"Scaffold", a deck of cards to design competence-oriented learning experiences

This guide has been prepared to accompany practitioners who will be starting to use the Scaffold deck of cards for designing learning experiences aiming at the development of key competences of young and adult learners while applying the “integrated learning outcomes” approach. The idea behind Scaffold is to provide educators with a deck of cards that they can use to design teaching, learning and assessment activities. The cards represent competences, instructional design principles, assessment methods, and prompts for educational activities. The concept of Scaffold is presented as a portable, user-friendly tool that helps educators combine competences in meaningful ways. The tool is designed to stimulate creativity and awareness in the instructional design process, providing a blueprint for educators to incorporate key competences into their teaching practice. It addresses the challenges identified by the Council Recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning (2018/C 189/01), including the variety of learning approaches, support for teachers, and assessment and validation of competence development. While the “Scaffold” cards are a self-contained, intuitive, ready-to-use tool, that comes with a small booklet for guiding the new users in their first steps in using the card deck to the design of curricula and learning activities - as short as one lesson and as long as the whole course – this guide allows education and training practitioners and researchers to dig deeper into the main principles of learning design aiming at the development of learning outcomes for key European competences. This guide focuses specifically on the teaching and learning methods best suited to support the development of such learning outcomes in a cross-disciplinary, cross-curricular and integrated way.