"Charity begins at home - a lot of people agree on this opinion, but the ""I believe in GOOD"" project team thinks differently. Charity can't begin at home if parents don't understand the meaning of charity. In order to create a socially responsible next generation and strong charity traditions in the local community, the project ""I believe in GOOD"" created an approach which is unique all over Europe – non-formal education methods that promotes teaching charity in school in combination with a mobile serious game app to communicate with the target group in an environment that is very important for them. Methods were created for every subject – math, history, languages, sport and other subjects – to show that charity is nothing artificially invented, but a natural part of our daily life and value. The mobile serious game allows the target group to discover charity on their own from totally different aspect. Innovative methodology was developed by an international team from Latvia and Germany. These are countries with different experience as well as different levels of charity and each partner has a strengths and expertise in totally different fields. Talsi Region Community Foundation (Latvia) has experience in philanthropy, but Ingenious Knowledge GmbH is constantly exploring new ways of using modern technology to improve the lifelong learning environment and make learning more accessible and more fun. The first new method of the project ""I believe in GOOD"" used the test group - students from Talsi 2nd Secondary school, Talsi State gymnasium, Virbu Primary school and Falkenberg School. With created non-formal methods project’s aim was reached – educational staff understand how significant is to speak about charity and spread this information in schools. During 17 months a platform is created which easily can be introduced in each primary school. Step by step using innovative non-formal education methods and the mobile serious game app students strengthen charitable habits which becomes meaningful and natural aspect in their value system. Innovative methods are tested and adapted for international use. In the World Giving Index that is measured by Charities Aid Foundation none of the European countries is in top 5. The highest ranking EU country is the United Kingdom in 6th place, that's why European countries have room to improve. Innovative methodology for developing charity traditions in school can be a valuable tool to develop community philanthropy in each country."

<< Background >>Programming is the closest we can get to super powers, according to Drew, the creator of Dropbox. It is obvious that programming is an amazing tool that affects our daily life in so many ways. Programs can control robots that explore the surface of the planet Mars or help care for elderly people. Computers have evolved and have become part of not only almost everyone’s work life but also of almost every other aspect of life such as entertainment, health, finances, shopping, traveling, etc. They are in our phones, our watches, our cars, our home appliances, our entertainment systems, and even in our work tools.In all EU countries, we have a rising demand for skilled workers who can program computers; however, the gap between the skills needed and those with the skills is growing every year. As our societies are flooded with new technology every year the importance of knowing how to code becomes more and more apparent. We already have a serious lack of skilled workers in many areas of technology which means that we see growing opportunities for those who have at least a basic understanding of coding skills. Computational thinking and programming skills are not only very important key competences everyone should learn nowadays, they are also essential for an increasing amount of jobs in today's economy due to the immensely increasing function of technology in our society. This is why everybody should get to know the world of programming.What's even more, we will guide learners towards employment opportunities that are available for those with a beginner level knowledge of programming skills. Understanding which jobs are available and how to apply for them will be integrated into the course.Even though the partners will likely focus on Python in the videos, the core learning content can be adapted to other higher programming language like Java, C#, too.<< Objectives >>In this project the partners intend to give adult learners the opportunity to acquire coding skills that can help them in their personal development. For many adults acquiring coding skills is difficult and confusing. The question where to start is not easy to answer. This project aims to make coding easy and fun and provide a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in which learners can create a free profile and a learning portfolio. MOOCs have become widely accepted in education and in 2018 the number of learners using MOOCs has crossed 100 million.. The MOOC will take learners from the beginning to a solid understanding of coding and gives them plenty of opportunities to practice, offering highly relevant exercises that are practical in everyday life and help the learners to learn computational thinking and how to program. The partners plan the MOOC to introduce learners into programming Python. The MOOC can be done without any previous knowledge about coding, as it starts with the basics. Over 12 weeks users will improve themselves until they even reach a level in which they can understand and perform object-oriented programming.