Rationale

Mobility related learning in European adult education in its multiple forms is playing an increasing role, at local, regional and European levels, as stated by statistics, national and European officers.

This increase of mobility related learning in the adult education sector (and budget’s) is not yet paralleled by sound methods to record the added value of mobility actions, that justify the value of those investments in terms of learning outcomes in these initiatives and of their sustainability.

As stated in the “European guidelines for validating non-formal and informal learning”, a recent CEDEFOP publication, it is often a challenge to distinguish between learning for personal and for professional purposes. Especially in mobility actions both purposes are frequently mingled, so that a clear distinction is often not possible or not even favourable. Thus mobility learning validation refers to a large part to non-formal and informal learning.

With the EUROPASS Mobility Document a good instrument for recording and proving all periods of transnational mobility for learning purposes is available. However, as research, expert discussions and real cases in VILMA partners’ actions show, there is a lack and a strong need for a comprehensive approach and a consistent set of instruments to assess and evidence the impact of informal mobility learning on the competence development of the individual learner based on a comparable reference system and a common methodology.

The VILMA partnership will create and test a unique tool, which will facilitate validation of competences acquired during participation in transnational mobility actions. The tool is based on approaches and instruments developed in the premium assessed previous projects ACT and Act-Net.