Include skillman in a new project partnership

Skillman.eu is a worldwide Transnational platform of Centres of Vocational Excellence for the Advanced Manufacturing Sector based in the EU, addressed to introduce skills, competencies, and innovative curricula for the advanced manufacturing sector within the VET pathways. It has a large geographical coverage and connects industry and training providers with civil society giving support services that drive growth and effectiveness in the sector.

As an international network of stakeholders in TVET, we strongly foster cooperation among our members and we encourage the creation of strategic alliances. That is why we always open doors for new partnerships in EU project opportunities who want to include Skillman.eu as official partner.

Why you should include Skillman.eu in your partnership

Following are the main benefits you will get from partnering with us:

1. FOUR CHANNELS FOR CONCRETE INTERACTIONS: with the Skillman.eu High Skills ecosystem, your project owns four live channels accessible to companies, policymakers, VET providers, and individuals.

2. OBSERVATORY: Skillman.eu is provided with an Observatory in Advanced Manufacturing, namely access to the direct source of information about the forefront solutions for the innovation and improvement of the Skills Intelligence in the sector. The Observatory implements a long-term strategy that:

• builds resistant, live, bi-directional interactions with a wide range of different stakeholders;
• creates a persistent system of cross-relationships for the long duration of the Skillman.eu model;
• has a strong impact on the AM sector and on the VET system addressing the large public, policymakers, universities, and technical colleges.

3. ACCESS TO EXPERTS – Skillman.eu is also a roaster of experts in its field of intervention. The experts cover all the expertise necessary to deploy effective skills foresight exercises, curricula development, instructional design, quality evaluations etc.

4. LABOUR MARKET AND SKILLS INTELLIGENCE SET – Skillman.eu provides your project with the opportunity to implement the Skillman.eu skills anticipation lifecycle model based on the ILO skills anticipation system and inspired by the five methodological guides to anticipating and matching skills and jobs, published in 2016 by Cedefop in collaboration with the ILO and ETF.
In relation to your project need of identification of the skills for the future, the Skillman.eu ‘Skills foresight exercises’, allows your project’s manager:

• to know how to engage the necessary stakeholders involved in the identification and definition of the skills for the future
• to solve the problems generated by the need of balancing among the characteristics of the stakeholders
• to solve the problems related to the distance and the time constraints for the meetings of the stakeholders
• to access and implement a digital tool designed to manage efficiently all the ‘Skills foresight exercises’ meetings

5. CURRICULUM TEMPLATE, MOU, and GUIDELINES – Your project partners in charge of curriculum development can enjoy our set of guidelines that connect the project results with the ESCO DB and access to a curriculum template that allows them to easily produce deliverables fully compliant with the ECVET and EQF STANDARDS.

As far as the ECEVT standards are concerned, the Skillman.eu solution provides your project also with an MOU template and guidelines to correctly define Unit of Learning and Learning Outcomes.

6. EFFECTIVE DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES –Dissemination is a fundamental element of every project proposal. Therefore, throughout the years we have developed a solid and sustainable dissemination infrastructure that relies on stakeholders’ engagement at an international level, through digital communication activities, online/onsite events design and implementation, promotional content creation, execution and monitoring, social media management.

Skillman.eu ensures dissemination activities thanks to its network of around 630 international organizations in 93 countries, including TVET providers, schools, policymakers, companies, experts etc. Our dissemination campaigns have  been conducted in a professional manner and have reached outstanding results:

In the past year alone, we implemented 61 online events including webinars, workshops, focus groups, training, and an international conference. The total number of participants was more than 4500, with dynamic sessions of TVET related discussions and peer learning activities that resulted in the formulation of policy recommendations and position papers.

Our biggest event, the Skillman International Forum- redefining the future of learning- hosted around 470 delegates from all over the world last year, in 10 time zones and engaging EU institutions, TVET practitioners, education providers, industries, international organizations. 24 sessions of events were organized during the conference, involving 120 international speakers, followed by interactive networking activities, such as polls, questionnaires, word clouds, and a TVET cafè. The event was live-streamed and endorsed by 500+ professionals worldwide.

