European agriculture is facing many challenges, among which producing food and non-food products in sufficient quantity and quality and generating added value for farmers and food chain actors, while reducing agricultural impacts on the environment. Agroecology, defined as “the study of the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment within agricultural systems”, is seen as a very pertinent option to reorient European agriculture in order to answer these major challenges. However, higher education in European Universities is not yet fully adapted to train the present and future agricultural professionals on agroecology. In particular, multidisciplinary approaches are not very developed in existing programs. Moreover, current pedagogical methods often lack interactive and digital dimensions that are promising learning methods. Innovative tools are thus urgently needed to help university teachers deliver multidisciplinary, high quality and attractive training on agroecology to the students and current agricultural professionals. Our project thus aims at facilitating a multidisciplinary and systemic understanding of agroecology for secondary and higher education students as well as agricultural professionals through the development of a digital training tool. This tool will take the form of a serious game, i.e. a computer simulation game that will help students and agricultural professionals understand concretely how to implement agroecology in agriculture. Several game modes will be accessible to answer different learning outcomes and to reach different publics. The game will include learning tools, factsheets and other information to help learners taking decisions on their virtual farm. A tutorial, pedagogical guide and online course will also be developed. The game, tutorial and pedagogical tools will be freely accessible online at the end of the project. To reach this goal, we gathered a consortium of six European Universities: University of Liège (BE), Agrocampus Ouest (FR), Groupe ESA (FR), Oniris (FR), University of Agriculture in Krakow (PL) and University of Bologna (IT). Partners were selected based on their scientific excellence, the complementarity between scientific disciplines, their experience of European projects and their representativeness of the European diversity of dairy and crop production systems. Partners have participated in several European projects together, which is a guarantee for success. The project implementation will be divided in 5 work packages (WP): - WP1: project coordination and management by a steering committee gathering all partners and WP leaders; internal communication through a website and collaborative online tools; organisation of transnational meetings for teamwork and coordination. - WP2: review on agroecology; creation of a conceptual model including all major agroecological features for a European dairy and crop farm; identification of national farms characteristics in the four partner countries; definition of steering indicators for the evaluation of social, economic and environmental performances of the farm. - WP3: conception of 5 submodels (soil, crops, animals, economic and social aspects, ecosystem services); connection of all models into a global model; creation of a module to calculate steering indicators. - WP4: choice of IT company ; definition of game rules; game conception based on scientific model; game design and test of the serious game (O1). - WP5: realisation of tutorial (O2), pedagogical guide and online course (O3) and translation in five languages; student training week in Bologna (C1); dissemination to teachers in each partner university (E1); dissemination to professionals in each partner country (E2); online dissemination and participation to national and international events. This project will lead to the conception of 3 intellectual outputs: a serious game (O1), its tutorial (O2) and pedagogical tools (O3) to use the game in higher education or professional training. The student training week in Bologna (C1), the dissemination to teachers (E1) and to professionals (E2) that will be organised during the project are very important to test the serious game in real conditions. As final result, the serious game will be integrated in our existing study programmes. Dissemination will mostly happen at the end of the project, when the game will be available. The number of students, teachers and agriculture professionals that will be directly reached during the project is thus not showing its full potential. However, the game will be freely available online for all potential users at the end of the project, and we estimate that it will be used by over 1000 users per year. Our final objective is to train students - as future agriculture and veterinary professionals – and current professionals to implement agricultural practices based on agroecological principles.
European agriculture faces many challenges, including producing food and non-food products in sufficient quantity and quality and creating added value for farmers and actors in the food chain, while reducing agriculture's impact on the environment. Agroecology, defined as "the study of the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment within agricultural systems", is considered a highly relevant option for reorienting European agriculture to meet these major challenges. However, the education provided in European universities is not yet fully adapted to train current and future agricultural professionals in agroecology. In particular, multidisciplinary approaches are not well developed in existing curricula. Moreover, current teaching methods often lack the interactive and digital dimensions that are promising learning methods. Innovative tools are therefore urgently needed to help university teachers provide high quality and attractive multidisciplinary training on agroecology to agricultural students and professionals. The SEGAE project therefore aims to facilitate a multidisciplinary and systemic understanding of agroecology for secondary and higher education students and agricultural professionals through the development of a digital training tool. To achieve this objective, we have brought together a consortium of six European universities: University of Liège (BE), Agrocampus Ouest (FR), Groupe ESA (FR), Oniris (FR), Agricultural University of Krakow (PL) and University of Bologna (IT). This tool takes the form of a serious game, i.e. a computer simulation game that helps players to understand in concrete terms how to implement agroecology on a farm. In concrete terms, the player manages a virtual farm combining crops and dairy cattle breeding, where she/he can implement and evaluate the impacts of agricultural practices on indicators related to the environmental, economic and social sustainability of her/his farm. She/He can make her/his choices on aspects as varied as the choice of cattle breed, animal feed ration, choice of crops, tillage method, etc. And see directly and over time the impact of her/his choices on the various indicators. Four European farm types are proposed by default: French, Italian, Belgian and Polish. The game is aimed at teachers at universities and agricultural schools, as well as agricultural advisers in continuing education. Several pedagogical objectives can be achieved with the game: understanding the effects of different agroecological practices, global analysis of the farm, management of agroecological transitions. In addition, a scenario editor allows teachers to develop their own tailor-made pedagogical scenarios, thus meeting different learning objectives and reaching different audiences. The game is accompanied by video tutorials and a pedagogical platform that includes a teaching guide for teachers, turnkey exercise sheets, as well as lessons on the different dimensions of agroecology addressed in the game. The game, the tutorial and the teaching tools are freely available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish). In the framework of the project, more than 800 students have used the game. A training session involving 51 students demonstrated the educational interest of the game and resulted in a scientific publication (Jouan et al., 2020). Nearly 700 teachers, researchers and higher and technical education staff also received information or training on the game. Finally, more than 4,800 people have used the game since it went online. We hope that this serious game will help train high school and university students as well as agricultural professionals to contribute to the agroecological transition of European agriculture.