The aim of the project was to use the various activities starting from scientific (educational) research through actual classroom practice to hold up a mirror to the participants so that they could reflect on their current pedagogical approach as an adult education centre in general and as a team in particular. Based on this reflection, they aimed to make the necessary adjustments to their current operation in order to further optimise it in the light of the new challenges within adult education. The project thus focused on the one hand on the individual teacher within the 4 adult education centres and on the other hand on the centre/team as a whole. The main objectives of this project were: - for gamification: developing an awareness of the use of gamification within an educational context in the 21st century; learning about the concept of an educational escape room; learning how principles from games can be implemented in a contemporary learning process; learning how a curriculum can be translated into a game and/or educational escape room; discovering the added value of gamification and educational escaperooms in a contemporary learning and training concept; learning about tools and frameworks to be able to create educational escaperooms. - for blended learning: developing an awareness of the importance of distance and online learning; being able to apply strategies to develop distance and online learning and incorporate principles into his/her curriculum; getting to know and be able to use a range of tools and apps for distance and distance learning. - For embodied learning: developing an awareness of pedagogical approaches that focus on the non-mental factors involved in learning, pointing out the importance of the body and feelings. Being able to make the connection between Embodied learning on the one hand and the idea of learning-by-doing and through engagement with the environment on the other.
This project aimed to reflect, together with 4 adult education centres from the Catholic Education Flanders network, on a new pedagogical approach for adult education, which in recent years has been in full transition as a result of some government policy decisions. Adult education is increasingly becoming the education of the second chance, more focused on the labour market and also as part of the integration path of newcomers. The diversity within class groups this brings about poses many challenges for our adult education centres. Second-chance education (TKO) was set up more than 20 years ago to offer people of a certain age a chance to obtain a secondary school diploma. Today, thorny TKO classrooms are populated by generational learners who drop out of the traditional education system. These trainees have had some negative learning experiences that sometimes lack intrinsic motivation. The rapidly changing technologies and applications put pressure on the familiar teaching methods. Newcomers who want to learn Dutch as a second language as part of their integration programme increasingly want to do this in combination with a job; this requires flexibility in the provision and approach; here too, the centres are faced with the necessary challenges to explore a different educational approach with these target groups; the outbreak of the COVID pandemic accelerated implementation, but the fact that these 4 centres were already proactively exchanging ideas on the subject before the outbreak gave them the necessary tools to find solutions for the additional COVID challenges. The approach around digitalisation blended learning gave the participating CVOs a head start in switching to this new approach during the pandemic. They used gamification, elements from the gaming world, to excite the motivation of course participants during online and blended learning.