Heliculture Serious Game for the promotion of sustainable snail cultivation businesses focusing on exports Erasmus Project

Project Title

Heliculture Serious Game for the promotion of sustainable snail cultivation businesses focusing on exports

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Rural development and urbanisation

Project Summary

BACKGROUND
Snail farming (Heliculture) has attracted much interest due to its alleged profitability, rapid return on investment and low capital required for an initial investment. For these reasons, Heliculture is recommended for farmers without substantial capital, low-skilled, unemployed and those aspiring to augment their income. As such, snail farming is a potentially profitable business and ideal for low-skilled adults from rural areas. However, today, snail farming in several EU countries, including Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Spain, fails and snail farmers are forced to quit snail breeding. One of the reasons is snail diseases. The problems faced by traditional methods of snail farming also include hatching the Snail eggs, formulation of the best feed for snails at whatever stage of growth, the best care and management practices to reduce the mortality rate to Zero levels.

OBJECTIVES
Development of a heliculture training game for low-skilled adults and support for the setup cooperatives in rural areas by low skilled adults who have been trained on SnailVille.
The main objective is to provide a training game serving as a single information point guiding a potential snail farmer on how to start a profitable business depending on his/her situation (financial capability, educational background, geographical location, etc.) by minimising the risks associated with traditional snail farming (snail diseases, egg hatching, formulation of the best feed, mortality rate). Also, contribute to the preservation of the snail population in the wild by promoting heliculture.

PARTICIPANTS
The partnership comprises an educational games developer, an agricultural university with expertise in heliculture, adult training organisations targeting rural areas, a finance and business development association and a technical consultancy researching on personalised training environments and with a proven track record of mainstreaming result of E&T projects.

ACTIVITIES
– Elaboration of a training methodology for adults from rural areas
– Development of a training curriculum addressing sustainable snail farming
– Iterative design and development of a training game
– Validation of the outputs through a series of workshops providing feedback to be integrated in each subsequent iteration until the completion of the project following a pilot period.

METHODOLOGY
– Validation of the perceived training needs of low-skilled adults
– Elaboration of a training methodology using a game
– Development of training and assessment material covering sustainable heliculture
– Creation of a game concept for training on snail farming, including the design of a gamification schema and the definition of characters and their attributes, the conceptualisation of the game screens and a description of the gameplay
– Re-purposing of the training material to knowledge content to be delivered through the game
– Development of the game in 3 iterations
– Set up and support of a community of SnaillVille enthusiasts, snail farming practitioners, trainers, etc. to serve as the single information point guiding a potential snail farmer on how to start depending on his/her unique situation
– Promotion of the SnailVille Academy and the pilot training activities through multiplier events in order to recruit pilot participants
– Validation of the game through pilot activities
– A conference titled “Heliculture: Turning Challenge into Opportunity”

The methodology is iterative meaning that feedback from each iteration drives work of the next iteration.

RESULTS
– Sustainable Snail Farming training content and Trainer’s Guide on how to administer the training and the game
– SnailVille Game
– SnailVille Academy

IMPACT
– Increase in the number of successful heliculture businesses especially in rural areas
– Prevention of the endangerment of snails in areas where snails are captured in the wild through the promotion of snail farming
– Improvement in the quality, efficiency and quantity of snail breeding in the countries involved and a subsequent boost of the international trade of snails in Europe
– Reinforcement of key competencies among adults from rural areas, such as digital competence, bridging the worlds of education and work

LONG TERM BENEFITS
At long term and through the development of the SnailVille Academy (dedicated virtual space) the project proposes to move towards a standard-based approach that will bring coordination, consistency and coherence to the improvement of adult training on issues which are important for a functional rural society. Such a process will allow all stakeholders to move in the same direction, with the assurance that the steps they take for improving adult training will be supported by policies and practices.
By achieving its objectives the project will contribute to the fight against digital exclusion, improve quality of life, social participation and cohesion but also grow.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 257860 Eur

Project Coordinator

CIVIC COMPUTING LIMITED & Country: UK

Project Partners

• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• ASSERTED KNOWLEDGE OMORRYTHMOS ETAIREIA
• INSTALOFI LEVANTE SL
• ATERMON B.V.
• EUROCREA MERCHANT SRL