METHODOLOGIES ASSESSMENT – CIRCLE Project

io5

Socio-Civic Experiences’ Assessment Protocol

CIRCLE Context: Socio-Civic Experiences Assessment Protocol

Currently, there is no educational framework to assess solving circular challenges with a socio-civic approach. The Socio-Civic Experiences aim to inspire students to create circular solutions with socio-civic impacts. IO5 introduces an innovative assessment protocol to evaluate these experiences, awarding badges for solutions that align with socio-civic principles. The CIRCLE project evaluates SOCg competencies developed by participants during Circular Experiences. A specialized tool, created as part of IO5.T1, tracks and measures student growth in these competencies throughout the experience. It also incorporates participant feedback, encouraging reflection and continuous improvement.

Importance of SOCg Competency-Based Learning

Team efficiency depends on developing key competencies. Teams that focus on learning SOCg competencies—social, citizenship, and GreenComp skills—achieve better results and satisfaction. This often requires a leader to guide the team. However, despite the need for preparing graduates for a changing job market, SOCg competencies are rarely included or evaluated in higher education. SOCg competency-based learning is crucial as it meets the evolving needs of teachers, students, and society, offering more integrated and meaningful learning than current curricula.

IMPORTANCE OF MONITORING AND ASSESSING SOCg COMPETENCES

The assessment of SOCg competences sets CIRCLE apart from other projects. As a complement to higher education, it draws attention from both businesses and educational organizations, offering key benefits for collaboration. Monitoring and assessing the development of SOCg competences in participating students, workers and companies is essential for several reasons.

STUDENTS

Define clear objectives and achievements.
Respect the individual work rhythm of each student.
It allows to combine different teaching modalities.
Create a visible learning map.
Greater versatility in the use of learning resources.
Improves efficiency in the use of technologies.
It allows students to actively demonstrate their competence.
It leaves room for short-term success and true student engagement.

workers

Enhances the current level of knowledge by competence.
It emphasizes the most appropriate personnel to perform each process or task.
Determine the gap between the desired level of skills requested by the process and the
current level of skills possessed by the personnel involved in the process.

Provide recommendations to improve competences training

both, individually and in the working group.
Measure the effectiveness of the training program.
Review the level of improvement of competences after the training program.

COMPANIES

Improve efficiency in the use of time and resources.
It improves the retention of knowledge of the workers, and, therefore, the quality of the
result.
Ability to assess tactics and programs that give better results.

ASSESSMENT IN SOCg COMPETENCES

Monitoring personal progress is challenging, especially without an official framework of indicators, as is the case with SOCg competencies. However, assessing whether SOCg competencies are being developed properly is crucial for the success of the CIRCLE project, ensuring effective training and enhancement of these skills.

A tool has been created to analyze the growth of transversal competencies and sustainability during an educational or training period. This tool is designed for use by education professionals, teachers, and companies to assess students’ transversal competencies, aligned with the 2018 Key Competences for Lifelong Learning and the 2022 GreenComp, both validated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC).

This project commits to empower new generations of professionals working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise. To that end, we establish the Circular & SOC Learning (CIRC.LE) Hub; a meeting point for students, professors, transdisciplinary experts, society at large, and decision-makers, working together with a circular and sociocivic compromise. In the Circular & SOC Learning Hub, students reflect on challenges by evaluating social and civic implications and become co-creators and active part of the challenge. This humanizing approach is here considered as the perfect complement to the technical skills for a true application of circularity principles. The CIRC.LE Hub creates a multi-stakeholder, participatory, democratic mutual learning and knowledge transfer platform and puts on the table complex dilemmas and “out of the box” ideas for students’ social and civic development and promoting local action and global thinking. This contributes to boosting the concept of the European Engineer. The pilot Circular & SOC Learning Hub will be promoted by the participating Universities and Associated Partners and then grow beyond this partnership.