<< Implementation >>In the project there will be the following activities, mainly to develop, create, host and disseminate our project result, the MOOC:Learning conceptThe partners will work on a learning concept for the MOOC. The partners will define what knowledge about coding is most useful for adults and therefore belongs into the MOOC.Creation of lesson conceptsAll partners work together on creating a lesson concept for the MOOC. This will be done based on A1 by creating a structure for the 3 main modules and defining what aspects will be learned at what time.Creation of learning materials and exercisesAll partners work together on creating learning materials and exercises, each partner bringing in their expertise. Illustrations and DesignIn this activity illustrations and design for the learning materials and exercises and other MOOC-related resources will be done.Filming and editingLearning videos for the MOOC will be filmed and edited.Overall Compiling of the MOOCThe MOOC needs to be created on a platform and the lessons need to be created, along with their materials, exercises and videos.Testing and EvaluationThe MOOC will be tested and the test results will be evaluated. This happens several times during the development of the MOOC and its respective materials to make sure that the output suits the needs of adults when it comes to learn coding and computational thinking.<< Results >>The MOOC will contain a wealth of materials and videos and it will be translated into all project languages. We intend to create a showcase of how much potential a well-designed modern MOOC has. The MOOC will consist of 3 parts, each of which lasting 4 weeks with approximately 4 hours of content per week - an amount that fits into adult's schedules even if they have a job and lots of things to do. This means that we intend to create 48 hours of course materials It will be shared widely and will be completely free. The project consortium consists of one IT expert and two organisations of learning who have high experience in doing courses for adults. All three partners are experts in creating learning concepts and materials. By doing several test iterations of the respective modules with adult learners of all skill groups the partners will assure that the concept and the quality of the MOOC suits adults perfectly by also focusing on aspects that are relevant for them, like job-related information. The MOOC will be available in English, German and Greek.Knowing how to give detailed instructions to computers by writing code is a very powerful skill that is already extremely useful in many work situations and will only gain in importance as our world becomes more and more digital. We are just now starting to react to this development, and the first countries in Europe have made teaching coding mandatory in schools.

<< Background >>The main objective of this project is to use the highly motivating features of videogames to promote interest in coding in young people, and especially in girls. Videogames have a set of characteristics such as proposing challenging goals in scenarios where players need to discover the rules with high interactivity, and immediate feedback that achieve a great player engagement. We believe that these characteristics can be effectively used to increase the interest in coding and the computational thinking skills of young people. By using an alternative language that is very close to them such as videogames, we can change the perception that young people have breaking the stereotype that coding is only for male nerds and attract a wider audience. In Europe it is critical to use new approaches to attract more younger students to coding and especially girls before they accept the biased gender stereotype avoiding to choose ICT related studies. The number of ICT specialists in the EU grew by 40.0 % from 2011 to 2019, over 6 times as high as the increase (6.9 %) for total employment. In 2019, 82.1 % of men were employed as ICT specialists in the EU against 17.9 % of women. This statistics will be updated in july 2021 but no improvement in the women participation in ICT is expected (obtained from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/ICT_specialists_in_employment. Bringing more women into EU digital sector would benefit the EU economy and we consider that early attraction to coding could be a way to increase that number , and to fight the gender divide in Europe's ICT education and labour market.<< Objectives >>The three-folded project objective is: 1) To design, develop and evaluate a game-based learning analytic tool for formative assessment in programming courses, 2) To create and evaluate an online model for collaborative learning based on the concepts of Communities of Practice and Pair programming, and 3) To assess existing solutions for visualisation of programming concepts. This project should be carried out with a Design science approach, in a collaboration between the Mid Sweden University in Sweden, The Complutense University of Madrid in Spain and the Ingenious Knowledge GmbH in Germany.<< Implementation >>The central main activity in the project is the development of the game-based learning analytic tool for formative assessment. This design, development and evaluation process should be conducted in a collaboration between the three partners with the Mid Sweden University in the coordination role and responsible for distribution and evaluation of the tool in various educational contexts. Ingenious Knowledge in Germany should carry out the design and development of an educational game named 'EuroCoder', where players solve programming assignments in different European real-world contexts. For the formative assessment in online introductory courses the Complutense University of Madrid will extend the game with a learning analytic unit that can assess each player's activities and individual progress. Considering the model for collaborative online learning (2) and the assessment of visualisation tools (3), the Mid Sweden University should have the main responsibility for analysis, development, and assessment of existing tools.<< Results >>Finally, the project outputs, the educational game, the didactic model and the visualisation tools should be deployed online and made available for use in Corona adapted programming education. An important delivery from the project is the earlier mentioned website, where the results from the three sub-objectives will be presented and aligned. The educational game and the project website are both artefacts that should act as a resource for programming educators also after the project period. Finally, the artefacts should be disseminated to a wider audience through the project partners networks, and through international events for game-based learning and software engineering.

