Page 23 - euroguidance-highlights-2020

1.4 ‘Academia’

Academia 2020: of training programmes and
The First Step Towards Virtual Mobility! training materials for guid-
ance counsellors in Europe
Since 1992, Euroguidance centres in different to address current key chal-
countries have carried out learning mobility proj- lenges in the labour market
ects, the most substantial of which is Academia. and in guidance. Considering
It is coordinated by the French Euroguidance the pandemic, the first
Centre alongside partner countries. The COVID-19 training module ‘Counselling
pandemic crisis unfortunately disrupted most of Migrants and Refugees’ was successfully adapted
the exchanges planned that were to take place online through the University of Applied Labour
in the spring of 2020. However, this initiated new Studies of the Federal Employment Agency in
ways of exchange between professionals and new Germany, contributing to the further development
developments. of the project's digital learning tools. These digital
learning tools can be used in the future by the
Estonia hosted the first ever virtual mobility How to React to a Worldwide environment; to expand participants' professional
‘e-Academia: Career Guidance in Higher Education partners of the Academia Network and serve also Lockdown: e-Academia networks and as a new learning outcome as part
as a stimulus for the further development of their
and Employment Offices. How to Support Learning Learning Mobility in Estonia of virtual mobility - to learn how to use a variety
and CMS Development’. This challenging but ex- own national online courses. of ICT tools.
citing experiment was a success. It also confirmed The annual Academia coordinators' meeting The Estonian Euroguidance Centre has participated Reorganising the exchange within such a short
that virtual learning mobility should not replace was also held at a distance and was hosted by in the Academia project since 2000. To date they time frame was challenging for both the organ-
traditional face-to-face exchange but can make Slovenian Euroguidance colleagues. Discussions have hosted approximately 200 counsellors and isers and participants. It required being efficient,
learning more exciting. focused on the consequences of the health crisis experts and at the same time a similar number adaptable, curious and supportive of each other.
on the exchange of professionals and on the offers of Estonian specialists have had the possibility to
2020 was also the year of fruitful cooperation proposed for 2021. experience this aspect of learning mobility. Also it required keeping in focus the smart use
with the Erasmus Academia + partnership proj- of technology where the content directs the tools
ect: ‘Counsellors' Study and Training Exchange You can read more about these activities in the The worldwide pandemic and lockdown in 2020 utilized and not the other way around.
Programme’, which focussed on the development following articles. took us all by surprise and forced us to be creative. e-Academia took place on the Tallinn University
This led to the proposal for a virtual mobility of Technology Moodle learning platform, which
experience. e-Academia ultimately comprised 8 enabled sharing presentations, assignments
European experts from 6 countries.
and virtual engagement through programs like
One of the biggest challenges was the question of BigBlueButton and MS Teams. The participants
how to create an experience that is not just a long used a personal reflection diary which made sure
series of online meetings, and in parallel, how to they gathered their main learning points and new
integrate a variety of different tools and platforms information, and could reflect during each day on
into a learning experience. their learning experience.
As the original plan of physical exchanges became The course covered a wide spectrum of techno-
impossible, the new plan was to make the mobility logical tools like Mentimeter for group reflection,
opportunity in two phases. Phase 1 - online - in Kahoot to test the learned facts about Estonian
May 2020, and Phase 2 - face to face - in Sep- Guidance and Padlet for describing group devel-
tember 2020. The latter proved to not be possible, opment and the reflection timeline.
so both phases took place virtually.
The challenge was to maintain quality, as the
The participants met each day for 2 hours and mobility was virtual. It was a first-time for all
had assignments they had to do outside of the to experience virtual job shadowing through a
formal meetings. The aims of the exchange were virtual guided tour of the newly opened ‘Estonian
to give an overview of career services in Estonia; Unemployment Insurance Fund Career Centre’ in
to introduce the services of PES for different target Tallinn. It was innovative, smart and a creative use
groups; to experience learning in a multicultural of virtual innovation that surprised and inspired

22 1. EUROGUIDANCE NETWORK LEVEL ACTIVITIES 1. EUROGUIDANCE NETWORK LEVEL ACTIVITIES 23