Shaping digital skills for labour market orientation
Session 2
On the 24th of January, we hosted the 2nd session of our Webinar series: Unwrapping the Digital Divide. This series develops different topics on the field of digital inclusion, and its main objective is to share best practices for vulnerable groups’ integration in Europe through basic digital skills training. The topic of the first session was digital literacy. In this session, Shaping digital skills for labour market orientation, our invited speakers were training providers who brought light to innovative teaching methodologies for curriculum creation and implementation. As digital skills are relevant in many fields, especially in job search, their teaching methods are designed to provide the learners with tools directly of relevance to this area. For DigiCo, the link between skills training and the labour market is crucial, as it is a way to equip vulnerable groups with concrete digital tools to enter the market.
Silvano de Marte, Communications & Community Engagement Officer at DigiCo, opened the webinar by announcing the relaunch of DigiCo’s Community of Practice. We work on tackling the digital skills gap through a collective approach to this problem. Therefore, our community offers a space to participate and get involved through sharing knowledge, best practices and networking around digital inclusion. Silvano de Marte presented the benefits of joining the Collective, free of charge for all members that fit the criteria. You can find more information about our Community of Practice here.
The first part of the event consisted of a theoretical overview of research on digital skills frameworks. Juliane Stiller, Information Scientist and Chair of the board of Grenzenlos Digital e.V. explained how digital skills’ interconnected nature can be used for designing courses that enable learners to transfer these new skills to other domains. Through a practical analogy, Juliane Stiller presented digital skills training as a house, where the base of it is knowing your target group, its pillars are: definitions, evaluations and motivations, and the ceiling is the setting of the course. Once trainers consider all these relevant aspects, they can construct the content for a relevant, applicable and useful curriculum.
The second part of the event was the presentation of two successful cases from Germany. Picking up on her colleague’s analogy, Violeta Trkulja, Information Scientist and Vice-chair of the board of Grenzenlos Digital e.V., presented Intro, their program that, with grant support from DigiCo, empowers refugees and migrants in Germany through targeted digital literacy education. She shared with the audience every aspect of this training and how every skill is linked to labour market orientation. It is also tailored to increase relevance and motivation for its students. Violeta closed her presentation by sharing concrete tips for training low digital skills. Nikan Tiouri, Lead of The Competence Workshop (Die Kompetenzwerkstatt) at Malteser Werke, presented the second successful case. This program supports refugees through career orientation. She shared methodologies and best practices implemented in this course, specially designed for job searching. She emphasised the importance of each student finding their path, as each has their motivations to take the training, and of trainers to support them for reaching these goals.
The webinar also had a section of Q&A, which covered the onboarding of individuals with no to low basic digital skills, language barriers and the importance of certification. Léa Ichikawa, Program Manager at DigiCo, moderated this part of the event and was also in charge of its closing. She emphasised the relevance of having a solid framework such as the DigComp Framework for Citizens to work on the curricula and effectively knowing your target groups as a starting point. The following session of this Webinar series: Unwrapping the Digital Divide will take place in March, so follow us on social media to stay updated.
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Grenzenlos Digital e.V. is a charitable association based in Berlin, and one of our partners in the Community of Practice. Its mission is to promote, research and generate knowledge about digital skills so people can benefit from digital transformation in education, science, economy, and society. With grant support from DigiCo, they run a digital skills training called Intro, a program that empowers refugees and asylum seekers in Germany through targeted digital literacy education.
The Malteser Werke gGmbH is – like Malteser Hilfsdienst e.V. – part of the Malteser Deutschland gGmbH organisation. The Malteser Werke was founded in 1989 and has 3 main areas of charitable purposes: Migration, Youth & Social involvement and School. The charitable institution has 2343 employees (2021).
Our Collective reunites non-profit organisations, policymakers, researchers, and labour market intermediaries with similar values who actively work to raise awareness, collaborate, share knowledge, and promote good practices to reduce the digital gap.