Ideation and call – Competence Hub

Based in the drafted scope and the input in the Issues and Need dialogue, the below areas are considered to be included in the call. We may however decrease the number of areas due to budget constraints, if the area fits better to be included in the Academy fall 2022 call (for activity start July 2023), and if we think there will not be proposals addressing the area. Related to the last concern, we want you to either as a comment to this post or through other channels let us know if you want a specific area to be prioritised as you plan to send in a proposal.

  • Synchronous blended and face-to-face courses with significant revenue potential 
    • With an initial focus on online in 2020 and 2021, we need to strengthen our portfolio especially regarding synchronous blended and face-to-face courses. Course should ideally be possible to repeat enough times to reach break even, justifying the investment and development costs. Blended learning programmes, which make the most of asynchronous online, synchronous online and on-site offer great opportunities in terms of efficiency, flexibility and price performance, especially in the post-covid era. They should be further and better leveraged. This also includes niche courses meeting very specific unmet needs.
  • Latest learning technologies and methodologies
    • How can we utilize new learning technologies and methodologies within the Competence Hub? Can we improve learnings and/or decrease costs? Examples can be new immersive technologies (VR, AR, XR, etc.) and learning methodologies (gamification, challenge-based learning, neurosciences/psychology-based learning etc.) that enable us to create new, more effective learning experiences. How to leverage, in practice, these new technologies and methodologies within professional/learning courses should be tested.
  • Trade fair courses
    • New course formats based on existing trade fairs, such as Tomorrow.Mobility, could be an interesting way to leverage and exploit potential synergies based on existing activities gathering urban mobility professionals.
  • Communities
    • We look for new ways to engage with existing urban mobility communities. Supporting existing communities could be a fast way to identify, probe and met training needs by larger groups.
  • Inter-sectorial courses and networking
    • There is a need for different mobility stakeholders to better understand each other as well as to work and learn together. There is a connected need for mobility professionals to develop their network and their networking skills. Often best practices and solution directions exist, but making them happen on an organizational or inter-organizational level, is another challenge.

  • Cross-Cutting Issues to Permeate all Call Items
    • Focus should be but on strengthening practical skills in a way that is easily transferable to professional practice. Training programmes in urban mobility need to be specific and tailored to the specific professional realities (needs, goals, challenges, working environment, etc.) of the learners.
    • Knowledge exchange and shared best practices in the training of professionals should happen in a contextual setting.
    • Given the many deep changes that urban mobility is going through and the need to train many professionals to occupy jobs that do not yet exist, there is a need to address this reality in a constructive way, so to better understand the “big picture”, key trends and transformations, key skills which need to be developed, what data should be used and how, etc.
    • The Competence Hub has already developed and delivered a wide variety of courses and course content, which should be leveraged as much as possible in the development of new courses and learning experiences. There is also a need to integrate urbanmobilitycourses.eu courses with complimentary material from YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms.
    • User and citizen-centred solutions are a key component of efficient and effective urban mobility. We need to find ways to design trainings that better take into account the learners’ needs. We also need to design trainings that show the different mobility stakeholders how to be more user-centred.
    • We need also to meet the needs of transport professionals today, which on one hand are very local (when you think of governance for example, urban structure, legal aspects) and on the other hand universal (technology, general concepts related to space, to accessibility etc.).
    • How can we make sure that courses developed by the Competence Hub reach beyond a highly-educated, English-speaking audience? We need to find ways for people around Europe with a poor level of English to still be able to benefit from CH online courses, without having to duplicate/replicate our e-courses into different languages, as they would then be too difficult to operate once online.
    • The gender balance and perspective in CH courses and regarding learners needs to be further emphasised and integrated. Likewise geographic diversity (e.g. EU, RIS, non-EU).