Building Sustainable Career Skills in Youth Through Adaptive Learning and Competency Self-Assessment Tools

The DECIDE project entitled “Career choices competencies for the post-pandemic future using multicriteria decision-making”, aimed to empower young individuals in their career decision-making by providing them with personalised learning sources and tools to monitor the development of essential career competencies. This paper presents the findings from evaluating two key components of the DECIDE project: an e-guide for developing career competencies and a web-based application that monitors individuals’ progress in competency development. These tools help young people identify the skills and knowledge they lack to meet the demands of employers for sustainable and innovative career paths. The e-guide was designed as a self-learning programme that guides users through interactive models focused on building the competencies required for sustainable and innovative career profiles. Pre-tests and post-tests were developed to assess the effectiveness of the e-guide and measure the participants’ competency levels before and after engaging with the learning content. The application utilises advanced algorithms and visualisation techniques to analyse pre-test and post-test data, identify competency gaps, and provide users with a clear understanding of their competency development progress and areas for further improvements. The results of the testing and user feedback indicate that the developed tools positively impacted the development of career competencies. The study reveals that the e-guide provided educational value and effectively supported self-directed learning. At the same time, the web-based application offered a valuable tool for self-assessment and identifying competency gaps in career decision-making.