WildSkills EU: Tackling skills gap in the wildlife conservation sector
The WildSkills EU project addresses the skills gap identified by employers responsible for biodiversity monitoring and climate change mitigation in Europe. Here there is a mismatch between employer needs for early career staff to possess both ‘practical wildlife survey and identification’ and ‘communication and stakeholder engagement’ skills and the absence of this training from Higher Education pathways. This project is a collaboration linking practitioners from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), teachers from Higher Education and students seeking employment. These three groups will co-create and test innovative and accessible distance learning packages to address these skills gaps.
The objectives of the project are:
To co-create, develop and test six distance learning modules addressing employer skills gaps in ecology with key elements translated into native languages;
To test a new digital pedagogy of distance learning skills delivery and assessment leading to employer and Higher Education recognition on 60 virtual mobilities;
To train eight staff and 36 student trainers in new digital learning and assessment pedagogy;
To establish a platform for sharing pedagogy best practice with practitioners.
Partners and project intervention areas:
Ambios Ltd. (United Kingdom, project leader) – mammals
Ambios Portugal (Portugal) – nature journaling
Barn Owl Foundation (Hungary) – environmental influencing
WWF (Hungary) – stakeholder engagement
University of Évora (Portugal) – birds
University of Padova (Italy) – trees
More information on upcoming actions here.