25 March 2024 – The NEMOS consortium welcomed the opportunity to be involved in one of the first international workshops for Higher Education Institutions on the recently released Scaffold cards, held in the framework of the Education for Sustainability and European Greencomp Framework event organised on 14 March 2024 by the Technological University of Dublin’s Sustainability Education Unit and Faculty of Sciences and Health Sustainability committee, in collaboration with the NEMOS project.
The context was set by a presentation from Dr. Guia Bianchi, researcher at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Seville, author of Sustainability competences and co-author of
GreenComp – The European sustainability competence framework, who talked the audience through the process that led to the development of the European sustainability competence framework and the creation of the Scaffold cards.
Afterwards, post-doctoral researchers at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Pisa, Sabrina Tomasi Ph.D and Annapia Ferrara Ph.D, successfully organised and facilitated the workshop, involving teachers from TU Dublin, as well as local stakeholders. Divided into smaller groups, participants were called to design potential learning activities for students using the Scaffold cards, with the support of the NEMOS partners. To ensure the quality of the workshop, the UNIPI partners who conducted it, followed the recently published guidelines « Scaffold », a deck of cards to design competence-oriented learning experiences », authored by Margherita Bacigalupo and other colleagues from the JRC.
The exercise was especially focused on fostering the acquisition of green competences (GreenComp) and invited participants to reflect on the whole designing process of the learning activity, including aspects such as setting a specific target, learning objectives and resources, as well as planning for the most suitable teaching methods and assessment techniques to reach the set goals. The groups were also encouraged to create links with further sets of competences – digital competences (DigComp), entrepreneurial competences (EntreComp), life competences (LifeComp), as well as Transversal competences – using the suggestions reported on the Scaffold cards.
The outcome of the workshop was very positive, especially thanks to the capacity of TU Dublin to involve highly-motivated and competent educators and researchers with a high interest in integrating sustainability in the curricula, as well as actively engage local students. The role of the NEMOS partners was also fundamental in supporting the groups during the activity and compiling final reports, while TU Dublin’s NEMOS fellows followed the reflection process and reported about the discussion dynamics generated in the different groups.
The NEMOS partners were pleased to receive the participants’ favourable feedback on the experience and acknowledge their intention to explore the Scaffold cards further as a supportive resource in their future work.
About the Scaffold cards
“Scaffold is a tool, consisting of a deck of 102 cards, created to support educators in designing learning activities and guiding them step-by-step – from planning to assessment. Scaffold has been produced jointly by the European Training Foundation, in the framework of its Creating New Learning initiative, and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, in the context of its work on key competences with the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion” (source: European Training Foundation).
More in depth information is available in the Teaching different key competences at once report, focusing on the process that led to the production of the Scaffold cards. The document describes the initial concept of the cards, explaining what needs they address, and it summarises their design including the proof of concept, the design of a prototype for testing and evaluating their usefulness before production.
About the NEMOS Project
The NEMOS project acknowledges sustainability as an increasingly crucial skill for graduate and post-graduate students to tackle important global challenges such as climate change, food waste and the loss of biodiversity in their professional future. Therefore, the project aims to define a new educational model to integrate sustainability competences in the curricula of food-related degrees by means of service learning.
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, the NEMOS project is led by the Public University of Navarra and includes the following consortium partners: Technological University Dublin (Ireland); Technological University Graz (Austria); Rhône-Alpes Higher Institute of Agriculture (France); University of Pisa (Italy); and IGCAT.
More information at www.nemosproject.com
