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EmployID at symposium on coaching supervision in Kassel

EmployID has been invited to the symposium on coaching and supervision at the "Jobcenter" in Kassel, Germany, which had been initiated by the large German supervision association DGSv. Results from the research on coaching and supervision in Jobcenters were presented and discussed. The main target group for this workshop were supervisors and coaches that already work as external or internal supervisors and coaches in German Jobcenters and employees of German Jobcenters who already benefit coaching and supervision or are interested in coaching and supervision.

Etienne Wenger at ECTEL 2014: 21st century is going to be the century of identity

Etienne Wenger, influential thinker and researcher in the field of learning and knowledge management who is known for his groundbreaking work on communities of practice, has given a keynote at ECTEL 2014 in Graz, Austria. In this inspiring keynote he has shared his views on the challenges of learning for our age. Towards the end of his talk, he highlighted that 

The 21st century is going to be the century of identity

Forming, transforming, developing identity has become increasingly complex with the complexity of the landscapes of knowledge and competences and the individual learning trajectories in this landscape. To the TEL community, he has posed the challenge of finding ways of supporting identity-related processes.

EmployID addresses with its research one important aspect in this challenge: how to facilitate with the use of technology such identity transformation in a professional context. EmployID also adds the collective perspective of identity development.

We're excited to continue on this learning journey to contribute to meeting this challenge!

MATEL 2014: Towards motivational design patterns for technology enhanced learning

Motivational Aspects are of particular importance when it comes to learning and identity development. However, there are only a few research results on systematic engineering processes for considering motivation as part of motivational design. To foster such research is the mission of the MATEL Workshop series for which the sixth edition has successfully taken place as part of ECTEL 2014 and I-KNOW 2014 in Graz, Austria. It has been organized as a joint activity of the projects EmployID, Learning Layers and MIRROR.

The focus of the workshop was on developing a pattern-based approach to capture the experiences that have been gathered in various contexts in a structured way. The workshop participants actively discussed along a hands-on session of developing a pattern how a structure and process for such patterns should look like. The results are summarized under http://matel14.professional-learning.eu, and participants have agreed to continue the activity within online meetings in the coming months.

EmployID is defining its agile project management methodology

With now almost five months after the start of the project and its "contextual investigation phase" in full swing, EmployID is preparing for adopting a more structured approach to its agile project management approach. While there are plenty of materials and experiences with agile project management and agile development for customer projects, little consideration has been given to the specific nature of multi-disciplinary, multi-national research projects. While Scrum as an agile project management methodology seems appropriate to address the challenges, its basic assumptions are not easy to meet in such a setting. Therefore we have started to adapt the methodology to large-scale research projects, also based on experiences that have been collected as part of earlier projects, such as the MATURE project.

Kick-Off Meeting at Vienna

After already several months of amazing engagement, the project had its official kick-off on February 6/7 in Vienna.

All the partners have discussed intensely on 

  • the challenges of fast changing working and learning practices and identities in public employment services
  • the need for agility in providing learning to their employees
  • and the constraints of security and privacy considerations.

It has become obvious that supporting learning has fundamentally different requirements in terms of openness, networking and exchange with others than the need for security and privacy of operational administrative systems. These diverging requirements and ways how to satisfy both will be one of the important topics of the four years project.

The interdisciplinary and multinational team drafted an agenda for the first months, ranging from strategies to engage a diverse set of stakeholders to exploring the architectural and technical possibilities. 

Pre-Kickoff virtual meeting

Continuing with the same dedication and level of engagement, all EmployID partners meet today via Flashmeeting to coordinate the activities for the kick-off in February. These activities around MOOCs, involving associate partners and discussing joint activities, exploration of ideas and setting up a sustainable and effective collaborarion infrastructure give the project a headstart.

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