On July 5th and 6th there has been the official kick-off of the project ENCORE. ENCORE stands for ENriching Circular use of OeR for Education. The partnership composed of 13 partners, belonging to 7 different countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden and Spain) will pursue the following objective: contribute to the teaching and recognition of the skills most relevant to the new macro-trends of digitalization, climate change and post-COVID economic recovery challenges.

In particular, ENCORE aims to face the following challenges: (1) help students and workers acquire the skills to face economical, ecological, and technological challenges; (2) address the skills mismatch between the demand of companies and the supply of educational institutions; (3) support educators to be aligned with the ever-evolving landscape of relevant skills; (4) support educators to face the evolution of the educational context with proper pedagogical approaches; (5) mitigate the reluctance to change of the education sector; (6) facilitate students in the certification of the skills they acquire through non-standard pedagogical approaches. 

Partnership

The ENCORE team is composed of 5 universities: UNIPI- University of Pisa, USAL- University of Salamanca, CHA- Chalmers University, UNIPD- University of Padova, HOU- Hellenic Open University; 3 VET providers: KFRU- Knowledge Foundation at Reutlingen University, LSU- Institut Polytechnique UniLaSalle and ATF- Adecco Training France; 3 Labour market actors: VAL- ValueDo, BMU- Beam Me Up, and REC- Reconnaitre- Open Recognition Alliance; 1 research institute: FBK- Fondazione Bruno Kessler and 1 NGO: EADTU- European Association of Distance Teaching Universities. 

Work Plan

The work that will be carried out can be described in phases. The universities involved will have a great responsibility in Phase I of the project– data-driven / technology, with UNIPI in charge of defining the GDE (Green, Digital and Entrepreneurial) skills (WP2) and USAL responsible for the collaboration with the technological providers (mainly BMU, FBK) (WP4). In Phase II (expert-driven / pedagogy) UNIPA will take care of defining the ENCORE approach (WP5). All the educational providers, led by CHA, will be equally involved in the internal and external testing (WP6). The picture below better summarise it: