Create Digital Games for Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Create Digital Games for Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Digital games are an integral part of most of our students’ life outside the classroom. Throughout the years, games have been increasingly recognised as powerful learning tools to facilitate students’ learning. Most notably, games allow students to be at the centre of the learning experience, allow room for trial and error and make learning fun and engaging. This Strategic Partnership targeted efforts that challenge traditional pedagogies and encourages the use of innovative game-based learning (GBL) methodologies for learning purposes. The Erasmus Plus Strategic partnership developed a Game Creator Tool (GCT) that can be used on a range of devices, developed for ease of use in classrooms to help enrich the educational and skills portfolios of local and European educators. Furthermore, this partnership promoted sharing of best practices, cooperation and cross-fertilisation between the fields of technology and education.

The impact of this partnership is aimed at bridging the gap between the complex world of programming and designing games with the availability of an open and easy-to-use tool for game authoring. The project outputs are meant to throw light on the need for further research into the positive potential of actively designing games for learning purposes, enhance the digital competences of students with particular focus on media literacy and STEM education via GBL learning.

The synergistic working relationship created between European partners from Malta, Austria, Germany and Luxembourg strengthened the cooperation between organisations, post-secondary schools and also facilitate the exchange, testing and development of best practices in the field of education. The team will work together towards the development of a user-centered game-based learning framework. The GCT will allow students and teachers to work on game projects to dive deeper into the subjects of Fake News and STEM. The Fake News Game will serve as one of the pilot demonstrators for the Game Creator Tool. This will allow both teachers and students to create their own games related to the subject. Based on the current impact of fake news across social media and news portals, it is essential that the general public, in particular youth learn how to identify reliable news sources. On the other hand, the STEM pilot game will be based on and inspired from a current theme in the education STEM syllabi currently being adopted in Malta at post-secondary level of schooling. The game will serve as a precursor to and underpinned by an inquiry-based learning approach, where students will practice both STEM-related process skills and critical thinking skills.

A total of 7 multiplier events were planned however due to the Covid-19 situation only 4 were organised as planned, 2 were organised virtually and 1 was cancelled. Originally, 3 transnational partner meetings were planned however the final transnational meeting had to be organised virtually due to the pandemic. One joint training staff event was planned and held in Austria. All of these events involved the participation of various individuals and entities from the European Union with the aim to increase awareness of the project and its goals. Results of the meetings and training events, as well as project progress, were disseminated online to the relevant audiences.

Following project closure the consortium took stock of the lessons learnt and the outputs emanating from the project to be in a position to continue disseminating and raising awareness of the game creator tool. A needs analysis report identifying the best practices recommendations document was drafted and published online. The intention of this is to amplify the project’s aims by reaching out to decision makers on curricula in relation to GBL as a powerful learning methodology.

The Partnership aims to enhance the level and quality of digital competences and relevance of students’ knowledge and skills and promote students’ centered learning approaches through ICTs. Through this project, the consortium sought to create an innovative method of teaching as well as learning. ICTs will be used effectively to enable educators to diversify their pedagogies and enable students to learn using a tool that is modern and attractive, thus motivating students’ appetite to learn.

This Strategic Partnership involves the appropriate mix of complementary project partners with the necessary profile, experience and expertise to deliver successfully all aspects of the project. The consortium consists of a team of academics, researchers, education consultants, and ICT experts. The commitments and tasks have been distributed diligently and responsibly to successfully produce high quality innovative deliverables.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 321046 Eur

Project Coordinator

MALTA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AGENCY & Country: MT

Project Partners

• Science Centre (Department of Curriculum Management)
• UNIVERSITAT FUR WEITERBILDUNG KREMS
• RESEARCH AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT GMBH
• UNIVERSITE DU LUXEMBOURG
• waza! UG