The Open University of Cyprus (OUC) is contributing to a research project entitled youth new personal & employable skills development (YNSPEED). This aims to facilitate youth development and training in critical digital and employability skills and other competencies essential for an active and responsible digital citizen.

The OUC research team is led by associate professor Jahna Otterbacher, head of the Cyprus Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (CyCAT) hosted at the OUC.

The project, which is funded by the Erasmus+ programme, aims to develop online courses addressing hot topics of the digital era, such as digital literacy, fake news, education for sustainable development, and learning English using technology.

These courses, the successful completion of which will lead to the award of diplomas, will be available on the platform for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that the YNSPEED’s consortium will develop using digital tools, educational material and innovative practices for informal learning.

Training will primarily target youth workers in the project’s partner organisations and youth aged 16-35.

To foster youth employability, another aim of the project is to make efforts for validating and accrediting this kind of informal learning.

The project consortium consists of the Institutul Roman de Educatie a Adultilor (coordinator, Romania), the Open University of Cyprus, Fundacio Eurecat (Spain), Regionalne Centrum Wolontariatu (Poland) and the Balkan Distance Education Network (Serbia).

The duration of the research project is two years, from February 2020 until January 2022.