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Capacity building for HE on digital skills and remote teamworking:

Taking stock VIBES project’s preliminary results and progresses

Back at the end of 2006, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe published a pivotal policy recommendation on key lifelong learning (LLL) competences to be nurtured and tackled by Member States’ national strategies and policies on education and training. Among these 8 competences, Digital Competences are formally foreseen as a core are of interest for all Members States to facilitate and support the socio-economic inclusion of adult citizens and the transition of fresh graduates and young people into the labour market. As per policy framework, there is an evident interest in exploitation, and leveraging on, digital technologies to strengthen students’ transversal capabilities, including remote teamworking:

The focus on proficiency with digital technologies is “pushed” even further by the 2018’s update of the very same policy framework, which sets also the fundamental policy background of the VIBES project. The relevancy of this project is even greater now that EU and worldwide societies and economies are dealing with COVID-19 devastating aftermaths.

Recent figures show that about one third of all employed persons in advanced countries work remotely in virtual teams. As recent Covid-19 pandemic exposed, in times of crisis virtual teams become only means of functioning even for activities of intrinsically oriented organizations. Being able to work in virtual teams is one of basic skills essential for employability of prospective graduates. However, while different aspects of digital transformation are covered in educational programmes of higher education institutions (HEIs) and even some high schools, the clear focus on building of skills for work in virtual teams is lacking. The main aim of the project VIBES (Virtual Business Skills Empowerment) is to enhance students virtual teamworking competences to cope better in today`s global working environment and create and develop entrepreneurial opportunities for the European single market.

As of today, the VIBES finalised two major deliverables including:

  1. Consolidated virtual skills supply assessment, performed by each partner with reference to their national context – Intellectual Output 1
  2. Comprehensive private sector’s needs-assessment for virtual team skills analysis – Intellectual Output 2

What followed after was an initial brainstorming to define the conceptual structure of the training content that will be developed later throughout Intellectual Output 3. Based on initial results, partners foreseen the following pedagogical framework:

To know more about the project, please consult: www.virtualskills.eu

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