Porto – a pefect place to discuss progress and plans for the future. Even if the beautiful city of Porto would be reason enough for a visit. Along the steep riverbanks of the Douro a beautiful city spreads along the river. There are steep streets and narrow alleys to explore. And it is worth to do so!
But it was not the only reason to come to Porto. Next-UP is more than 15 months up and running – high time for have tome reflections on the progress so far and to make some plans for the time coming.
The Next-UP consortium meeting brought partners together to exchange ideas and discuss innovative approaches to supporting young people’s education-to-employment transitions in post-Covid Europe.
Our colleagues from Universidade de Aveiro and the Center for Research in Higher Education provided a beautiful venue in the Casa Comum of the University of Porto. What could be a better place for a European project as the common house where everybody comes together and that provides place for multiple events. The downside was, we had to leave the room on time as in the evening musicians wanted to take over and fill the room in another way.
Before that, we were busy to communicate first results and insights, discuss methodological challenges, and plan future activities.
While it is natural in a big project to report and reflect the work done in the different work packages Next-UP went beyond that. We discussed a shared framework for our work building on some ideas of Yuzhou cay. Thus, the team enhanced the joined understanding of Next UP and the tasks ahead.
In addition we tried a newly developed simulation game for employability designed by Daniela Craciun to bring together the insights gathered by different partners. We had fun and learned a lot about skills. What they are and what our expectations are, which skills are needed for future job markets. It came as a surprise that employers expectations as reflected in job offers are a bit different.
But more on this will come up soon as a Next-UP report.