K2Games – Learning by Playing Erasmus Project

Project Title

K2Games – Learning by Playing

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND OF PROJECT
Sustainable development, climate change risks and their impact on human health are among the big challenges of current and next decades. Education raises the odds that people will use natural resources more efficiently. Therefore, there is a need of both raising awareness on the issue of sustainability and providing young people with relevant competencies to contribute to sustainable development. To that end, experiential learning has great importance. The potential of games combining entertainment and education is acknowledged by the research community, who say that games:
– Allow learners to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons including safety, cost and time.
– Enable improved self-monitoring, problem recognition and solving, decision making.
– Create a context of communication, collaboration and sense of belonging.
All in all, games are an effective and enjoyable way to learn, in particular simulation games and the increasingly popular board games. However the letter are still not used to their full potential in non-formal contexts, let alone on environmental and/or sustainable development topics.

Based on the above, this project aimed to make accessible for youth workers and young people several games as educational tools and methods in non-formal and informal contexts. The games, along with additional guidance, would help them acquire relevant sustainability-related competencies, and develop constructive, pro-active, empowering attitudes about environmental issues that impact human health and community welfare.
We sought to reach this aim by:
1.Understanding and sharing findings about when and how simulation games and board games can be used by youth workers as tools and/or methods in various educational contexts when working on education for environmental health and sustainable consumption.
2.Providing youth workers with know-how on developing simulation and board games as learning tools in education on this topics.
3.Developing and providing youth workers in our organisations and the wider youth worker community and young people with a collection of simulation and board games focused on issues related to the topics of this project, which are currently of most concern in the European region.

Project activities aimed directly at producing the Intellectual Outputs engaged 25+ members of staff and collaborators from the 4 partner organisations based in Romania, Italy, Germany, and Lithuania. Further, it engage with over 200 youth workers and young people for planning, testing and evaluating the outputs.

To this end, SRC (Romania), Insight_epd (Italy), CRISP (Germany), and EEHYC (based in Lithuania) carried out a series of focus group meetings, a training event for its staff, 4 transnational meetings for project management, monitoring and evaluation, research on simulation and board games in non-formal education and local meetings with stakeholders to test and improve the quality of project results. This has contributed to the realisation of useful and engaging Intellectual Outputs. Dissemination activities, including 4 multiplier events, took place in the last months of the project, and will continue to be carried out after the project to ensure the ease of access to the developed games and the guide for youth workers.
Developing the capacities of partner organisations has empowered the staff of all project partners to contribute to the development of quality games as educational tools, while the Guide enables youth workers outside this partnership and the wider European youth worker community to understand the use of such games as educational tools. It is our hope that the guidance provided to the wider youth worker community will help them in learning how to develop their own games on topics of their own concern. The produced games and the exemplification of their use during the multiplier events is a showcase of what can be achieved.

In numerical terms, the main results of this project are:
– 2 board games: K2 Pioneer City (cooperative boardgame) and K2 recycling Party (competitive card game)
– 5 simulation games: K2 Air Quality, K2 City Gardens, K2 Waste Management, and K2 Climate Negotiations (2 in 1)
– Guide on how to use (and develop) games as educational tools. The guide ensures that we don’t only provide the fish, but also assist youth workers in catching their own fish, i.e. develop/use own games on environment, health and sustainable consumption.

All results are available on www.K2Games.info

The games are fun-to-play, attractive tools for youth workers to use in their activity with young people of various backgrounds. Board games in particular are suitable to use by young people in informal contexts. This can lead to positive change in young people’s stand towards environment, and shift their mindsets from selfishness and fierce competition to fearless cooperation for greener, kinder and more inclusive society.

Project Website

http://k2games.info

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 115279 Eur

Project Coordinator

Asociatia “Societatea pentru Consum Responsabil” & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Europos aplinkos ir sveikatos jaunimo koalicija
• CRISP e.V.
• Insight – education project design