The purpose of the project is to collaborate on continuous learning in Swedish-speaking Finland across regional boundaries and educational levels, to create a common understanding of continuous learning, to develop the education providers’ own competence in continuous learning and to develop new learning paths for continuous learning in order to improve and broden the supply of educational services in cooperation with working life and to meet the national goals for continuous learning.

The project is based on broad national cooperation and jointly identified needs for development and better coordination to secure the supply of continuous learning services in Swedish. Customised and accessible continuous learning services require both flexibility and the ability to act and respond to the needs and demands of working life for continuous learning. The aim is to better respond to the need for educational services that offer opportunities for the development and renewal of skills at different stages of life and in working life.

For individuals, continuous learning is important to achieve personal potential, a meaningful career, improve their employability and ensure their well-being. For employers, continuous learning is important to ensure the availability of skilled staff and future competences.

For society, continuous learning is important to ensure readiness for change, employment development and the competitiveness and productivity of companies/employers.

The project is structured around five work packages as follows:
WP1: Continuous learning in collaboration
WP2: Future competences and learning pathways for continuous learning
WP3: Customer-centered and value-creating cooperation with working life
WP4: Future readiness and continuous learning
WP5: Professional development of staff with a focus on future learning.

The project’s activities will coordinate the activities of education providers in Swedish-speaking Finland, from liberal education to upper secondary vocational education and higher education. The project’s development activities will improve the efficiency of the use of continuous learning resources at different levels of education and improve the availability of services by improving the knowledge and skills of education providers and staff. The project activities will emphasise the development of staff skills and knowledge, linked to customer orientation, based on the demand for continuous learning.

Activities in the different levels of education are developed simultaneously, which creates the conditions for education providers in Swedish-speaking Finland to offer versatile and labour market-oriented education packages in continuous learning based on mapped future competence needs (WP1-2).

The project’s development activities will also improve the target group relevance of education services and improve the ability of education providers to carry out customer-oriented and value-creating activities (WP3).

The project identifies and develops training providers’ skills and expertise in trend scouting and future-orientation and improves existing methods of business intelligence and access to different sources of information in order to support the planning of a future-oriented range of continuous learning that improves the future readiness of different business sectors (WP4).

The project activities promote the pedagogical and process-related competence development of Swedish-speaking trainers in continuous learning and collaboration on continuous learning, given that the target groups of education providers also include adult students, and the education providers’ educational offerings should also include continuous learning offerings (WP5).

The project will run from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2026 and is implemented by the following actors: Åbo Akademi University (main project partner); Axxell Vocational Education and Training; Novia University of Applied Sciences; Prakticum Vocational Education and Training; YA! Vocational Education and Training.

Associated partners: Arcada University of Applied Sciences; Bildningsalliansen (non-formal adult education in Swedish in Finland), Hanken School of Economics and Regional State Administrative Agency.

The Lärsam project’s web pages (in Swedish).