European surveys indicate that youth in Europe face challenges related to low level of development of soft competences such as: • ability to work in interdisciplinary and international project groups, • ability of cross-cultural understanding, critical thinking, communication, self-direction and creativity, • low level of knowledge of spoken English, • ability to create a contextual game scenario on selected topics in an interdisciplinary team, • spirit of entrepreneurship. These challenges should be faced at transnational level as entrepreneurial skills are becoming increasingly recognised as necessary skills for III level students to thrive in the 21st century. However, traditional predominant teaching approach is passive learning. Learners receive lectures for the majority of class time, having little opportunity to give input through experiential exercises and team work. Entrepreneurship education should focus on project based learning facilitating real life learning experiences. As a result, teaching soft skills to students is very difficult in a classroom within traditional system. Overall objective: to make education with use of interdisciplinary groups focused on contextual games (CGs) a systematic didactic approach widely used by higher education institutions, as well as these dealing with non-formal education. CGs are games strictly connected with real context-environment of the player, they stimulate interaction of players with other people in the real world. CGs, often connected to educational purposes, can be used for social integration of groups of people. Introduction of game element will enable students to develop soft competences in an attractive way. Specific objectives: I. to analyse challenges related to development of soft competences among students and to teaching these competences in project countries, II. to stimulate development of soft competences among students by organisation of blended mobility for them during which they will develop together prototypes of CGs, III. to promote and build foundations for CGs as an innovative educational approach by elaboration of: 1) didactic courses on their development and 2) Protocol: Implementation Concept. 120 students of bachelor and master programmes (applied IT, graphical design, design, teacher training and telecom engineering, tourism) will take part in blended mobility. Methodology: IO1 will provide knowledge on challenges related to learning by and teaching to students soft competences. IO2 will provide knowledge used in practice in blended mobility. IO2 will contain knowledge on CGs development. IO2 with IO3 will be foundations for CGs as a systematic didactic approach. Work Package (WP) 1: PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION WP2: ANALYSIS OF CHALLENGES RELATED TO SOFT COMPETENCES • examination of the challenges related to 1) learning soft competences by students in project countries 2) teaching soft competences among students by the teachers in project countries • preparation of national reports • preparation of the collective report WP3: CREATION OF KNOWLEDGE BASE ON CONTEXTUAL GAMES (CGs) DEVELOPMENT: • elaboration of general introductory didactic courses • testing the usefulness of general didactic courses on students and their feedback (virtual workshops) • refinement of general introductory didactic courses modules based on feedback from students and teaching staff gathered during blended mobility • elaboration of new didactic modules based on prototypes developed during blended mobility activities • delivery of the final didactic courses (with new modules , taking into account feedback from blended mobility) WP4: BUILD FOUNDATIONS FOR CGs AS AN INNOVATIVE SYSTEMATIC EDUCATIONAL APPROACH: • organization of blended mobility for students • elaboration of the Protocol: Implementation Concept (draft, final version) WP5: PROMOTE CGs AS AN INNOVATIVE SYSTEMATIC EDUCATIONAL APPROACH: • develop the website and social media presence • develop e-newsletters, press releases & dissemination materials • organize 6 multiplier events Results: • Collective report on challenges related to soft competences • Didactic courses on CGs development • Protocol: Implementation Concept • Blended mobility for CGs development (120 participants) Impact: • Increase in active use of CGs by students and teachers at universities as an innovative tool and higher level of development of soft competences of students to ultimately make young people more competitive on the labour market. Long term benefits: • CGs as a systematic educational approach meaningfully integrating technology into the 21st century education (instead of traditional, rigid way of teaching and learning), that can be applied to other than young people target groups (citizens, workers). • Existence of Protocol: Implementation Concept - structure aimed at guaranteeing the project sustainability.
The project Genius - Innovative Interdisciplinary Contextual Education Using Games Development goal was to design and implement a new didactic methodology for soft-skills development using contextual games. The modern knowledge-based society puts a high demand on new young people who are fresh to the labour market. European surveys indicate that youth in Europe face challenges related to low level of development of soft competencies such as: - ability to work in interdisciplinary and international project groups, - ability of cross-cultural understanding, critical thinking, communication, self-direction and creativity, - low level of knowledge of spoken English, - ability to create a contextual game scenario on selected topics in an interdisciplinary team, - spirit of entrepreneurship. These challenges should be faced at a transnational level as entrepreneurial skills are becoming increasingly recognized as necessary skills for students all over the world to thrive in the 21st century. The project Genius targets these issues. The new method developed during the last three years allows increasing the level of skills needed in the modern job market. Most young people are interested in new technologies and are familiar with mobile games and applications. Therefore, the designed methodology is based on a creative activity like mobile game development. During the event that implements the approach, the participants are asked to create, in a small team, a mobile game or application on a selected topic. The teamwork and creative task put high demand on soft skills like communication, creativity, critical and innovative thinking, etc. During the project, five partners from Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and Portugal have developed the method as well as tested it in a real environment during two LTT activities. In the project participated 92 students and, 15 academic teachers. In the duration of the project, didactic courses that can been used in blended games development events and the Protocol of Implementation that described developed methodology and provides a guideline for implementation have been prepared. During the LTT activities, teams of students have prepared 15 prototypes of contextual games on two themes: “Elderly care in Europe, especially in Finland” and “Motivate people to sports activities in the city of Antwerp”. The methodology for soft skills development with the use of contextual game development can be used by university-like educational institutions as well as by other entities who perform non-formal types of education. Especially, the method can be used for the integration and introduction of a group of new employees in the company during internships. The consortium has created the Implementation Protocol. This guide can be used to implement the method by the followers. It has to be mentioned that not all Genius-like project participants have to have a computer science background. Quite in the opposite, only about 25-30% of participants should have IT knowledge rest can represent different areas. The multidisciplinary is very important in the approach.