The Project "Identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences (IBAK)" has produced its first results, halfway through the project.

Project „Identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences (IBAK)" (142367-2008-LLP-AT-Grundtvig-GMP) reached it´s halfway - one year has passed from the start of the project.
Implementing the project financed by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme the partners from Austria, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Slovakia and Switzerland aims to encourage adult education institutions and their management and pedagogical staff to foster the idea of lifelong learning, to develop specific methodical competencies by applying in practice already tried and trusted methods.
During the first year of the project project partners analysed the documents regulating identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences, collected the data for the data base on methods used for identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences, filled in "The virtual portfolio of instruments".
Regional and national "methods workshops" were organised in Germany, France and Lithuania. Representatives of adult education institutions and social partners discussed the situation and prospects of identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences. For example, four methods of identification of competencies were presented in the "methods workshop" in Koln and the participants of the workshop had the opportunity to try them. Two methods of assessment of informally acquired competencies in university studies were presented in National workshop in Lithuania.
Other partner countries will organise National seminars in spring of 2010. The series of National and regional events will be finalised by two day International „methods workshop" in Bratislava (Slovakia). Participants of this forum will discuss the practice and experience in identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences, will compare the effectiveness of methods used in different countries, will obtain the ideas for improving of or developing new methods. The practicians of adult education will discuss country-specific future tendencies reflecting the guidelines of lifelong learning and will develop recommendations for improvement of methodologies.
Each partner will prepare the compendium of methods of national methods used for identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences.
To the end of the project the international compendium of methods of identification, assessment and recognition of informally acquired competences will be prepared. This compendium will be accessible to the adult education institutions and professionals. The compendium will be presented to the publishing houses of training resources.

Project partners
• HeurekaNet e.V. (Germany) - project coordinator)
• Burgenlaendische Volkshochschulen (Austria)
• Bildungswerk der KAB (Germany)
• ROC van Twente (the Netherlands)
• GIP FCIP Alsace (France)
• Lithuanian Association of Adult Education (Lithuania)
• Akademia vzdelavania (Slovakia)
• Swiss Association forAdult Education (SVEB, Switzerland) - "the silent" partner

Project website: www.competences.info