FUTURE

The world has entered a new era – the one of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Futurists and experts expect that 2 billion jobs that exist today will disappear by 2030 (Frei) and that 65% of children entering primary school today will have completely new job types that don’t exist yet (US Department of Labour). By the time Generation Z (those born in early 2000s, also called “digital natives”) entered the workplace, digital technology would be an aspect of almost all career paths, creating new ways of doing things, new type of jobs and demanding new types of skills and most of all – innovative thinking.

The future calls for a new paradigm for young people, educators and leaders: everyone needs to be a change maker and cultivate an innovative mind, cognitive empathy, entrepreneurial spirit, and collaborative outlook. Career guidance services need to transform to guidance into the future and career guidance and education policy should transform into leadership for the future. The New Skills Agenda for an Inclusive and Competitive Europe states that: education and training need to go beyond the immediate needs of the labour market and focus on “longer term objective of developing the flexible mind-set and curiosity needed to adapt and acquire the new, as yet unidentifiable, knowledge, skills and competences that will be needed to steer the technological development of the future”.

FUTURE TIME TRAVELLER project aims to transform career guidance of generation Z through introducing an innovative, game-based scenario approach for preparing the next generation for the jobs of the future:

1. Developing and testing an innovative virtual reality platform with game-based approach for supporting career information and decision making and future-oriented career mindset of young people;
2. Enhancing the innovation capacity of career guidance practitioners and experts – through development and promotion of an innovative methodology;
3. Giving impetus to innovation and future-oriented policy in career guidance systems in the partner countries, and fostering a more comprehensive approach for building career competences, making use of innovative technologies and learning methods and labour market intelligence.

The project has produced:

• FUTURE TIME TRAVELLER – an innovative virtual reality platform tailored for young people that applies the methodology of educational games to create a simulation of a future world.
• FUTURE Roadmap report, which includes, among others, competition for innovative career guidance services and “Jobs of the future” contest for young people, which unlock creativity empowering them as co-creators of the future world; seminars for policy makers, aiming to sensitize policy makers about the need to support innovation; an E-book of best practices: “Guiding young people to future jobs through innovative career services”, including the best ideas from the “Jobs of the future” contest and the competition for innovative career services.

As a result, the traditional classroom will be transformed into “time machine” for exploring the future:

• Students will be empowered to create their own life scenario and play the leading role in it. Acting as FUTURE JOB CURATORS students will improve their critical skills, their information about emerging jobs, their decision making and planning skills, their capacity to think ahead, see the big picture and draw scenarios, their self-confidence and ability to take responsibility, their team-working, presentation skills and creativity.
• Career guidance practitioners will step into a new role –as facilitators of learning and GUIDES IN EXPLORING THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE, while they also benefit from the approach, as; collaborative work with students will stimulate their own innovation potential, help them improve their digital skills and motivate their pursuit of excellence and professional upgrade. 

The partnership comprises 7 partners from Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.

Do you want to know more about this project? Contact us! opportunities@ciape.it