In continuing the masterclass on the same topic organised in September, the BME hosted a leadership school for the middle and senior managers of the partner institutions of the Digital Re-Skilling@Universities project led by the Sorbonne University (including the Institut Parisien de Chimie Moléculaire). The aim of the leadership school taking place between 24 and 26 October, entitled Skills Intelligence Strategies for Career Guidance in Higher Education: Lifelong Learning and Agile Continuous Education for Employability, was that the participating 20 program and organizational leaders (from the BME, UOC, the University of Milan and Sorbonne) be able to examine from a strategic point of view the importance of the multilingual European classification of skills, competences, qualifications and occupations (ESCO), the significance of the training content to be transformed into block of skills (BOS) and their verification with micro-credentials, and the details of the European Year of Skills.
The two-year project which ended now in October, was born out of the realization that employees need effective guidance in reskilling and upskilling, a career counselling tool in order to maintain or improve their employability, as job requirements are currently very flexible and can change quickly. This support must be effective and affordable so that as many people as possible can use it, in accordance with the guidelines of the European Skills Agenda.
The primary goal of the project was the development of software to create customized path for reskilling and upskilling. This Smart Catalog helps assess the user what kind of job they can fill with their current skills and what skills they need to acquire to fill a position that they are almost qualified for. It provides a list of training offers as well, where the user can acquire these skills. The operation of the smart catalogue was modelled by processing analytical chemis and data scientist skills.
The event was opened by Dr. Koczkáné Dr. Emília Csiszár, Vice-Rector of International Affairs and ofered clearly distinguishable themes for all three days. On the first day, the topic was research and development of skills-based approaches to education and employability, during which representatives of all participating universities spoke about their own institution’s efforts in this direction. After that, related strategies and policies were discussed, with particular regard to the LLL strategies of the host country of Hungary, which were discussed by Professor András Benedek. The first day was closed by Hal Plotkin (who, among other things, was the Obama administration’s senior education advisor) with a subjective analysis of the topics covered during the virtual lecture series organized by the project, expressing his insights as an American outside observer on the issues affecting European higher education.
On the second day, the cooperation and expectations of industry and higher education came into focus, where Dr. Márta Fischer, director of the Institute of Modern Languages, spoke about the issues of language competences in the labour market and the nuanced approach to the competences themselves. Another invited speaker, Dr. András Nemeslaki spoke about the cooperation between the Magyar Nemzeti Bank and the BME, while Roland Löffler, owner of a supply chain management company, spoke about employers’ criteria in hiring. In line with the theme of the day, the smart catalogue developed during the project was also processed from the point of view of usability for employers. Since the primary goal of the leadership training was to provide the participants with the widest possible further training, the participants closed the second day with a group decision-making training, led by invited coaches.
On the third day, the participants of the leadership school joined the technology diplomacy workshop of the European Engineering Learning Innovation and Science Alliance (EELISA), which was co-organised by the D-reskill team and project representatives were invited to participants to the round table discussions featuring other distinguished speakers. The event provided the opportunity to serve as the final multiplier event for the project as many guest were invited from outside of the partnership and we were able to present the results as well as it was an upskilling opportunity for the participants in a less prominent but all the more important area of tech diplomacy.