RadioActive Europe: promoting engagement, informal learning and employability of at risk and excluded people across Europe through internet radio and social media (RadioActive101)

RadioActive is an innovative education project that has developed and implemented a radical technology-enabled pedagogy to promote the inclusion, engagement and informal learning of excluded people, or those at-risk of exclusion, across Europe. It does this through harnessing primarily internet radio and also social media, or, as our motto states:

"RadioActive101: Learning through radio, learning for life!"

The project developed, implemented and is sustaining a pan-European Internet Radio platform, incorporating Web 2.0 ideas and features. This is linked to innovative community based pedagogies to address inclusion, employability and active citizenship in an original and exciting way, whilst recognising informal learning through electronic Open badges.

The consortium was led by the University of East London (UK), with other partners from Portugal (CIMJ), Germany (UKL), the UK (Pontydysgu), Romania (ODIP) and Malta (KIC).

These partners have direct links and ongoing collaborations with 13 primary Associate Partner organisations and a network of 39 mostly grass-roots organisations that facilitate access to the RadioActive101 participants, or 'radio-activists' as we define them. So the Associate Partners perform and deliver RadioActive 'on the ground' and are the vehicle for the learning experiences required for their production. These represent a particularly diverse range of groups and this was deliberate to allow us to test and refine our model, and show that it potentially works with virtually all excluded groups, and across Europe.

We actively developed, implemented and ran five national RadioActive 'stations' (or hubs) that are accessible via the European Support Hub (ESH). Through making the radio shows the target groups (schools, vocational education, Higher Education, informal and adult education) are developing digital competencies and employability skills 'in vivo' that are transferable to the 21st Century workplace. These competencies and skills align with six of
the EU Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning and we have developed a progression and accreditation model linking the key competencies to RadioActive activities and performances
that are recognised through Open electronic 'badges'. These badges provide concrete recognition measures and represent proficiencies that are relevant to further education or employment in particular related to the knowledge and creative and digital industries.

Evaluation findings were obtained through conducting a phased evaluation incorporating a full in depth ‘prototype’ evaluation in the UK during year one, a similar evaluation in Portugal and a smaller one in Germany in year two, that were followed by a broader and larger international survey of radio-activists (subjects) towards the end of the project. All these showed particularly positive and interesting results, such as the delivery of additional impact
and value beyond the informal learning of technical and employability skills. Additionally, we found improvements in confidence, self-esteem and general self-efficacy of individuals, plus additional improvements in groups and organisations. It appears that once our excluded groups developed the confidence and competence to perform activities they often thought were beyond them, they seem then empowered, to learn many other things and to develop a number of key competencies. At the European and national levels we have produced an extensive amount of dissemination activities to make the RadioActive Europe project public and well known, and also won two additional funding awards towards the end of the project.Other exploitation activities include embedding locally and internationally, with the latter
being realised through the establishment of an international Foundation that will also support and advise about funding models to support further expansion at the European level.