On 07.09.2019 we had the opportunity to provide a 2-hour workshop entitled “Assessing and enhancing integration competences of refugees” in the framework of the Language Day (German as a foreign language) organised by the Hessische Volkshochschulverband. The workshop involved teachers and counsellors that provide integration and languages courses for refugees.
Tag: workshop
On February 4th, 2019, the opening workshop took place in Kassel. It was attended by nine adult eductors who work in different settings with refugees – coaching, language courses, vocational training.
The participants showed a great deal of interest in the project itself and were particulary interested in the general activities of the other VIC partners. Moreover, they were curious to learn more about the new opportunities provided by VIC: the e-learning platform – for some of them the first time they would do e-learning – and the validation of competences – a new concept for all of them.
In addition to this workshop, other workshops took place in Bonn carried out with trainers of DVV, and in Göttingen carried out with trainers of BUPNET.
The pilot phase was launched in Greece, France and Italy with national workshops, wheras in Germany and Austria, the opening workshops will be held in January 2019.
Each VIC partner will involve ten or more adult educators that will take part in the national workshops and in the subsequent e-learning phase. They will then implement their newly acquired knowledge in national learning projects that will involve refugees and migrants. The purpose of the piloting phase is to verifiy whether the VIC approach and blended learning course actually support the adult educators to plan, deliver and evaluate innovative integration learning activities and eventually to validate the integration competences developed in these learning offers.
The piloting phase will be documented by means of national reports that each partner will set up on the basis of the feedback gathered from the involved participants.
The German partners, DVV and BUPNET, were invited to provide a workshop in the framework of the conference entitled Angekommen in Deutschland – was nun? (please find the documentation in German here) organised by the German NA.
After a short introduction into the project, Sabine and Beater presented the concept of “integration” and the different competencies associated with it. The aim is to evaluate and visualise these competences using the LEVEL5 validation system. This has already been developed in various previous projects. The participants were given an overview of the LEVEL5 reference system and its application in the VIC project. Then all participants were given the task to firstly assess themselves in terms of their knowledge, skills and attitudes using the reference system for the competence “Intercultural Communication”. This self-assessment was then jointly evaluated and discussed – with the participants finally agreeing that a well-founded self-assessment is indeed difficult, but at the same time helpful and valuable.
In October the VIC team met in Padova to finalise the training offer and to plan the national pilots.
The piloting period will be inaugurated with national workshops organised by the partner organisations. These workshops will serve to introduce the VIC idea and the approach, on the one hand, and to demonstrate the e-learning platform and some practical activities, on the other hand. The e-learning modules are available in English, French, Italien, and German. The Greek participants will work on the English version of the platform. Greek will be made available in summer 2019.
If you are interested in participating in one of the workshops, please contact the partner organisation of your country.
If you are interested in taking part in the training course, please register here.