“Creating awareness on validation of the acquired competences”

The validation process has an objective: to give visibility to someone’s learning process. This learning process is usually done in non-formal contexts, that have nothing to do with the traditional formal educational backgrounds such as the educational degrees (school, university and master’s degrees). The learning process can take place at home, in your job, or maybe during leisure activities, and people tend to forget this. In the case of financial literacy, this happens all the time. As you have learned in the first modules, you need financial literacy to manage different aspects of your daily life, therefore you will probably acquire financial knowledge through non-formal settings. Open educational resources are also a non-formal way of gaining new competencies and skills. The validation process has the objective of giving value to the knowledge you acquire regardless of the context in which you have gained it. This process must generate confidence, reliability, and quality assurance to make sure that the learning process has been accomplished.

This module is important because you will learn about the importance of being aware of the competences you have acquired; you will be able to give them value and motivate yourself to continue learning. You will be aware that non-formal learning is another form of gaining new knowledge, that it gives new job opportunities, and it gives you access to second chances.

By the end of this module, you will learn:

• About the context used nowadays in Europe to validate and recognise non-formal learning,
• How to apply the non-formal learning outcomes to your national framework,
• The importance of recognising your capabilities and competencies and how to validate them,
• How to increase and improve the visibility and value of your competencies.