Guidance and Enrepreneurship Mind-Sets through Games Erasmus Project

Project Title

Guidance and Enrepreneurship Mind-Sets through Games

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The GEM: Guidance and Entrepreneurship Mind-Sets through Games project seeks to foster the assessment of transversal and entrepreneurship skills of students through innovative, ICT-based guidance games. The project design, create and test a multilingual game that helps guide students through transition periods and fosters entrepreneurship mind-sets and skills.

The GEM project analyze needs and game possibilities related to self-knowledge, decision-making and the world of work with a focus on fostering entrepreneurship mind-sets and skills. Through the games developed in the GEM project students will have an increased sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and better understanding and identifying skills and competences. The GEM game is also an innovative, quality tool for guidance services in order to increase the quality and innovation of their services.

The GEM game is targeted at late primary and lower secondary school. The need for innovative guidance actions at the earliest levels of education is clear after a previous Comenius project that tested guidance actions within Primary school and while there have been other initiatives to create entrepreneurship skills and values through games, they have not focused on primary and lower secondary education.

The GEM project carry out an analysis of needs to identify priorities and the state of the games and entrepreneurship education. This analysis has collect other experiences as well as involve teachers and guidance practitioners. The GEM project has design a game aimed at primary and lower secondary school. The learning outcomes of the GEM game are based on Entrepreneurship education learning outcomes for primary and lower secondary (ISCED 1 and 2) from educational steering documents of partner countries.

The games have been tested within 398 students between 9 and 13 years old participated, and also more than 40 teachers or guidance practitioners. The impact of the GEM game has been analyzed through pre and post surveys of students and teachers and guidance practitioners, as well as observations and focus groups. The study reflects that, although the game has impact in 3 of the 7 transversal and entrepreneurial skills, is a useful and complementary resource to foster the assessment of transversal and entrepreneurship skills of students. Finally, it is important to explain that GEM game was valued by the students with a score of 7.59 on a scale from 0 to 10, and teachers was valued their experience with a 6.8 on a scale from 0.10.

The GEM project has also create outputs to support teachers and guidance practitioners to use the game with their students. GEM manual supports teachers and guidance practitioners in using the game with their students and incorporating it into curriculum and classroom activities. The online module for teachers and guidance practitioners in an open source learning management system (Moodle) that supports teachers and guidance practitioners in using and incorporating the game in lesson plans.

The project partners have disseminated the openly available GEM game through their networks and extensive online prescence within the education sector. GEM Gymkhanas- local dissemination events with a learning through games theme have been organized in each partner country.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 114865 Eur

Project Coordinator

EDUCAONLINE, S.L. & Country: ES

Project Partners

• UPCNET, SERVEIS D’ACCES A INTERNET DE LA UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA
• CASCAID LIMITED
• CENTRO STUDI PLURIVERSUM SRL