REALLIFE: serious gaming and virtual reality to develop 21st century and employability skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

REALLIFE: serious gaming and virtual reality to develop 21st century and employability skills

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Project Real Life aimed at the social inclusion of prisoners by improving 21th century skills through serious gaming and virtual reality, gamification. Many people in prisons have no diplomas and no or little access to digital media. Excluding this disadvantaged group from 21st century developments will only widen the gap between them and the labour market. The goal of this partnership is to close this gap. The project partners therefore developed a very innovative blended learning environment for people in closed facilities. Skills needed for employability and life outside the prison were trained in a personalized environment through off- and online exercises. The specific target group of Real Life is people living in closed facilities, like prisoners. The project involved the target group closely by co-creating the learning platform with prisoners from five European countries. Involving the target group in the development of the blended learning environment contributed greatly to the quality of the developed materials, like the online tool, games and exercises. In total the project developed five games: three serious games, one virtual reality game and one practical tool. These games train specific skills like social media awareness, self-knowledge when it comes to personality traits, self-management, communication and cooperation. The practical tool is called Real Life Pathways in which players can create their own plan for reintegration. The project also facilitated a guide for mentors and educators working in prisons and a workbook for prisoner. Real Life shows that gamification is a user-friendly method that can surely be applied in prisons. The method contributes to employability and reduces possible recidivism of prisoners. Many among the end-users have learning disabilities and reject more traditional teaching approaches. This project shows that the development of new, innovative and informal learning possibilities can be rewarding for disadvantaged groups like these and can lead to validated learning outcomes in the form of an official certificate. The impact of the project can be considered rather successful. After getting to know the positive results of this project, the Turkish Ministry of Justice supports implementation of Real Life in all Turkish prisons. In the Netherlands it will be implemented in the biggets Dutch prison in the city Zaanstad. On top of that this project provided new insights for discussing the importance of education in prisons. This project definitely sets some important first steps in closing the gap between people living inside closed facilities and life outside the prison walls. Europe could be on the frontier of discovering how to use innovative technology to improve 21st century skills of disadvantaged groups in general. Specific information about the project can be found on www.reallifeproject.eu and to access the website please go www.my-real.life and log in: Erasmusplus and password: Erasmus+RL2018@.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 417574,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Click F1 & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Changes&Chances
• STEPS srl
• Kocaeli Open Correctional Institution
• VSI HITECO
• CHAINS
• THE NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY
• Accord International s.r.o.