City quiz social games and mobile apps have been in trend for several years, and the demand is still growing. In the digital era it is essentially important to reach the target audience using the methods and means that decrease the distance between the educator and the student, and the mobiles apps successfully occupy this niche. The main aim of the City Quiz&Walk project is to enhance integration and cultural education of migrants, immigrants, expats, and students using an innovative city quiz mobile application. The most important practical result of the project will be the creation of the mobile applications through the planned activities and cooperation, which would have an impact on successful integration of the immigrants and expats and educating them in the field of the receiving cultures. The staff of the partner organizations selected for City Quiz&Walk project have extensive knowledge in the field and expertise in a large number of E+ projects: - Finland (coordinator), LEARNMERA Oy - France, ITG CONSEIL SAS - Greece, INNOVATION FRONTIERS - Lithuania, TAVO EUROPA - Portugal, RECURSOS FUTUROS According to the research conducted at the preparatory part of this project application, the mobile app created for this project will be a unique digital solution both for the foreigners residing in partner countries as well as the professionals working with immigrants and refugees. Furthermore, we aim at delivering a simple digital solution that would answer the needs of both highly educated and low-qualified adults and young adult; we will provide a significant amount of tailored educative content delivered in a most user-friendly way. In this project, we would like to deliver 5 versions of the mobile application for city quizzes with the main focus on the partner’s cultures in their capital cities (Finland, France, Greece, Portugal, Lithuania). This thematic app will contain illustrated and text questions that will help the user get a better understanding of the culture, traditions and key figures in the partner cultures. In our mobile app we will be offering a possibility to explore the culture and history both by solving the online quizzes in the mobile app and (when the app user is present at the quiz location) by following the map of the area to be able to solve the quizzes and familiarize themselves with the places on which the questions are based. Each version of the mobile application will be available in 2 languages (English+partner language). Before the official launch, the mobile applications will be tested first by the partner organizations in-house and then with around 100 stakeholders to guarantee the highest quality of the outputs. In order to ensure that this project’s goals will be fulfilled perfectly, a project methodology was designed: 1) Pre-project research was conducted to find out about similar tools, their specifications, and limitations; 2) Extensive research about mobile apps and best practices on local markets will be made by all partners, and a report will be made with all considerations; 3) Types of exercises and educative content will be prepared for the mobile apps reality; 4) Based on these reports, 5 versions of the mobile application will be created, ensuring the best educational gamified approach for the stakeholders; 5) A mobile app will be tested in-house and externally, all versions will be released globally 6) A digital and analogical dissemination plan will be set in motion to raise awareness about the concerns that led us this project, our goals, and solutions. The project will be disseminated on regional, national, European and International levels. On regional level all partners will arrange a launch event and the apps will be made available in all the application stores globally. The desired impact would be having refugees, migrants and others use the applications to enhance and accelerate their cultural awareness and enhance their education and socialization processes. We aim at least 500 mobile application downloads in total over all of the mobile application versions one year after the project completion. To reach and exceed this number of downloads, the partners will be in touch with the stakeholder organizations on the local levels (such as expat centers, international and student unions, associations dealing with migrants etc), their social partners and through social media as a tool for disseminating the apps. The apps will be available for free download on both Ios and Android markets within 3 years after the project has ended. After the project completion, similar mobile apps can be created for other cities and countries using partly the same coding, procedures and documentation, thus we can state that the transferability of the developed outputs and project results can be considered very high if another project can be made as transfer of innovation in the future.
The city quiz & walk app is one of the few bilingual apps available with the features we implemented. The idea is to continue adding more content in the future even though the projects have already finished making users still want to play with the apps after they have gone through the quizzes and quests. We also wanted the apps to be a possible gateway for foreigners to go out and do something fun together and find the answers to the quests by going to these locations in each city. To create 10 phone apps, 5 in Android and 5 in iOS. One each for Paris, Athens, Vilnius, Lisbon and Helsinki. A lot of content about each of the cities for people to learn a bit more about the history, culture, and places to visit. The partners worked together on ideas and categories that would be suitable for all the partner cities. We wanted five phone apps in the same design and with the possibility for a new transfer project to create more city quiz apps in the future. A question has been brought up in Portugal to create a similar app that caters for Algarve and the sights there as it is a major touristic area of Portugal.
We applied for this project to be able to create apps with quizzes and quests for Helsinki, Lisbon, Athens, Vilnius, and Paris. The idea came from one of Learnmera's former employees who had been on similar "treasure hunts" organized now and then by a group of friends and they charged some money to attend the event. As she was very interested in culture and meeting up with friends at the same time, the idea for the application came from her. This event was posted on a website and happened every couple of months in Helsinki. The participants would print out their quest sheet and everyone would start at the same place and at the same time. The winner was then the team that came first with all the tasks done to a specific meeting point. They would then receive a prize. The idea was then to create an app that would be accessible for everyone anytime so they would not need to wait for the event to take place by the organizer. According to the pre-project research we did there were no apps available with both a quiz and quest section. We wanted to create something fun while at the same time would encourage the users to learn more about the cities and also find some hidden gems they otherwise would not have known how to access.