Skills4Integration
Skills for Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers
is a project that addresses the integration of adult refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have notable disadvantages in literacy, numeracy and digital skills. Literacy, numeracy and digital skills are fundamental to master typical situations in everyday working life. Competence deficits in these areas can prove to be an obstacle to permanent and successful integration into the labour market.
The project will research the skills gap between new arrivals and their basic educational, linguistic, numeric and digital needs to reach a level of civic engagement and employability in the host country.
IO1: Training Manual for volunteer educators of adult migrants and refugees -
The consortium will develop a Training Manual for volunteers working with refugees and migrants to support their Literacy Numeracy, digital skills and eventually their integration into the labour market. The training manual will offer a teaching model to volunteer trainers, which aims to promote the social, educational and professional integration of low-skilled adult migrants and refugees in their host countries, developing their literacy, numeracy and digital skills. These skills become necessary for the learners' empowerment so that they can participate constructively in the social and economic life of their hosting country and improve their autonomy. The training manual will offer a comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring model for volunteer trainers through the professional and user-friendly WebApp being developed as another result. The material will be provided in 7 languages: English, Dutch, French, Greek, (Turkish?), Portuguese and Finnish. Volunteers and professionals will act as tutors to the low-skilled adult migrants/refugees for building their literacy, numeracy and digital skills. The training manual will include:
1. General Overview of Migration to Europe 2020 The Module provides volunteers with background knowledge on the migration phenomenon and its impact at a European level.
2. EU/National Legislation on Migration The Module provides volunteers with background knowledge on the legislation and policy framework concerning migration, both at a European and national level.
3. Inclusion Care for Migrants The Module provides volunteers with the tools to promote individual integration and social cohesion at the local level.
4. Administration/Evaluation The Module provides an overview of the critical principles of evaluation and administration, how an educator's competency is assessed, how learners' needs are analysed, and the various teaching styles that could be used.
5. Numeracy Module, The critical aim of the Module is to provide volunteer trainers with skills and competencies that will help them train migrants in basic mathematics.
6. Digital Module The Module provides volunteer trainers with basic guidelines, tools, strategies, approaches, learning techniques and methodologies for further developing migrants' digital skills in the following areas: Communicating, Handling information, Transacting, Problem-solving
7. Literacy Modules A guide for volunteers teaching migrant's literacy skills in Turkish, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Swedish languages.
The consortium will develop a WebApp to teach and engage users in various ways, including simple texts, videos and animations with voice-overs and subtitles, audio files and computer screen recordings. The WebApp will interface with the dissemination site and offer the multilingual framework to host the course materials developed in the project's scope. It will offer an easily navigable system with instructional videos throughout better to support the engagement of newcomers to the digital world. The WebApp will host other instructional videos created as another result teaching navigation of common online platforms. It will also offer interactive pages offering literacy and numeracy support in an entertaining and gamified fashion for the beginner in literacy and numeracy development. The reasoning behind the Web App is to teach by doing. Projects will be available for selection for a hands-on practical methodology. They will be easily guided with videos, audio files and digital imagery, leading the user to better developmental understanding and a positive experience.
The web app will include a series of instructional videos with voiceovers in host country languages plus English. Students learn best when they take in information via multiple modalities—through reading, listening and viewing visual media. We also know, from much research, that using visuals is critical for those acquiring a new language. The videos in this result can be used in two primary ways, 1) support or enhance the understanding of course content, or 2) as the primary mode of content acquisition. Students can watch video content either together with a teacher in class or outside of class, depending on the instructional need. The learning outcome will need to be specific and measurable. Additionally, video content will be used in conjunction with instructional activities that show students have achieved the learning outcomes.
Course Content for the WebApp. There are the Minimum Core Skills of literacy, language, numeracy and Information Computing Technology (ICT) which will be included in lessons. The functional skills of maths, English and ICT will mostly be embedded in the learning programme. The key is to enable people to function confidently, effectively and independently in life and at work.
There will be 30 lessons per module divided into 10 lessons per level of beginner, intermediate and advanced, in total 90 lessons in 6 languages. Each of the numeracy and digital skills lessons will be accompanied by an instructional video from IO3. The Literacy lessons will be accompanied by grammar notes and reading warm-ups. The curriculum will be available on the web app in PDF and interactive gaming formats, in the six partner languages.
Finally, a Training Manual will offer a teaching model to volunteer trainers, which aims to promote the social, educational and professional integration of low-skilled adult migrants and refugees in their host countries, developing their literacy, numeracy and digital skills. These skills become necessary for the learners' empowerment so that they can participate constructively in the social and economic life of their hosting country and improve their autonomy. The training manual will offer a comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring model for volunteer trainers through the professional and user-friendly WebApp being developed as another result. The material will be provided in 6 languages: English, Dutch, French, Greek, Portuguese and Finnish. Volunteers and professionals will act as tutors to the low-skilled adult migrants/refugees for building their literacy, numeracy and digital skills.
Consortium
The Netherlands Stichting Vrouw en Welzijn (migrants and underskilled adults) Coordinator (heading administration and financials and reporting)
Belgium: Welcome Home International (refugees and asylum seekers Arabic (heading media campaigning, dissemination, translations into Arabic, and coordination of deliverables)
Finland: LFI (migrants and refugees)
Portugal: TropicalAstral (IT-web app)
Greece: Innovation Frontiers (digital animation and instructional videos)
Cyprus: SYNTHESIS (migrants and underskilled adults: training resources)