Back2Basics: Bridging the gap between higher education and labor market by fostering digital skills

The pandemic highlighted that many higher education teachers, forced to adapt their daily work to online environments, lack "digital preparation," which resulted in many frustrating attempts to ad...

The B2B project aimed to contribute to the digital transformation of the higher education system and to bridge the gap between higher education systems and the labor market by improving digital skills in higher education institutions (HEIs) to better prepare teachers and students or recent graduates. The partners sought to demonstrate a potential approach to create real change in higher education systems, making them more modern and aligned with labor market needs. The B2B aimed to achieve the following OBJECTIVES: - contribute to the development of a higher education learning system that better meets the demands of the current market by incorporating digital activities and tools into daily teaching/learning practices in higher education; - train higher education teachers with skills and pedagogical tools related to new digital environments and improve the efficiency of their teaching; - educate higher education students in valuable digital skills for the workplace; - create a pilot teaching-learning system more aligned with the current most needed digital skills in the labor market; - train teachers and students on crucial topics such as online security and data protection.

To achieve the proposed objectives, the B2B consortium implemented the following ACTIVITIES: • 1 LTTA mainly aimed at higher education students, which included a series of training sessions for them to acquire/deepen important digital skills to improve their employability profiles. In these sessions, there was also direct contact with specialists from various recruitment/training areas who helped students understand the importance of digital skills in a professional context, as well as to identify the dimensions, attitudes, skills, and knowledge associated with the different digital competencies most valued by the labor market. • 1 LTTA primarily aimed at higher education teachers, with the goal of improving their digital skills and empowering them to integrate digital practices and tools into their pedagogical practices that enhance the development of digital skills valued by the labor market for their students, thus contributing to the training of graduates with better employability profiles. • Pilot Program, a small-scale trial to encourage digital-supported teaching-learning activities conducted at the two partner higher education institutions. This pilot test allowed partners to understand the real challenges and difficulties of developing activities that foster digital skills demanded by the labor market in an academic learning context, as well as the best ways to do so. • 5 multiplier events titled “Bridging the gap between HE and the labor market: the importance of Digital Skills” where the project and its results were shared and promoted, networking between higher education institutions and the labor market was encouraged, and discussions were held on how digital transformation can be implemented in higher education systems (particularly in classrooms). • 1 International Final Conference at the end of the project, where the project and its results were promoted, including training sessions organized by partners aimed at the academic community, focused on the digital skills addressed. The conference program also included sharing experiences, challenges, and opportunities that the project brought to teachers and higher education students who participated in project activities (LTTA and pilot) and their main conclusions about the effectiveness of these activities. During the project, the partners also implemented other activities, such as a local training course in Greece for pilot participants, scientific activities (event organization, supervision of master's theses, and writing articles), and various other dissemination activities and events (as described in the dissemination records) on digital transformation and preparation in higher education; the benefits of closer proximity between higher education institutions and the labor market; and the labor market's needs in terms of digital skills and what the labor market expects from young adults.