The VINA project aims to increase the recognition rate of adults’ competencies acquired through non-formal and informal education.

The main goal of the VINA project is to provide individuals and institutions with easy access to an open pool of validation tools, information, and projects targeting informal and non-formal education. The international partnership serves as a means to exchange good practices and, by delivering simple tools, supports European men and women in highlighting and affirming their abilities. The project pursues the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy by facilitating an easy assessment of knowledge and competencies acquired through informal and non-formal learning, improving the competitiveness of adults, promoting social inclusion, and supporting social mobility.

The project partnership will achieve its goals by creating:

  • A database—a set of effective validation tools for non-formal and informal learning
  • An analyzing tool—the Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyser (R.O.T.A.)

Project target groups:

  • Validation institutions (private and public)
  • Adults who plan validation
  • Institutions who plan validation
  • Individuals supporting non-formal/informal education

The first result of the VINA project is the database that helps find information, projects and their outcomes, European and international organizations and tools related to the informal and non-formal learning effects validation.

It was built in line with Cedefop’s tool categorization recommendations, taking into consideration validation stages, areas of interest, and our target groups. (Cedefop is an agency that helps the European Commission, member states of the European Union, and social institutions develop European policies in terms of vocational education and training.)

Other crucial elements of the database are the system of adding new tools/entries and the availability of the collected tools in a few European languages. These features enable to easily extend the database in collaboration with individuals as well as public and private institutions. The partnership will be expanded in the following years to take the full advantage of the database abilities.

The second product of the VINA project is the Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyser (R.O.T.A.). Thanks to the algorithms thoroughly developed for each tool, the Analyser enables their assessment based on the views number and taking into account the general number of lookups in the database.

The results are displayed as a table or a chart. The table shows most viewed and searched tools, while the chart indicates the highest-rated tools in the usability category.

The Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyser delivers additional statistics mechanisms for the tools available in the database, that is, users’ country of origin, the device used to explore the database (computer, mobile phone, tablet), operational system type, etc. This information allows to draw additional conclusions regarding preferred tools and tendencies that help profile the users.

 

VINA DATABASE

VINA FLYER

This project is co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ program