At the end of last year, the aspire-international team headed to the small town of Cham, located on Germany’s Bavarian-Czech border, for the first meeting of our new Erasmus+ project, Level Up. We attended the two-day meeting along with our partners from Finland, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ireland to discuss planning and outcomes for the next three years of the project, as well as to learn lots about game-based learning (GBL) and gaming genres within education.
A little bit of background around Level Up is that it’s a game-based learning VET project aimed at young people looking to take their next steps within education. It is designed to show students how many opportunities are available to them through choosing a VET pathway as opposed to a more traditional route through higher education. Social inclusion of disadvantaged learners is also a key issue which Level Up looks to address. This is because there are many learners who feel alienated from traditional, mainstream guidance services, and so the GBL approach should create a resource which is more relatable and engaging for this learner demographic. This mirrors the idea found within the European Commission’s New Skills Agenda, that there is a need to tackle the stereotype of vocational training being seen as a ‘second choice’.
As well as discussing the project’s aims and outcomes, we explored the interesting world of GBL and the different genres in educational gaming. The meeting in Cham saw the partnership develop an action plan for the coming months. Going forward in the coming months, we will be working with our partners to conduct research around GBL best practices within careers guidance from across Europe, and this will then be developed into an e-book resource. The findings from this research will also help us explore and decide upon which GBL genre will be best suited to the project.
There are a lot of great things to come with Level Up, and we look forward to the next transnational meeting with partners in Finland in June 2018 for the next phase of the project!
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