In addition, we have created focus groups of TVET experts called Peer Learning Clubs that involve around 280 people and that regularly get together to engage in discussions with a participatory approach. 4 position papers were finalized from these interactions.

We regularly carry out a solid and effective multi-channel digital dissemination strategy, through our website, newsletters, social media campaigns, mass mailings, and our Youtube channel. Specifically, this year we have published 325 posts on our social media accounts; 41 mass mailings were sent out to 379.639 targeted recipients, and had 214.074 views in total; 150+ informative articles were posted on the official website, where we had 5000+ visitors; 4 newsletters were sent out;  167 videos were published on the Skillman.eu Youtube account.

7. POLICY INFLUENCING CAMPAIGNS- The Skillman.eu members are engaged in several high-level groups at local, regional, national, and international levels assuring a deep and effective action of policy influencing.

One of the main initiatives of this kind that we have been implementing is the Skillman Ethical Campaign. It was inspired by the belief that ethical principles for education should not only translate into strategic action plans and systemic changes but also make possible the recognition and integration of ethical competencies in new and revised curricula, in order to achieve an inclusive and peaceful society capable of achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a few words, TVET should be for all, regardless of regional location, gender, ethnicity, age, social or economic status. We have so far 258 subscribers for the campaign.

Another initiative that we undersigned is the EU Pact for Skills, promoting its objectives of a culture of lifelong learning for all, building strong skills partnerships, monitoring skills supply/demand and anticipating skills needs, working against discrimination, and for gender equality and equal opportunities.

In addition, we are engaged in high-level consultations with the European Commission, Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises EASME, Unit A1 – COSME, within two specific workgroups created to design:

• the EU 2030 High-Tech Skills Vision for Achieving Smart Industrial Specialisation and Digital Transformation and
• the EU Curriculum Development Guidelines for KETs and AMT

The Skillman.eu is a member of the European Sector Skills Council in Automotive Industry, is affiliated with EPIC, the industry association that promotes the sustainable development of organizations working in the field of photonics in Europe, with Cumulus, the global association to serve art and design education and research and act in partnership with IVETA, EAPRIL, and many other umbrellas and international organizations. The Skillman Editorial Board includes members from various private and public bodies and members belonging to supranational bodies, like the European Training Foundation, the Cedefop, the UNESCO, the ILO UN, the ADB etc.

8. SUSTAINABILITY AND EXPLOITATION WITH learn.Skillman.eu – Skillman.eu owns a unique approach and ambient for your project effective exploitation. With the Skillman.eu solution, the project managers implement an effective and successful go-to-market strategy based on open access to the SKILLMAN.EU MARKETPLACE: learn.skillman.eu.

The Skillman.eu Marketplace is an open space where the beneficiaries of your project freely access to download your deliverables and where they have the opportunity to ask for your support services.

The Skillman.eu Marketplace is based on open-source principles: the project deliverables are the ‘codes’ distributed with no charge through the platform. The project partners can offer their services to support the beneficiaries in the implementation of their materials. The Skillman.eu Marketplace is therefore a concrete market arena that hosts service solutions and curricula, fully powered by the Skillman project partners and addressed to all their potential targets.

This model assures long durability to your deliverables and wide distribution to a very large and relevant audience of specialized customers.

9. ETHICS – The Skillman community aims to influence the debate about the skills addressing its approach to Ethic issues. In this regard, you can give a sense to the life of your project embedding the same Skillman.eu principles inspired by the UNESCO 17 goals on sustainable development, in your project strategies and finding other partners, outside the composition of your own project partnership, who share the same attitudes and wishes and who can reinforce your own actions, to implement your curricula development fulfilling a vision extended outside the normal schemes of the industry and VET debates.

10. EXTERNAL EVALUATION OPPORTUNITIES – Skillman.eu provide also services of external evaluation with the key benefit, for your partnership, to identify areas of weakness and strength within the project activities and allowing to take improvement and corrective actions in time.

Through its extensive network of members and experts, Skillman.eu owns a pool of expertise that embeds the transfer of general know-how and peer learning through the evaluation exercise. The members of the network are involved in several activities and collaborate all to source a common base of information, know-how, and standard procedures that allow your project to access to bench-marking data,  specifically set to evaluate the curricula development exercises.