DCDS presented to National Coordinators for Adult Learning at the European Commission
On 5 February 2020, ALL DIGITAL participated in the meeting of the national coordinators for adult learning at the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and presented the Digital Competences Development System.
The European Agenda for Adult Learning highlights the need to increase participation in adult learning of all kinds (formal, non-formal and informal learning) whether to acquire new work skills, for active citizenship, or for personal development and fulfilment. The Agenda is promoted in 36 countries by a network of National Coordinators. They coordinate and steer different actions in the field of adult learning by engaging the main stakeholders, disseminating and implementing European policies, exchanging good practices and knowhow with other countries and raising awareness of adult learning. National coordinators are mostly from the policy-maker side, e.g. representatives from ministries of education or national agencies responsible for education. In some cases, there are also institutes and think-tanks tasked with promoting adult education by the governments. The European Commission supports the national coordinators in implementing measures at national level, and also brings them together for meetings and conferences to exchange good practices and get inspired.
Renato Sabbadini, CEO of ALL DIGITAL, and Gabriela Ruseva, Programme Officer at ALL DIGITAL, participated in the national coordinators’ meeting on 5 February 2020, which took place in Brussels at the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission. Gabriela Ruseva presented the DCDS “Digital Competences Development System” project, its methodology and online environment, its achievements and recommendations for policy makers. Participants were interested to hear about this first attempt to create a comprehensive system for developing the basic digital competences of adult learners and were impressed to learn that it covers all 21 competences of the Digital Competence framework (DigComp).
The logical question was - what’s next? Although the project has ended, our work on the Digital Competence Development System has just started. The DCDS project results are online and accessible to all. Moreover, the DCDS Partnership is looking at different possibilities for using and maintaining the platform and the contents in their countries. For example, in Greece, the Ministry of Education has sent an official letter to our partner HOU to investigate how the system can be incorporated into a national pilot programme on digital skills. ALL DIGITAL in its turn confirmed their intention to continue to look for opportunities to further scale up the system in other countries with the ultimate objective to reach a pan-European coverage. The adult education coordinators seem to support this idea and to be open for future cooperation.
