Challenges Addressed
- Blended counselling
- Exchange and knowledge transfer (among educational professionals, guidance counsellors, etc.)
- Facilitation of transition from school education to career selection
- Improve matching between skills and jobs
- Improvement of guidance/ employment services
- Increase the interaction between schools and professional life
- Increase the mobility of people in Europe for education and employment purposes
- Promote self-assessment
- Provision of low-threshold information on educational guidance to disadvantaged adult populations
- Raise awareness on guidance
- Reduce early school leaving
- Support those wishing to re-enter the labour market
- Tackling unemployment
- Target unemployment
Syvonline aims to enable practitioners to offer better services as well as assist teachers to introduce guidance practices in the frame of their daily teaching routines. Syvonline features:
- The News Section;
- The Research Bank;
- The Method Bank;
- The Syvonline Forum;
- The REKAS tool that provides regional forecasts and LMI on career and educational paths.
Policy objectives
- Access to Lifelong Guidance Services
- Assessing the effectiveness of Lifelong Guidance Provision
- Assuring the quality of Lifelong Guidance Provision
- Career Management Skills
- Contributing the rise of mobility of people in Europe for education and employment purposes
- Funding Lifelong Guidance Services
- ICT in Lifelong Guidance
- Improving careers information
- Improving employability and supporting older workers
- Interactive online tools
- Raising the skills and qualifications of adults
- Raising the skills and qualifications of young people
- Strategic Leadership
- Supporting people at risk and disadvantaged groups
- Training and Qualifications of Guidance Practitioners
INNOVATIVE ASPECTS OF LMI
- Blended counselling
- Creation of ePortfolios with students' skills and competences
- Crowed sourcing of expert knowledge on educational guidance
- Customisation of LMI through the users' adaptation according to their needs
- Data entered by end-users
- Effective job matching
- Guidance methods
- Informal LMI
- Innovative user profiling
- Interoperability with job-search engines
- Life course related filtering of LMI
- Matching of regional education to labour market
- News relevant to educational guidance
- Occupational information
- One-stop-shop
- Personalised educational advice
- Provision of additional information on the awards not available elsewhere, to make it easily understood to employers and institutions in other countries
- Provision of external links to available EC employment, guidance and educational services
- Real time LMI
- Scientific research on guidance
- Thematic compilation of third party LMI
- LMI is collected from various sources and provided as follows:
- News are grouped under eight main themes: 1. Labour market; 2. Continuing education; 3. Disability issues; 4. Laws and regulations; 5. School work; 6. News regarding the National Agency for Education; 7. Studies, and 8. Guidance and counselling.
- The Methods Bank includes guidance methods, tips and exercises to serve the target group’s needs.
- The Research Bank provides current LMI about scientific research on guidance.
- The REKAS tool provides LMI regarding the matching of regional education to labour market.
INNOVATIVE USE OF ICT
- Combination with offline elements
- Connection with third parties (LMI, PES, etc.)
- Customized RSS feed
- Dynamic interconnection of electronic resources according to a life course approach
- e-portfolio
- Interactive online tools
- Mobile app
- Online counselling
- Online wiki
- Open source
- Personalised information storage
- Quick diagnosis tool
- Social media utilisation
The infrastructure requirements of Syvonline are those of a simple website. LMI data and all other information is entered in Syvonline through its Content Management System.
From the users’ side, Syvonline and its different tools are quite easy to use and do not require advanced e-skills. The structure of the website and of its content has been reported to be user-friendly.
Results and impacts obtained
- Quantitative: in 2015, Syvonline had around 48 000 visits and attracted around 10 000 users.
- Qualitative: the platform can help guidance practitioners by offering them increased knowledge on guidance and understanding of opportunities for collaboration; and Syvonline can improve the cooperation between schools and working life.
- Evaluation: no systematic process. A network of guidance practitioners provides feedback on the website. Google Analytics, also used. Practitioners’ reference groups are organised.
- Alignment with the regional strategy for growth and the national curricula and LLG framework;
- Increased level of cooperation between Syvonline and municipalities as well as among municipalities themselves;
- Ability to empower school staff to assume guidance activities as the national curricula foresees;
- Single access point for a diverse range of information;
- News and guidance advancements with a local and national scope;
- Active support and promotion by the National Agency for Education;
- Largely user-driven design, tailored to specific student target groups;
- Increased accessibility and convenience provided by an ICT online collaboration platform.
- Uncertain sustainability in terms of funding.
- Local news confronts the national use.
- Wider adoption and use among school staff.
- Forum does not attract much activity.
Transferability elements
The National Agency for Education has been engaged in Syvonline since its development phase and has also spread information about the platform and its material.
Syvonline is aligned:
- with the frameworks promoting ICT tools and digitisation at a regional level, since it is actively supported by the VGR region and the respective municipalities, and
- with the new “ICT for Schools” strategy that aims to stimulate the digitisation in every aspect of the school system, including guidance.
The “GR SYVO” project that led to the development of the practice received funds of SEK 6 183 444 for the period 2012-2014. For the period 2014-2016 Syvonline, funded by VGR, had an annual budget of SEK 700 000.
The daily operation and maintenance of Syvonline is the responsibility of a team of four employees: a Project Manager who coordinates the project and is responsible for the cooperation among the municipalities; a Web Editor, responsible for the research conducted; a Process Manager with a focus on guidance methods and practitioners and a Programmer who is responsible for the coding of the portal and the IT part of the practice.
There is no standard profile in terms of educational background for the staff that works on the platform.
- Syvonline does not require advanced infrastructure ICT requirements;
- Syvonline’s tools are considered easy to use and do not require advanced e-skills or respective training;
- In addition, Syvonline offers customized RSS news feed.
- The Syvonline platform is combined with face-to-face activities with practitioners for stimulating peer learning and enhanced high quality services tailored to their target groups.
- The cooperation with stakeholders contributes to the further development and sustainability of the website.
Syvonline will focus in the next years in providing guidance methods that will assist practitioners to better work with newly arrived people to Sweden.
Additionally, Syvonline’s will aim to find a sustainable funding scheme.