Game Based Learning to Alleviate Early School Leaving Erasmus Project

Project Title

Game Based Learning to Alleviate Early School Leaving

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Early school leaving and lack of student engagement are challenges faced by educators in schools around Europe. This Strategic Partnership proposed targeted efforts that challenge traditional pedagogies and encourages the use of innovative game-based learning (GBL) methodologies in English and Maths classrooms. This Erasmus Plus Strategic Partnership aimed to enrich the educational and skills portfolios of local and European educators, to promote synergies, sharing of best practices, cooperation and cross-fertilisation between the fields of education and technology.

The consortium consisted of five partners: the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), the University of Malta, St. Margaret’s College Malta, Nyströmska School Sweden, and Danube University in Krems Austria.

The project kick-started in September 2015, with the objective of enhancing educators’ digital competences and equip them with game-based learning tools and methodologies. The GBL4ESL toolkit developed through this project (www.toolkit-gbl.com) is a platform that can be used by educators to search for lesson plans and share game ideas to teach specific subjects such as Mathematics and English.

This project aimed to use games in the classroom as a tool to reduce the rate of early school leavers (ESL). The European Union set the target to reduce ESL to 10% across member states by 2020. Malta had a high rate of ESLs in 2013 (20.9%), and the Government aimed to reduce this rate over the years. Given that students at risk of becoming ESLs are typically disengaged from the traditional curriculum and teaching methods, this project sought to secure their interest by putting the student at the centre of the learning experience through GBL.

The key project outputs, that were created over the 2-year project are:

TOOLKIT: Educators can find meaningful games that have been tried and tested with students, as well as projects explaining how these games can be used in education and with which student cohort they work best.

Guidebook: The consortium has created a practical guide for educators. The guidebook contains examples of games and lesson plans that can be used to teach English and Mathematics.

Recommendations & best practices document: to influence policy makers’ perceptions and future actions, and encourage educators to support GBL, create new initiatives, and try it out in class.

One of the main aims of the Erasmus+ GBL4ESL project was for teachers, in partner schools, to make the utmost of the toolkit and the guidebook and become ‘agents of change’ within their schools by practising and sharing the GBL pedagogical expertise aimed at maximising the engagement in learning of the potential early school leavers.

Over the 2 year period, the consortium organised 2 transnational meetings, 7 multiplier events in Malta, Sweden and Austria, 2 short-term staff training events in Malta and Austria, and created the 3 intellectual outputs.

Efforts to address ESL are being organised by different local entities. Various stakeholders were involved in this project, mainly schools, educators, policy and decision makers, education officers in charge of curricula, universities, and MITA as the national ICT agency. Reducing the rate of ESLs is in the interest of numerous stakeholders who look at fostering intellectual curiosity, computational thinking and creativity in the upcoming generations, and strengthen the economy by having a highly skilled local workforce.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 218386 Eur

Project Coordinator

MALTA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AGENCY & Country: MT

Project Partners

• St Margaret College
• UNIVERSITAT FUR WEITERBILDUNG KREMS
• Nyströmska Skolan
• UNIVERSITA TA MALTA