<< Background >>The colleges of the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) aspire to enrich the quality of students’ outcome and behaviour while in college and upon graduation. However, creating an enabling and inclusive environment for students’ development through an effective student support system, in terms of services and facilities, was one of the major challenges faced by the RUB. Therefore, this project was implemented to establish a counselling service centre at each of the nine colleges in the RUB.<< Objectives >>The specific objectives of the project were as follows: •Establishing a counselling, wellbeing and mental health support centre at each of the nine colleges of Royal University of Bhutan (RUB). •Capacity building of human resources in the area of counselling, & mental health at RUB .
•Development of a Digital Platform to support Mental Health, Wellbeing and Counseling Services for RUB students.
•Supporting the centres with essential resources to cater services to the students and staff.<< Implementation >>In the beginning, the project conducted an initial assessment study. In the next, a training manual was developed and capacity training was launched. Then the project directed the individual colleges to identify a suitable location for the centres and the essential resources were distributed. In addition, a digital platform dedicated to enhance the support services was developed. The project supported in day to day operation of the centres. Finally, a impact study in form BA was conducted.<< Results >>As a result of this project a unique model of student support centre at nine colleges of RUB was established. The project trained 27 individuals (three from each college). A digital platform was developed. Essential resources for the H&W B centre was distributed. The project published two research articles, two book chapters, and a major Beneficiary Assessment and Impact Evaluation report. The project initiated establishment of new EU project office at RUB and collaborated with nine agencies.

<< Background >>Homework is a relatively widespread and common educational activity, especially among elementary and high school students. It facilitates both students’ engagement and performance (Magalhães et al., 2020; Hagger et al., 2015). Despite the apparent benefits of assigning homework to students (learning, consolidation, and application of learning content, better time management in the classroom), it appears to be a tremendous discomfort to students. Trying to make students get their homework done was always a big challenge -not only during the pandemic- faced by teachers and by parents as well. Therefore, the need to address this issue strongly emerges. Research data have shown the effectiveness of gamification techniques in the educational process because they are highly engaging, motivating and thus they enhance learning compared to traditional learning techniques (Hamari et al., 2014; DomíNguez et al., 2013).However, converting educational material and exercises into online educational games for online learning and assessment for each course is a virtually impossible task for teachers and school institutions. The project’s objective is to develop an online gamified environment that overcomes this challenge (the transfer of physical learning material and exercises into digital form) while conserving the motivational mechanics of games to help students better engage with their homework improving their learning outcomes. The proposed gamified homework environment will allow the easy creation of gamified experiences independent of the specifics of each course, thus providing a versatile educational tool encouraging the take-up, use, and adoption in all schools regardless of the courses they provide. This goal will be achieved by eliminating the difficulties of creating educational games that incorporate all the learning content and by associating the gamified elements with the homework activitiesThe GameWork project aims to help alleviate students’ reluctance to do homework by developing a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to engage and motivate students to do their homework.Therefore, this approach promotes innovative pedagogies and methods for teaching, learning, and assessment and supports students and teachers to use digital technologies in creative, collaborative, and efficient ways. Moreover, the GameWork project is about developing digital learning materials and tools, particularly Open Educational Resources and Open Source Educational Software.Finally, the GameWork proposal is also about tackling learning disadvantage, early school leaving, and low proficiency in basic skills since the use of the gamified homework environment will help teachers gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually, the progress they record, and the time completion for each task. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student. ReferencesMagalhães, P., Ferreira, D., Cunha, J., & Rosário, P. (2020). Online vs traditional homework: A systematic review on the benefits to students’ performance. Computers & Education, 152, 103869.Hagger, M. S., Sultan, S., Hardcastle, S. J., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. (2015). Perceived autonomy support and autonomous motivation toward mathematics activities in educational and out-of-schoolcontexts is related to mathematics homework behavior and attainment. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 41, 111-123.Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences(HICSS), 3025–3034.DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J.-J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380–392.