The Skills Portal
History
MAG is a Spin-off of the International Telematic University UNINETTUNO, the first promoted by an Italian Telematic University, the world leader in distance education. In MAG, the University excellence approach to distance education is complemented by the experience of major companies, thus defining a highly effective training potential for the employment.
The Skills Portal
This is the context where the idea of the lecturers of the International Telematic University UNINETTUNO to develop a skills portal on the Internet, devoted to vocational training and retraining by applying the psycho-pedagogical theories and models that are the basis of the international success of UNINETTUNO distance teaching model, realized after 25 years of research and experimentation on technologies applied to online teaching-learning processes, was born.
Labor in the digital society is the global emergency. Almost all over the world, there often is a lack of skills required by an ever-changing and evolving digital labor market, an evolution and transformation that generates new needs related to new skills.
The labor market needs vocational skills that would already have enormous employment potential; so there is a need for the development and use of new training models to be implemented at a distance and increase access to training modes in the digital society.
The new economy must focus for its growth on "human capital, the main resource for all forms of development."
Education and training are crucial factors for the development of economies also to meet the demands of international competition. The new goal that the economic and social system must set is "lifelong learning." One of the main sources of unemployment is the inadequate level of education and vocational training in the face of both the rapid changes in technology and the challenge brought by globalization and digitization
The Skills Portal aims to create a portal with training, qualification and retraining courses to provide answers in support of public administration, small, medium and large enterprises regarding the continuous training of human resources required by the national and international labor market that is constantly evolving and especially characterized by great changes brought about by the innovation of digital technologies.
In particular, the "Skills Portal" also has the function of informing about changes in the labor market, digital competence skills required to update various work sectors, and skills required to create new businesses in innovative sectors linked to applications of technologies in different work activities.
The portal’s information section can help the business world on how to adapt human resources to technological evolution and thus to new ways of working for new scenarios. The forecasting and analysis of new skills makes it possible to identify the contents on which to implement and have Italian and international experts carry out distance learning qualification and retraining courses to give a concrete answer to the new needs of labor markets.
The Skills Portal enables, on the one hand, research aimed at studying and analyzing the labor market in its constant becoming and thus identifying the demands for new and specific professional skills and, on the other hand, at creating distance learning courses to be included in the UNINETTUNO MAG Portal.
The MAG UNINETTUNO Skills Portal, structured to cope with the creation of the skills required by the new digital world of work, is a useful tool not only for businesses as well as for the national and even regional government to be made available to all its citizens, and thus promoting a shift from the passive protection of minimum wage and unemployment benefits to an active protection of the individual who, by acquiring new skills, can more easily hope to enter the new labor markets of the digital society, in a context of knowledge economy based on specific skills and interdisciplinary approach to digital methods and processes.
The Skills Portal could have the customized interface of the individual company, ministry, local authority or region; an example being the portal we created in San Patrignano where professional courses in Computer Literacy and Advanced Computer Science were implemented.
Fighting unemployment with such targeted training, accessible to all, with no space or time limits, would help the labor world to keep pace with the times and equip itself with the only tool needed to defeat crisis and unemployment, namely continuing education and retraining enabling the country and its citizens to become the active players of innovation in the digital world.
Target
Enhance the academic training activities of the International Telematics University UNINETTUNO by offering it to a wider audience eager to gain skills in employment area, thanks to an educational approach based on:
- Modularity: The teaching material is developed in didactic modules
- Multimedia: Integration between different media is implemented to diversify learning
- Interactivity: The student has a dynamic approach to didactic material by utilizing a learning by doing methodology
- Community-based: The platform is equipped with tools to foster collective learning contexts
- Dynamism: The model is selected to acquire new skills just om time
- Control: The platform is designed to continuously monitor the learning level