"<< Background >>In an era of advanced technology, human interaction is become less and less frequent. Tasks like doing your grocery shopping, managing your finances, making travel arrangements, accessing information, and communicating with people has all moved to the digital realm. This has led to a reduction in face-to face communication with people daily. This move may have had little impact on Baby-Boomers, Generation X and Y who grew up in periods of little or none of the technology available today, who sent letters instead of emails and played board games instead of video games. Those generations have adapted and moved with the technologies around them. However, it seems the impact of a more technological driven society has been quite different for Generation Z. Often deemed “digital natives”, Gen Z (born between 1995 and 2010) have grown up in an environment where technology is readily available, high speed internet was the norm and social media platforms are the primary form of communication. As this generation begins to join the workforce, it is becoming apparent that they often lack the soft skills required to be effective in the modern workplace (Tulgan, 2018). By soft skills for employment, we are referring to skills like good communication, time-management, problem-solving, punctuality, a good work ethic – all skills that professionals today may take for granted, but that could be real obstacles to employment for young people today.Research presented in ‘Gen Z @ Work’ (Stillman & Stillman, 2017), states that 37% of Gen Z's believe that technology has weakened their ability to maintain strong interpersonal relationships and develop people skills. Through the Workplace Preparedness Study, commissioned and published by McDonalds in 2018, employees of the fast-food chain who participated in the study stated that they valued the soft skills of their colleagues more than their hard skills. The study engaged over 6,500 employees in McDonalds, and they rated the soft skills of problem-solving (95%), teamwork (94%), verbal communication (94%) and being on time for work and having good attendance (94%) as being the most valued soft skills for colleagues to have. This survey also found that in most cases, Gen Z learners only gain these skills through their first job and cannot learn and cultivate these skills through school and social settings.Roles and opportunities in the jobs market are evolving, the importance of hard skills has shifted. Although hard skills are still necessary, the importance of soft skills is becoming more and more visible in the labour market. A survey, called the Global Talent Trend Survey, conducted by LinkedIn (2018), found that 82% of organisations said that soft skills are more crucial to the success of their company than hard skills. However, 62% of Gen Z’ers think hard skills are more important than soft skills for employability (LinkedIn, 2018). This survey also showed that 61% of organisations believe Gen Z employees will need extra support in the development of their soft skills in the workplace.Soft skills, also referred to as transversal skills, are needed to help employees to be more adaptable and resilient to possible changes (World Bank, 2018). The OECD (2019) have outlined a framework for soft skills, called “the Big 5 Domains”, looking at the 5 areas of soft skills: Task Performance (achievement motivation, responsibility, self-control, persistence), Emotional Regulation (stress resistance, optimism, emotional control), Collaboration (empathy, trust, cooperation), Open-Mindedness (curiosity, tolerance, creativity), and Engaging With Others (sociability, assertiveness, energy). Gen-Quest will explore each of these 5 areas and will design a suite of active learning resources that will support Gen Z learners, and the youth workers who engage with them, to develop their skills under these 5 themes. The GENQUEST consortium will address these competences using a WebQuest methodology.<< Objectives >>Supporting youth employability is a core objective of all EU Member States in the aftermath of the pandemic. Young people have statistically suffered the work job losses through pandemic-induced closers of sectors. Young people are typically engaged in economic sectors where informal, low-skilled jobs are most common – including retail and the tourism sector in our countries. To provide young people with every possible chance to succeed in the post-pandemic economy, partners feel that in their role of supporting the progress and wellbeing of young people in Europe, that we have an obligation to support young people in our networks to develop the soft skills they will need to succeed in the modern workplace.Research published on TechTarget (2020) states that making a meaningful contribution to the world is important to GenZ, and that young individuals expect to have their input welcomed and respected and are less tolerant of authoritarian working environments. In the workplace, research tells us that GenZ employees expect greater flexibility; seek authenticity and truth in their work; are more motivated by the desire to contribute to something meaningful in work, etc. While this is the ideal for GenZ employees, most of these young people realistically will not find employment that offer these conditions. Even in modern workplaces, while there are advances in organisations having a purpose, being more diverse, offering more work-life flexibility and being mindful of individual needs and desires of employees, even the most progressive and open workplaces, required employees to have well-developed soft skills so that they can work effectively as part of a team, be motivated and conscientious enough to work independently on tasks allocated to them and trouble-shoot and solve problems as they arise. GENQUEST partners believe that these transversal skills that are key to employability are basic competences that all employees should have and that GenZ often lack. It is for this reason that this project will dedicate itself to supporting young people to develop these skills so that they can attain employment and begin building their purposeful careers. In this way, GENQUEST is responding to the needs of our target group of young learners so that they can develop the soft-skills they need to access sustainable and meaningful employment opportunities.WebQuests were chosen as the format for these resources because they are inquiry-oriented activities which encourage learners to engage in collaboration and team-work exercises, and to develop their creative and critical thinking and problem-solving skills through completing the proposed challenges. The format of the resources in themselves will support young people to develop some of the key skills they require to support their employability; however when focused on the targeted subject of developing their soft skills, these activities will be developed to create authentic and deeper learning experiences for Gen Z learners, which will appeal to their interests in seeking truth and authenticity in their experiences, while also supporting them to enhance their transversal skills that employers value. As such, through these innovative learning resources, the GENQUEST project aims to bridge the gap between Gen Z and the needs of the labour market by increasing their soft skills; but it is also significant that the education model chosen to deliver these educational activities will also align with the learning preferences of young learners. While this project will prioritise soft skills for employment, through using the WebQuest methodology, our aim is also to foster independence in learning among our youth target group, so that they can be informed, well-rounded and confident European citizens, able to make the most of social, civic, and political life, as well as supporting their employability. These are the primary outcomes that the GENQUEST project team would like to achieve.