<< Objectives >>This project aims to motivate students to work on their homework and alleviate their reluctance to do homework. Towards this goal, we will develop a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to motivate students to do their homework. The GameWork project focuses on three precise objectives:1) Homework organisationLearners can access the environment with their smartphone or tablet and see the daily list of activities that they must perform to prepare for the next day, ticking the completed ones. Each activity can provide details that will help the student better organise their time while doing their homework. Some of such details can be: the estimated time to complete an activity which would give students an indication of how to fit each activity into their schedule better, a suggested activity order that would provide a proposed order in activities that depend on each other, complex activities can be divided into subactivities that will better guide the student towards completing them references to educational material that the student already comprehends before completing each activity, etc. This functionality will allow the student to see a complete overview of their homework at a glance and support them to better estimate, organise, and, in the end, complete their homework.2) Student engagementTowards this aim, the GameWork project will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide the gamified features and courses included in the development creating a gamified homework environment that will engage students in doing their homework. Some gamification features that could be included in the environment could be: rewards: upon completing their homework, students can earn points that will increase their level in the environment, prompting them to complete their homework to earn more rewardsrankings: based on the students’ performance, a ranking system can indicate the relative performance of each student, motivating them to do better than their classmatescontent unlocking: content can be unlocked when a student reaches a certain level that can include fun material not related to homework, such as a funny video or an imagenotification: student can receive notifications when they level up to motivate them to continue their progress3) Progress monitoring (for students and teachers)A verification process will be designed for a student not to skip the assignments and declare them untruthfully complete. The platform will ask for answers to one or more questions essential for each task. This verification process serves two purposes: a) it is a safety measure against cheating, b) it constitutes an incentive for students that would not otherwise do their homework learning at least the minimum of the essential questions.Furthermore, performance analytics will be provided for each student, alongside their classroom performance. In addition, students will be held accountable to the teachers, the parents but most important to themselves. Teachers can also add complementary material and content according to their students’ needs (pictures, external links, videos, voice recordings, etc.) to facilitate the learning process. Teachers will gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually and the progress they record. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student.<< Implementation >>The following project activities are planned (details on the project Gantt Chart, see Annex): A01: Project Plan (UPatras) A detailed Project Plan (first version M2, final M22) will describe the working process of the project, tasks, activities, and deadlines. It will be a living document being continuously updated throughout the project.A02: Project Quality Plan (UPatras) The Project Quality Plan (PQP) (M2, M6) will describe the internal procedures (peer review process of outputs, communication plan, risk management, internal monitoring procedures, tangible project results templates, etc.) that need to be followed by all partners to ensure the fulfilment of the objectives and the scope of the project. A03: Project Promotion Plan (Arsakeio) Development of the Promotion Plan which will be a living document (first version M4, final M24) describing the sharing and promotion strategy to ensure the widest possible promotion of the project. The plan will describe the envisaged sharing and promotion activities that need to be carried out during the project, but also after its completion. A04: Online PM tools (UPatras) Online Project management (PM) tools will be deployed by UPatras (M3) to facilitate communication between partners. The PM tools will include the use of a project email list, an online project management system that will include project tasks and activities combined with a monitor mechanism, and a secure file sharing system for the storage of project documentation and files, and a virtual classroom system. A05: Project website (ISMAI)The project website (M3, continuously updated until M24) will be created by ISMAI with the contribution of all partners and it will provide information regarding the project and its goals, expected outcomes, and partnership. It will also provide access to project results. A06: Project Social Media (KJGAG) Project pages in social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) will make use of Web 2.0 technologies for the promotion of the project. These media pages will be created by KJGAG (M3) and will be continuously updated during the project lifetime including contributions from all partners.A07: Project Logo, and leaflets (Freixo) The Project Logo (created by Freixo at M2) will be used in all formal and informal communication of the project. Project leaflets will be released in two versions at M6 and M18. A08: Project newsletter and video (UPatras) During the project lifetime, 4 newsletters (M6, M14, M19, M23) will be created and communicated through project communication channels to stakeholders. A promotional video will be released (M10) in English. A new version, including features from the final version of the environment, will be available at M18. A09: Internal Evaluation Reports (UPatras) UPatras will control the internal evaluation of all major events, tangible project results, and activities and will collect all responses from all the partners and will combine them into a report. This report will be delivered periodically (every 6 months) and will serve as the internal monitoring of the Quality Assurance Procedure of the project. A10: Progress Report (UPatras) The coordinator will prepare the interim progress report for the National Agency (M12). A11: Partnership Agreement (UPatras) Partnership Agreement which will reflect the major principles ruling the cooperation among project partners and the exploitation of existing & project generated value will be created by UPatras (first version at M2 and final version at M6). A12: IPR Agreement (Arsakeio) The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Agreement will reflect all intellectual property rights of all elements created within the project. The first version will be available on M2 and it will be agreed upon, but the final version will be signed after the final version of the system (M20). A13: Closure Report (UPatras) Closure Project Report for the National Agency will be prepared at M24.