Competency lab

PerFORMARE EmotivaMENTE (that encompasses “Competency lab” and the course “Emotional competencies and individual development”) has been included in the short list of the best didactic projects in the session “Nurturing Employability” at the international competition “Reimagine Education” organized by  Wharton – University of Pennsylvania, SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, QS Stars.

Contacts

The work environment is the place in which the importance of an intelligence that is not just logic and abstract, but a harmonious combination of different capacities is more clearly manifested. These capacities include the ability to establish constructive relationships, to trust visceral sensations – when needed –  , to grasp emotional links between people enhancing the positive ones and diverting the destructive ones.”

Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, 1998.

What Competency Lab is

Competency Lab is a cycle of four interactive class lessons that aims to increase participants’ awareness of the behavioral competencies needed to achieve their professional goals and improve their competitiveness on the labor market.

Behavioural competencies are individual characteristics that lead to or cause effective or superior performance. Behavioral competencies are not related to a specific job, but they can be activated in any professional position which requires them. They can be goal and action management abilities, relational abilities or cognitive abilities. Some examples of behavioral competencies are: achievement orientation, initiative, adaptability, empathy, leadership, conflict management, influence, teamwork, self-awareness, self-control, positive outlook, pattern recognition, systems thinking, oral communication, etc.

Competency Lab is addressed to all students enrolled in a Master’s Degree Programme of Ca’ Foscari University.

Each Competency Lab is structured in 4 classroom meetings to 3 hours each (corresponding to 15 academic hours) and activities to be carried out online between one meeting and another. The entire Lab is organized over a period of 5 weeks.

Enrollment and attendance are mandatory. Participating in class activities and completing proposed exercises entail the provision of 6 ECTS credits, which will be inserted in the student’s study plan and in the final list of exams taken by each student.

The Competency Lab has been developed by the Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre, the Centre whose aim is to improve people’s employability and performance through the development of their behavioral competencies, in collaboration with the Department of Management.  

Contents and methods

The Competency Lab allows students to undertake a process aimed at:

  • Increasing their awareness of the aspirations and objectives of personal and professional growth;
  • Measuring the possession of their social and emotional competencies necessary for the achievement of their objectives;
  • Understanding their strengths and areas of improvement, functional to the definition of an individual learning plan;
  • Matching the expectations of the labour market about the behavioral competencies required, and understanding how to enter the labour market by leveraging on their personal vision and their soft skills.

In a Competency Lab each student is guided through four stages.

  1. The first step is the identification of his/her future goals.  This phase wants to orient the student toward a mature and clear vision of his/her professional goals (ideal self).
  2. The second phase lets the student understand which is his/her level of possession of a set of behavioural competencies (real self).
  3. The third phase helps the student to be aware of his/her strengths and weaknesses, and to understand which are the competencies he/she needs to improve – adopting new behaviours - to achieve his/her ideal self.
  4. The fourth phase, through conversations with companies, allows the participants to understand, on the one hand, if their professional objectives are aligned with the behavioral competencies they possess, and on the other hand the labour market requests.

The activities of the Laboratory will be offered through classroom meetings and online activities.

The online educational activities will be supported by a digital learning platform (Competency platform) developed by the Competency Centre for Ca' Foscari students. Through the platform, each student can have access to a set of additional activities necessary for the completion of the course: for example, reading a short article, watching a movie, filling in questionnaires, completing exercises.

How to participate

In the academic year 2023/2024 four editions of Competency Labs will be provided in September 2023 (in Italian), November 2023 (in Italian), February 2024 (in English) and March 2024 (in Italian).

Competency Lab is not compatible with participation in course "Emotional Competencies and Personal Development”.

  • Participation is limited to students enrolled in Master’s programmes since the a.y. 2016/17 and to students enrolled in economic Bachelor’s programmes in previous years.
  • The Competency lab must be included in the student’s study plan only after receiving a registration confirmation and having participated to the first meeting.
  • In view of the high number of applications, if missing the first meeting, registration to the following meetings will be subject to availability. If missing meetings following the first one, attendance to further meetings will not be possible.
  • It is possible to cancel one’s registration until three days before the beginning of the Competency Lab through the link used for registration.

Earn Open Badge with CFCC

What is an Open Badge?

Open Badge (OBI - Open Badges Infrastructure) is an open technical standard, developed by Mozilla Foundation, and adopted by more than fourteen thousand organizations around the world in order to identify, recognize, gather and narrate the competencies of people.

Each Open Badge is associated with an image which embeds metadata about the skill that the badge represents, the recipient to whom the badge has been issued, how the skill has been assessed, the institutions that assessed it (in this specific case Ca’ Foscari University of Venice for the open badge earnt by the participants of the learning activities offered by the Ca’ Foscary Competency Centre).

In Italy, Open Badges that comply with the standard defined by Mozilla are issued by BERST.

How can they be displayed?

Open Badges can be included in the digital curriculum vitae to recognize your competencies and can be shared across the web, for instance through Linkedin, in order to display your own competency portfolio.

How can they be earnt?

Attending the Competency Lab you earn the Open Badge “Soft Skills: Self-Awareness”.

Soft Skills: Self Awareness. Ca' Foscari Competency Centre

Last update: 14/02/2024