of sheets evaluating and commenting on the process at each of its stages.The main themes revolved around :> evaluation of the trainees, > preparation for work placements,> fight against discrimination. On this basis, the partners propose a series of recommendations and working ideas intended for people working in the field and for people responsible for training administration and policy, emphasising the advantages and the innovative side of the teaching materials (grouped together in a toolbox) in order to continue the reflection on the different ways of organising the ""WBL"" and its challenges with a view to a wider dissemination of the model.All the results stay freely available on the project website (http://www.nt4s.eu/) and via the partners' portal."

ACCenT aims at supporting career counselors, guidance practitioners and coaches working with “hard-to-reach groups” by an innovative online learning environment offering support, training and a peer-community. Europe struggles for adequate approaches for preparing and integrating hard-to-reach groups in the European labor market. One the one side European societies are struggling with the lack of qualified workforce on the other side the long-term unemployed are not (re)-entering the labor market. Additionally over the past years millions of migrants came to Europe that could enter the European society and fill-in the labor market gaps if adequate support via counseling, guidance and coaching is provided. Therefore counseling and coaching practitioners need being supported for developing new skills and competences in order to cope with the multiple challenges European societies are facing. The challenge is a European one. Since Europe’s labor market is an open and mobile one, solutions need to be developed from a European perspective. And they need to integrate innovative concepts in terms of training provision (e.g. online) and counseling approaches (e.g. using e-tools). Counseling practitioners working with hard-to-reach groups face three main challenges: 1. increasing number of migrants entering Europe. Counselors and coaches are keystones in the process of integration in order to provide opportunities to migrants to prove their competences develop new ones and increase their chances into the labor market. 2. Long-term unemployed persons that due to multiple biographies can only be supported at a very individual level and 3. high number of young people facing difficulties moving into a first job. For a better help on both sides – counselors and beneficiaries- it is crucial to provide these career counselors and coaches with motivating further training, information, knowledge, peer-community and support. And that is the motivation of the project ACCenT! It seems crucial that European countries collaborate, accomplish shared learning progresses and gain competences to cope with this very topical subject. Countries can learn from the approaches and solutions of others in order to reach a common higher standard in counseling for challenging target groups. The main output of the project will be an online training seminar, presented in a user-friendly online learning environment, for counseling practitioners. The online training respects the need of the target group for flexible training in term of time and customizable in term of contents, comprising four main topical areas: 1. Information: The main aim of this area of the online seminar is to enable the career practitioners to accelerate and facilitate the integration process in to the labor market and thus: support long-term unemployed to re-enter, help young people to get first access and to prepare the newcomers for a successful long-term integration. 2. Social-communicative and intercultural competence: This part of the seminar supports counseling practitioners in getting aware of communication processes and cultural barriers and helps them to handle difficult cultural situations. Which are the most common cultural challenges a specific group has to face? How can the work of counseling practitioners be influenced by cultural barriers? How communication skills and styles influence motivation? How to detect cultural and social barriers? And how to overcome those barriers? Social-communicative and intercultural competence is a key factor for working successfully with hard to reach people. This area of the online course aims at providing counseling practitioners with the necessary sensitivity and awareness for their work with people from different backgrounds. They get enabled to act as mediators between different cultures and social groups, understanding the background, thinking and acting patterns of a person. 3. Coaching skills & competences: “hard-to-reach groups” of becoming & staying unemployed build a very heterogeneous group. Support is very demanding and challenging and must be provided very individually and often only be fulfilled by individual coaching. Therefore the training will be focusing on the development of coaching competences, especially technical-methodical competences: targeted restatements, identifying, listening, questioning, clarifying to help individuals shift their perspectives and thereby discover different approaches to achieve their goals 4. Using e-Tools in counseling and communication processes: The training approach will use a set of e-Tools (online meeting tools, video-chat, video, social media, scheduling, self-reflection and self-assessment, online cooperation tools, etc. for the communication and counseling process. The tools are both learning tools and learning content. All experiences and outcomes of the project will be compiled in an interactive eBook that will accessible and free to use (cc-license).