<< Implementation >>The project workplan has been built around a phased methodology comprising interlinked and overlapping design, development, testing and implementation actions. GENQUEST is a result-oriented project and at each phase tangible results will be developed. While the two main target groups are front-line youth workers, who will be the primary beneficiaries of the proposed in-service training programme, and young people, who will reap the benefits of the new WebQuests to support their employability, in reality, both the professionals and learners engaged will extract significant benefits from all proposed project results.To support project development at local level, each partner will establish a stakeholder forum comprising key youth service providers, employment support organisations and business representative bodies. Having this composition of representatives in these forums will be beneficial to youth workers, as they will learn the real-needs of employers in terms of the soft skills that young employees should develop; and also beneficial to employers who will gain insight into the motivations and desires of Gen Z learners and potential employees. These forums will play a pivotal role in the development process supporting the work of partners by testing and validating all prototype resources produced. The forums will meet on a regular basis throughout the project duration and will act as local advocates for the project within the sectors they represent. Bringing representatives of business and youth development together is an important added value and it is expected that these forums will endure after the project has ended.The planned new challenge-based resources will represent a considerable addition to the lexicon of available employment readiness resources. In total, 50 WebQuest learning resources will be provided addressing a broad range of competences. These new resources will be available as an open educational resource in 5 partner languages. As all challenge based materials will be produced in media-rich formats - integrating short instructional videos and quizzes where appropriate, and accessible through the project website which will be optimised for mobile-use - the potential impact of this resource will be significant. Innovative soft skills training resources can only achieve the desired results if they are supported by appropriately trained youth workers. Partners will design and produce a bespoke in-service training programme for front-line youth workers addressing 3 key skill areas that have been identified during research conducted to inform this proposal. As this in-service training will address issues like online learning, developing employment-related soft skills and the use of challenge-based educational interventions the demand for this training will continue into the future as all of these issues become more and more mainstream.A project website will be developed by FIP. This website will function on a wide range of mobile learning platforms and will be populated with the innovative WebQuest challenges. This website will also host all completed WebQuest challenges as a reference to support exchange of best practice and will provide access to the social media pages of the project to help build a sustainable network of youth workers who complete in the in-service training and young people who complete WebQuest challenges to build their key transversal skills and competences. The project Facebook page will be embedded in the project website so that youth workers and young people who use these innovative training materials can post and share the results of their Quests on the project Facebook page, and this can be shared by youth workers and young people in all partner countries. In this way, the website will facilitate the intercultural networking of young people and youth professionals.<< Results >>According to McKinsey (2019) the gap in soft skills that Gen Z employees currently possess, and the soft skills that employers desire, comes from this generation’s need to find the ‘truth’ at the root of everything. As such, they seek authenticity in their conversations with others, and may appear to lack the skills to understand and adhere to the nuances of established workplace etiquette. Gen Z learners also seek authenticity in their learning experiences. Authentic learning motivates them, as they see a real and lived outcome from their educational effort. It is for this reason that the GENQUEST project proposes to use WebQuests to develop the key transversal skills in young people that will support their future employability. Based on our plans, partners have agreed to developing the following core project results: Result 1 – A suite of 50 WebQuests to build Key Soft Skills for Employment - WebQuests are a structured learning experience that use links to essential resources on the internet and an authentic task to motivate learners’ investigation of an open- ended question for the development of individual expertise. Effective WebQuests involve a process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. The best WebQuests inspire students to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own metacognitive processes. WebQuests are frequently described as 'scaffolded' learning structures to support learner performance beyond their capacities. The WebQuest challenges that comprise this innovative learning resource will address ""the Big 5 Domains”, that were identified in the OECD report (2019) and will specifically support Gen Z learners to develop their soft skills under the following 5 themes:(1) Task Performance (achievement motivation, responsibility, self-control, persistence);(2) Emotional Regulation (stress resistance, optimism, emotional control);(3) Collaboration (empathy, trust, cooperation);(4) Open-Mindedness (curiosity, tolerance, creativity);(5) Engaging With Others (sociability, assertiveness, energy).Embedded in the resources will be strategies and actions aimed at developing key transversal skills like: - digital competence- learning to learn- critical thinking and problem solving- negotiation and team-workThe primary target group of the project are young digital natives who have mobile technologies embedded in their daily lives. Designing bespoke game-based educational resources that can be directly accessed on smart-phones and other mobile devices significantly increases the chances of making a lasting impact on the target group in all partner countries and building high-value transversal skill sets that are much sought after in the labour market.Result 2 – In-service training programme and learner manual – The in-service training will place a significant emphasis on working in new dynamic, online learning environments and explore the different roles of youth professionals in these environments. The proposed new media-rich and interactive resources will potentially bring a wide range of new educational environments into the learning process especially smart phones, other mobile devices and social media platforms and partners need to ensure that all youth service providers are:- comfortable working with the new WebQuest resources in these non-traditional learning environments;- fully bought-in to the benefits that online learning can bring;- fully aware of the risks that pertain in online environments;- able to safeguard against possible negative factors associated with online learning.All partners will localise the new training resources to ensure that they are culturally appropriate in their local environment and translate them into their local language. All partners will also pilot the youth worker training and the WebQuests directly with members of our local target groups."