<< Objectives >>Digital entrepreneurship is defined as a practice of pursuing “new venture opportunities presented by new media and internet technologies” (Davidson, Vaast, 2010). COVID had an enormous impact on traditional entrepreneurship, hence, digital entrepreneurship became the replacement to some extent. By educating vulnerable and unemployed women about digital entrepreneurship and the vast possibilities that the virtual world can offer we hope to reduce economic challenges they face.<< Implementation >>We will organize two adult trainer training sessions (14-16 participants per training), we will collaborate with local regions and the state to distribute this training. A simplified training material about management and digital entrepreneurship will be designed to facilitate the direct training sessions as well as to create an E-book in 4 languages about how to teach to adults or adults to self-teach digital entrepreneurship. We will also design MOOC for open access to aim for wider audience.<< Results >>The above mentioned activities will be implemented; the adult trainers will have received their full trainings to take back to their current and future pupils multiply this training. This project aims to reach a target of more than 100 women in not only the mentioned countries but with the help of our distribution plan, we will be reaching other EU countries; this implies, that the training on MOOC and E-book will be fully accessible to all public via the internet.

Young generations grow up in a world which is vastly different from the world that existed just a few decades ago. However, educational methods are very slow to change and don’t appropriately reflect the way that young people prefer to learn. For instance, many young people don’t read books for entertainment any more, so learning from a book feels “unnatural” for them. In order to offer great chances of learning that resonate with its target groups the world of education should further explore new approaches and methods of integrating them. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has shown how little youth work is prepared to reach youths when face to face contact is no longer possible. We have the technology to connect and to keep learning but what is missing are good software tools that support youth workers in this endeavor. In this project we intend to develop an innovation by creating an app that lets learners experience an interactive detective story. The idea is that learners work together as a team of detectives and interrogate a number of witnesses or suspects. In the interrogation phase each learner works alone and needs to focus on details that are revealed. Since the learners are in the role of detectives they can also choose which questions to ask. However, they only have a limited time with each witness. In the next step the learners need to combine the information they gathered by communicating with each other. This will train their communication skills but also social aspects, as well as teamwork and other soft skills. In addition to the skill training we will also focus on informal language learning with the aim of creating a solution that is highly effective in its learning results.In recent years serious games have shown an interesting potential to motivate young learners. However, so far very few well-working examples exist that successfully combine high motivation and fun with a solid learning experience. For this reason it is necessary to continue the study of new game approaches that integrate learning content seamlessly into the gameplay.The tool addresses issues that are very essential in youth work and high quality solutions are in demand by all youth workers. We will evaluate the learning success and share the experience publicly, aiming for the tool to become a best practice case which sets standards in youth work and can be used as an example to build a new generation of digital tools that support informal learning.The consortium consists of two organisations (one of them having its main focus on language learning) that are very active in the youth sector, an SME who is an expert in creating mobile apps based on learning concepts and a language school. We believe that our consortium has great possibilities and capacities to make this project have great impact on language learning for youths.