IMPACT - IT based Methodology for Promoting, Assessing and validating Competence oriented learning and Training The Validation of Learning Outcomes in Informal and Non-formal Learning (VINFL) is one of the top priorities on the European Educational Agenda. Frameworks and instruments like EQF, ECVET, EUROPASS and others are about to be largely implemented in the member states to facilitate transparency of qualifications and competences and foster mobility. However, though there are long term initiatives and a number of pilot projects on the theme, VINFL has not yet sufficiently reached the “practical level” of the educational professionals. There are a number of structural, technical and content related obstacles and challenges that hamper the implementation of VINFL, especially in those educational sectors that do not explicitly train with a “qualification objective”, thus having a direct motivation to describe competences in terms of learning outcomes, for instance in the Adult Education and Youth sector, but also in rather informal learning fields in School and Higher Education (e.g. the whole field of Erasmus mobility). A specific case of interest are stakeholders organising or participating in KA1 mobilities with the purpose to train educational personnel in the different educational sectors, course providers, sending educational institutions and their staff members as learners. Though in KA1 courses the validation of competences is even explicitly mentioned in the application forms only a few of the course providers and educational institutes have sufficient knowledge, skills and competences regarding VINFL. Based on latest surveys carried out in the framework of the predecessor projects, the following obstacles and weakness have been identified: 1. Lack of technical interoperability in the field a. due to missing technical specifications (also leading to a lack of comparability of units and learning outcomes); b. Missing connection to IT supported learning and assessment systems and open educational resources (OER) such as open source LMS or e-Portfolios. 2. Missing outreach and lack of cross-sectoral usability a. Lack of integration of other educational sectors like AE, Youth and School in the VINFL approach and missed opportunities to attract new users and to exploit the full potential of EUROPASS, ECVET and VINFL; b. Lack of interfaces to key competences and social, personal and organisational competences; c. Lack of further training and continuing professional development for stakeholders in these sectors and missing networking opportunities among national and European stakeholders on the matter. IMPACT will develop and pilot a comprehensive implementation strategy for VINFL with a special focus on IT-based interoperability and on integrating those educational groups that have not (yet) a good affinity to this important European field. The core output of the project is the IMPACT Implementation strategy for VINFL into educational practice (O7). It is based on a fully fledged qualification for educational staff on VINFL which is designed, developed and piloted with a group of 20 professionals in blended learning methodology (O6) including a rich open learning environment, the IMPACT platform (O4). A specific platform section for KA1 stakeholders will be provided as O5. The platform is centrally managed and maintained on an open source e-Portfolio system are consisting of a combined learning and validation environment (O3+O4) that shall be developed on the basis of a sound technical ECVET specification (O2). The specification is grounded on a research survey (O1) on the demands of the stakeholders in the field regarding VINFL and available good practice examples under specific consideration of ECVET taxonomy. To achieve these outputs the following activities will be carried out: 1. Developing a basic IT-specification for validation systems to achieve interoperability; 2. Integrating the specifications in an existing validation software; 3. Creating interfaces to OER (Open Educational Resources) by developing plug-ins for the open source e-portfolios: 4. Integrating data from pilot previous pilot projects in both systems 5. Piloting the approach in different educational sectors; 6. Qualifying educational stakeholders that are not yet familiar with VINFL but supposed to work with it like educational personnel from IST-courses, youth organisations, HR managers or educators/trainers in enterprises. 7. Deriving a comprehensive implementation strategy The project is based on a series of successful projects in the field of VINFL in the LLP and will be carried out by a consortium of partners with a long experience in European project collaboration. The partnership consists of 10 partners from DE, GR, IT, BG, SK, PL, PT, LV and BE working in Adult, Vocational, Higher, School Education and Youth and bring in substantial expertise to support the implementation of VINFL a cross-sectoral approach.