ODISSEU is a cross-field strategic partnership in the school education field creating an online simulation game responding to 4 key EU-wide needs: This will address 4 related school needs linked to key EU policy objectives: Need1: Ensuring inclusive education for young people which combats racism and discrimination on any ground Need2: Empowering teachers to educate children and young people in media literacy and to impart common fundamental values and to prevent and combat racism, intolerance and hate speech online Need3: Promoting intercultural dialogue through all forms of learning in cooperation with other relevant stakeholders Need4: Increase understanding and raise awareness of refugee issues amongst pupils ODISSEU is a well-balanced partnership, composed of different types of institutions, with different skills, regionally and culturally diversified. All partners are largely experienced in participating and coordinating European and national projects associated to school education, innovation, ICT and asylum seeker issues. The partners in the project are Oxfam IT (coordinator), University of Erlangen-Nurnberg (DE), University of Pitesti (RO), CARDET (CY), KOPIN (Malta) and Meath County Partnership (IE). Partners know ODISSEU can meet these 4 needs because: -ODISSEU will have a structural link into the curriculum to embed learning more effectively into formal education: no other models do this - will structurally include student active citizenship actions into the online game: - will be informed by real life stories developed by asylum seekers, with specific focus on training them as agent of change and educators - will be developed with the support and evidenced based feedback of Peer Groups, schools themselves and asylum seekers as the end users of the model ODISSEU will produce a holistic and inclusive Online Simulation Game to explain forced migration which allows broad participation across the whole school, including integration into the curriculum, provision for skills development and shifts in pedagogy and mindset by participating teachers, and a genuinely involvement of asylum seekers as active change agent throughout the project. This will make it both innovative (entirely new in EU) and complimentary to existing work. It therefore has 4objectives: OBJ1: Develop, adapt and transfer an innovative online simulation game to increase understanding and raise awareness of refugee issues amongst secondary school students OBJ2: Develop online education resources to support secondary school teachers to engage young people in informed discussion about Migration and Asylum in the EU; OBJ3: Promote a positive interaction and active participation of asylum seekers and refuges by engaging them to participate in local community’s life telling their stories OBJ4: Enhancing young people critical thinking and media literacy, The project will create 6 intellectual outputs to achieve this 1. A needs analysis research 2. Curriculum and Story Board 3. Digital Teacher Manual 4. Odisseu Online Game 5. E-library of real life stories 6. Policy recommendations Outputs will be created working with schools and adult educator organization across 6 countries, ensuring IOs are relevant and transversal. They will engage target groups: Group 1: Youth (11-18) and teachers in our project hub/trial schools. They will trial the tools. Group 2: Youth and teachers in other secondary schools in partner countries and EU-wide, to whom we will disseminate the tools. Group 3: Education stakeholders at local, national and EU level (e.g. policy makers, professional bodies etc), who we will aim to influence. Group 4: Adult educator organizations dealing with asylum seekers and refugees Delivering the above will ensure we meet the 4 needs identified above, and therefore meet the project goals. The project will also conduct continuous and comprehensive communication and dissemination activities, and host 6 national multiplier events. Together the outputs and dissemination will lead to direct impacts on more than 10.000 youth, over 500 teachers, 300 asylum seekers and 60 key education stakeholders during the life of the project. More importantly the high quality outputs will lead to the take-up of a sustainable and inclusive online simulation game that put the students in shoes of an asylum seekers with significant multiplication impacts across EU schools. Partners will also integrate the model into their own educational offers. More broadly, ODISSEU will contribute to sustainable shifts in the institutional practice and mindset of EU education systems to better promote inclusive education through online tools and formal and informal education in school.
The ODISSEU project has been developed by a cross-field, well balanced partnership composed by different institutions active in the school education field in Italy, Germany, Romania, Cyprus, Malta and Ireland with the overall aims to increase students and pupils understanding of the situations and challenges faced by migrants and refugees, by empowering teachers to educate them with innovative and interactive media and communication strategies, with a view of contributing to create a more inclusive and intercultural educational environment. The goal of the ODISSEU project has been to produce a holistic and inclusive online simulation game, informed by real life stories developed by asylum seekers and conceived with their support and feedbacks, to explain forced migration. The creation of this tool has also been underpinned by the creation of a set of online educational resources to support secondary school teachers training, aimed at engaging their students into an informed discussion about migration and asylum issues in Europe, via different means including interative media literacy skills. The project has also strenghtened exchanges between students and asylum seekers and refugees at the communities' level in the countries of implementation, to create a more inclusive educational and societal environment. This has been achieved by creating 6 intellectual outputs: 1. A needs analysis research; 2. Curriculum and Story Board; 3. Digital Teacher Manual 4. Odisseu Online Game; 5. E-library of real life stories; 6. Policy recommendations Across the 6 countries, the ODISSEU directly involved, 138 middle and secondary school teachers (22 in Germany, 20 in Cyprus, 42 in Romania, 16 in Malta, 23 in Italy and 15 in Ireland) in the online training sessions organised between September and December 2020 on the use of the ODISSEU resources. The online game, digital manual and curriculum activities developed by the partner organisation staff were pilot tested on 234 students across the 6 countries (Ireland 47; Malta 28; 46 in Germany, 50 in Cyprus, 50 in Italy 53 in Romania). The storytelling workshops a with refugees and asylum seekers have involved around 30 participants across all the partner countries, with different methodologies (face-to-face meeting, phone conversations, online sessions) and different methodologies. As the Transnational Report shows, the ODISSEU project had a positive impact across all targets. In particular, the majority of teachers across the 6 countries fully agreed with improved knowledge on issues related to forced migration and identified the resources provided in the ODISSEU project as accurate, innovative, entertaining and istructive, pupil oriented and capable of mobilise young people as catalysts for transformational change. Also the materials were seen as flexible and easy to use and likely to be integrated during teachers’ lessons in class or online. The blended approach (digital resources in connection with more participatory learning methodologies) was also appreciated: having a digital tool readily available to be used represented an added value to educators during the Covid-19 pandemic and laid a foundation for the further use of the materials produced in the project. As for students, the ODISSEU project was evaluated positively by this target groups, following the pilot testing of activities during the lessons. The materials tested were deemed to have a strong potential to change the attitudes towards the topic of migration in students. The majority of the students involved responded that they had learnt more about the causes of forced migration and issues concerning refugees and asylum seekers and that the ODISSEU Game helped them putting themselves into someone else’s shoes, making them reflect upon hate speech and stereotypes towards refugees, and upon their own prejudices towards a number of issues related to forced migration. Refugees and asylum seekers directly involved in the project activities declared that, through their participation in the storytelling workshop and the sharing of their story, they felt they contributed to shaping the narrative on forced migration in schools and among young people. In terms of the project longer term benefits, the ODISSEU project has elaborated resources which can be used to raise awareness among different age groups on the topic of forced migration, within existing public events and campaigns. The intellectual Outputs are largely online-based, thus being readily-available to be used by educators and professionals within and outside the countries participating in the project, and particularly fitting to be used in the Covid 19 impacted educational context.