<< Results >>The GameWork project will include the following project results:PR1: Needs analysis, course selection, gamification featuresThis PR will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The work underdone will be included in the report “How students would like to have fun with their homework,” which will combine the literature findings with the students’ views collected from the GameWork schools. This report will also identify the courses selected to be included in the implementation phase (PR3), based on the feedback from the schools. Furthermore, following the feedback from students (Arsakeio, KJGAG, Freixo), the psychologists (ISMAI) of the consortium will work along with the developers to analyse the findings and conclude to a set of features that would be implemented into the gamified environment. We expect that the needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide more features that could be included in the development. All these will be included in a report called “Analysis of the gamification features” and, based on a typical software engineering approach, will be used as the analysis and design blueprints for the development of the various versions of the gamified environment.Therefore, the work on this PR will be presented in two reports:· How students would like to have fun with their homework· Analysis of the gamification featuresPR2: Development of the environment Alpha, Beta, and Final versionFollowing the work on PR1, a gamified environment for homework will be developed. This environment will offer features and functionalities that will be defined in detail in PR1. Such features could be (based on preparation analysis): allowing students to self-evaluate their homework progress, further motivating students that delaying, introducing a healthy competition among students (using awards and leader boards), offering rewards to students, allowing the teachers to monitor the activities (both progress and correctness), and allowing teachers to modify future homework based on students’ progress. The environment will offer a gamification-based approach in which the students will engage in homework-related activities that will help them be better prepared for their studies and the exams.The main outputs of this PR are:· The environment (Alpha, Beta, and Final Version)· A technical report for the future content creators that will use the environment after the end of the funding period.· Three demonstrative videos of the environment for the three roles (student, teacher, creator) that will explain the system features.PR3: Implementation, Students’ feedback, and ReportingFollowing the iterative development of the gamified homework environment, which is the focus of the PR2, in this PR, the GameWork partners will start inviting students, teachers, and course creators (primarily teachers) into the environment. This PR is the one most related to the impact of the gamified homework environment. The innovative character of this environment will be demonstrated to educators, students, and all types of stakeholders (education providers, local administration), thus having a multiplying effect. The main output of this PR is a report on “Implementation and Students and Teachers’ feedback.” This report will present all data collected anonymously. The report will include implementation strategies, success stories, dos and don’ts, best practices, and the results from the environment evaluation. These results will be analysed (both statistically and qualitatively) and will be reported. The report will focus on cultural differences and will compare results across countries. Due to its nature, this report is expected to be innovative, highly influential, and will probably lead to scientific publications.

<< Background >>The Coronavirus-19 outbreak has raised huge societal challenges worldwide and Europe is no exception. But the true impact of this pandemic is yet to be discovered. So far, more than 3 million deaths have been directly reported to COVID-19, so it is estimated that 9 million people have been bereaved by a COVID-19 loss (Verdery, 2021) and thousands of them may suffer from complicated grief reactions (Lee & Neimeyer, 2020). Yet, other authors like Morgan, et al. (2020) argue that, to calculate the real death toll of this pandemic, we have to look not only to COVID-19 direct deaths, but also to excess mortality (or indirect deaths) due to the COVID-19 impact in the global health system.The public health measures surrounding COVID-19 to mitigate and contain the outbreak, and practices around death and dying during this pandemic, introduced nuances in the bereavement process that must be recognized and addressed (Lowe et al., 2020; Sroebe & Shut, 2020). With significant restrictions to the social and cultural practices that normal bereavement usually relies upon, and the limitations on social support in grief and end-of-life situations, it is expected that the impact on the mental health of bereaved individuals will be significant (Stroebe & Schut, 2020). Although research is not yet able to report on the psychological impact in bereaved people during the COVID-19 pandemic (Burrell & Selman, 2020; Singer & Spiegel, 2020), it can be extrapolated that many may experience prominent levels of anxiety and/or depression during this period, predicting an increase in the number of prolonged grief disorders, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. The distinct COVID-19 situations in European countries in terms of direct deaths, justify accurate