Communities, Languages, and Activities App Erasmus Project

Project Title

Communities, Languages, and Activities App

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

In 2018, 22.3 million people of the 512.4 million people living in the EU were non-EU citizens, which poses a major challenge to ensure social integration, but also cultural and linguistic diversity. To address this challenge, this intercultural, intergenerational, and multi-sector project aims to 1) develop Open Educational Resources (OER) that will foster intercultural understanding within and between the members of immigrant and host communities; 2) promote opportunities for intergenerational interaction; 3) engage communities in co-producing materials for the OER; 4) provide support for task-based innovative digital pedagogy offering a real-world, immersive learning experience that brings culture to life; 5) bring a wider focus on the role of European cultural and linguistic heritage; 6) contribute to great social cohesion; and 7) foster inclusive higher education (HE) systems in the EU.

Our task-based innovative learning pedagogy will involve the development of a responsive web app tailored for the creation of, and engagement with interactive digital media (e.g. interactive videos, branching scenarios and interactive virtual 360 tours). The web app will also provide tools to support the creation of an online community ranging from commenting and voting on content on the platform to sharing and promoting content using existing mainstream social networking tools by providing shareable links. Using the web app, participants will co-create interactive digital artefacts for cultural activities (e.g. sewing, dancing, singing, children’s games, henna tattoos, puppet shows, etc), engage with the artefacts created by others, participate in an online intercultural community, and carry out activities of other cultures.

We will recruit up to 80 immigrants, refuges, and asylum seekers, and up to 80 members of host communities, who will work in intergenerational, and/or intercultural pairs to jointly describe, record, share, and carry out culturally relevant activities. We will also recruit up to 40 HE students, 12 HE staff, and 8 members of non-governmental organisations who will facilitate co-production of OER (IO 5), participate in training events (C1-3), provide linguistic support (IO 4), and contribute to dissemination (E1-4). During project activities, close collaboration among community members, non-profit organisations, HE students, and HE staff will establish a model of inclusive HE systems with a local learning ecologies approach.

To achieve the project aims, we will (1) carry out a needs analysis to understand requirements of the participants for the innovative technology; (2) develop a web app, project website, user guides and tutorials; (3) develop evaluation, recognition and certification systems to measure and certify digital, linguistic, intercultural gains and recognition of HE students’ community work in their academic results; (4) create 8 language versions of the web app and user guides; (5) organise co-production workshops to ensure development of and engagement with high-quality interactive digital artefacts (OER); (6) train HE students, HE staff, and members of non-profit organisations to facilitate the co-production workshops, (7) engage in research activities to evaluate and validate the outputs, and (8) conduct 4 local multiplier events.

We expect to have direct and considerable impact at a number of levels. The web app, and all project materials will be made freely available for download and use by any migrant and host community in the EU and the world, with an interest in learning about languages and cultures. Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers will learn aspects of their heritage languages, and that of the host community, as well as developing positive attitudes towards the culture of the host community. Members of the host community will learn about and develop positive attitudes towards the languages and cultures of the migrant communities in their local area. Participants will receive recognition of learning through certification systems for digital competence (youth and adults), increased awareness for languages and cultures (youth and adults), and recognition of community involvement in academic results (HE students). Participants who facilitate co-production workshops will develop relevant transversal skills, e.g. digital and intercultural communication skills, and field-specific skills, e.g. translation.

The web app will be fully transferable and scalable to represent other languages and cultures worldwide, and to be used in formal and informal education. In the long term, we envision wider impact (1) on any citizens of the EU or beyond who wish to learn digital skills, languages, and cultural activities; (2) on any HE institutions and non-profit organisations in the EU and beyond who wish to establish inclusive HE systems; (3) on cultural organisations who wish to promote cultures, and (4) on HE pre-mobility activities as a model for task-based virtual exchange.

Project Website

https://enacteuropa.com

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 272926 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE & Country: UK

Project Partners

• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
• UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
• Cultura-säätiö
• BOGAZICI UNIVERSITESI