CONTEXT Technology revolutions are transforming our world and changing the way we live, work and interact while leading to new opportunities with many challenges as well, and this is happening at an unprecedented pace. According to European Economic & Social Committee, "Information technology is on the rise everywhere, yet its potential for economic growth, employment, innovation and, above all, improving European citizens' quality of life, has still to be fully exploited." The committee also refers to "Digital Single Market Strategy" which will carry all Labour Market to the world of Internet and create a fully engaged digital society. As EC states, "those who could benefit most from education and training are the ones less likely to engage". In this process, in order to foster digital skills, training hard-to-reach adults is crucial, yet very challenging as well. Lessons learned from the previous attempts and European adult education experience in the last decade show us that these millions of adults can't be trained directly or taken to the 21st century labour markets. Motivational ways are urgently needed to reach those adults, re-mobilize them and increase their capacity to learn to learn and change the flow of their lives for better life conditions. Here, gamification practices both in face-to-face interactions and e-learning spaces are very promising to reach, motivate and re-mobilize these adults. OBJECTIVES Hereby the main goal of this project is to provide hard-to-reach adults with flexible learning opportunities through face-to-face interactions and an interactive e-learning platform and a mobile application equipped with gamification strategies to foster them digital skills. The project will also bring together small groups of these adults in events and show them how to transfer their digital skills into real life situations and how to use technology to improve their lives. The project also aims to • provide adults with 21st century skills and encourage them to take action and gain self-confidence, by enabling them to perceive their situations as a serious game in which they should play to win, • encourage them to see that they are "capable of changing their situations" by using their digital skills and gamification strategies in the society more effectively, • build the capacities of adult educators through trainings about gamification strategies in fostering hard-to-reach adults' digital skills and integrating these strategies into real life situations. TARGET GROUPS The target group will include 50 hard-to-reach adults who need practical experience to gain digital skills and integrate them into their lives to become capable of changing their situations and 50 adult educators who need capacity building to facilitate hard-to-reach adults to develop their digital skills and motivate them to re-mobilize in the community. ACTIVITIES & METHODOLOGY Methodology includes the following steps in general. 1- Gathering needs, experiences and generating inspirational scenarios through workshops with target groups 2- Developing Interactive e-learning Platform "My Digi Space" via literature reviews and joint work of partners and target groups 3- Developing Mobile Application "My Dig Box" through compilation and simplifying the content of e-learning platform RESULTS At the end of the project practice we will have obtained a guideline including inspirational scenarios, a gamified e-learning platform and a mobile app, which will serve adults to gain digital skills and facilitate them to integrate their attainments into real life situations/tasks. Thus they will be able to be re-mobilized, their engagement in 21st century skills will provide them with more self-confidence and motivation to take more action in the community. IMPACT Involved adults will make progress related to their work and life situations, like mentality change, producing practical digital solutions to facilitate daily life situations/responsibilities/interactions. Adult educators will have a chance for further professional development to facilitate hard-to-reach-adults to gamify their own real life tasks through digital skills. This will empower adults more and lead them to take initiative more easily. Project owners will be able to reach wider European audience thanks to interactive e-learning tools that will be developed in the course of the project and provide many European Citizens with effective and engaging learning tools to gain basic digital skills.
Owing to smartphones, tablets, and wearable technologies, digital devices became stronger in terms of managing transactions and humans, accomplishing daily activities, creating online identification, monitoring health conditions, adopting new ways of building connection between new opportunities. According to recent research from Munich University(2017) “digital transformation skills” presented that digital skill awareness has become important more than ever. In addition, an effective approach to close the gap in digital skills is exceptional in many societies. European Commission emphasized that improving digital skills of adults is top priority from the beginning of Erasmus+ program. European Commission set some goals in the European Skills Agenda and in Digital Education Action Plan to ensure that 70% of adults have basic digital skills by 2025. In scope of this, the project is dealing with one of the most challanging issue of Europe with regard to improve digital skills of hard-to-reach adults, and build flexible and dynamic societies equipped with 21. century skills. For this reason, intellectual outputs of our project are presented in a way that fullfill the needs of adult educators and the society. One of the focus of the project is to discuss with small groups consisting of hard to reach adults about how to use digital skills. In scope of this, digital skill’s needs were determined based on real life situations of adults. Inspirational scenarios were produced after analyzing target group’s needs and examining the results of focus group meeting. Inspirational scenarios and ODS lessons were used as a guide to develop educational content. The guide was translated to English, Turkish, Lithuanian, Greek, and Portuguese, and published on the web site. http://ourdigispace.meb.gov.tr/. Because hard-to-reach adults have many obstacles in front of them, more flexible and interesting solutions are needed. In scope of the project, in order to provide flexible learning facilities for adults distance education platform is established and e-contents are developed. The e-platform that is equipped with gamification strategies provides flexible and meaningful learning experiences. The platform includes many gamified digital duties compiled from adults living in different countries. Moreover, many of digital duties require similar steps (however they are not the same). For this reason, transferability potential is high for partner countries and in Europe (Learning Management platform http://mydigispace.web.tr/). (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7NPfjUICEkn-2vjJ_s2zQ) In addition, in scope of the project, a mobile interface was developed for e-learning platform. It is planned to be reached more adults with Mobile application. Mobile application includes “DigiBox”, gamified digital duties and animated introductory videos. The content addresses to basic digital skills, for this reason, transferability potential is very high (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mydigispace.mydigibox&hl=en_US&gl=US). During the project activities, to ensure progress of quality assurance project was evaluated and monitored. Quality control evaluations were prepared based on risk factor of the activities and performed in trimester. During quality evaluation, outcomes were examined in detail, and quality of the project on the basis of matrix charts has been evaluated to provide a clear picture of the implementation level. In order to evaluate the quality of Intellectual outputs, feedbacks gathered from local workshops, multiplier events (panel discussion and final conference), transnational meetings and small workshops are used as qualitative indicators. In addition, expert’s opinions are taken into consideration regarding intellectual outputs. Analyze was made based on gathered data, the project quality assurance final report was prepared. In order to reach wider audience, dissemination activities are organized at local, regional and international level. In order to reach and guarantee the target group at different level, project activities are organized during the project. Dissemination of the project are provided through following activities; • Small workshops • Panel discussion • Focus Group Meetings-same as workshops •E-Newsletter, notifications (posters, brochures, leaflets are the examples of notification); • Preparing a “dissemination bag” with various materials to distribute stakeholders (in addition; cloth bags, pencils, notebooks, usb’s) • Live lab and social network events=panel discussion • Mobile Application “My Digibox” • Internet website • Interactive e-learning Platform “My DigiSpace” • Policy documents • Professional virtual networks (Facebook, Linkedin ve Instagram) • Final Conference Later on, project dissemination report was prepared. - All aims planned to be achieved were accomplished. In scope of dissemination activities, through workshop, conference and panel discussion 319 people were reached and 600 people were reached via other tools.