intervention and motivated the development of this strategic Partnership for Cooperation between 4 countries. While Portugal, Spain and Italy have had more than 165 deaths per 100.000 people, Denmark has experienced less than 45 deaths per 100.000 people. This situation in particularly problematic in countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy, where there is no national, public health strategy to address grief and bereavement issues and an absence of an educational culture about death and dying that prevents these issues from being adequately addressed, even in the training of health professionals (and other professionals indirectly involved) (Aoun et al., 2019).This consortium is composed by five partners from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Denmark. A combination between public and private organizations involved in the training of professionals to deal with bereaved people will allow learning from the different cultural contexts and different levels of expertise in grief and bereavement support. Three university partners: ISMAI/Maiêutica (P1 – Portugal) Universidad de Comillas (P3 – Spain) and Università del Salento (P4 – Italy) joined efforts with the Psychology Service from a University Hospital (P2 - Hospital S. João) in Portugal and the Danish National Center for Grief (P5 – DNCG), a national reference center for grief intervention from Denmark. These partners constitute the AURORA@COVID19-EU consortium, as a Partnership for Cooperation to create opportunities to train direct agents (different health professionals) and indirect agents (key stakeholders and different community members) in issues of bereavement and death and update clinical practice interventions to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. This strategy will reach a higher number of bereaved people under a public health model and, ultimately, promote more capacitated, resilient compassionate communities.<< Objectives >>This proposal aims to facilitate a unified, articulated response for grief and bereavement support in the aftermath of COVID-19. Following a collaborative, joint effort between these partners to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the bereavement process (that is already ongoing in the several countries), this project and this partnership aims to develop training resources and facilitate the good practices and education of formal and informal agents related to death and dying in times of COVID-19 pandemic. This partnership will involve researchers and health professionals who directly intervene with the bereaved people in times of COVID-19 pandemic, from different European countries, already integrated in support networks on their respective health systems. Benefiting from distinct levels of expertise related to death and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic, we will also adopt a community strategy to reach bereaved population, with vulnerability for the development of complicated grief reactions, by disseminating relevant information related to grief and resources available within the community to increase access to adequate intervention responses and reduce suffering. In parallel, a dissemination campaign will raise public awareness and enhance the resources of bereaved people. According to a three-tier grief intervention model, this partnership will develop training manuals for different professionals to respond to each level of needs in terms of bereavement support during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the risk of complicated grief reactions. A pilot phase will also be carried out within this partnership to apply the main project results in local training activities for different professionals (direct and indirect agents for bereavement support), and also implement an undated clinical intervention with bereaved people with complicated grief reactions. This will indirectly impact our bereaved target group by enhancing and promoting more compassionate communities, better prepared to provide the support that bereaved people need.<< Implementation >>This consortium will create innovative project outputs and develop training opportunities to reinforce a local network to improve bereavement support in the communities surrounding the partners. This will contribute to diminish the burden of the already fragile mental health system in these southern European countries as well as reduce the risks of unmet support needs from the bereaved people. Our proposal will follow a systematic approach centered on a public health model of bereavement intervention, with the following main activities: a) Project dissemination initiatives: Creation of a website with a compilation of resources on bereavement in several languages (English, Portuguese, Castellan/Spanish, Italian and Danish) for a diversity of users, and with resources adjusted to different target groups, like direct agents (health professionals) and indirect agents (other professionals or educators) and the general population. An informative flyer will be distributed in the community, especially targeting vulnerable people, from underprivileged groups, with less access to the available health resources. A network of institutions involved as Associate Partners will be established to increase dissemination and achieve the required target groups, especially in less privileged neighborhoods from these communities; b) Pilot phase of professional training and intervention: After the development of the three training manuals for direct and indirect agents, these professionals will be trained (through in-presence and online training events) and involved to address the support needs of bereaved people and contribute to a culture of compassion around death and dying, and increase the acceptance and normalization of bereavement experiences; Finally, a group of trained clinical psychologists will lead and implement a clinical study (involving different partners) to study the outcome of bereavement interventions, adjusted to COVID-19 issues, to prevent and alleviate complicated grief reactions. This clinical study will assess the effectiveness of these intervention formats in terms of professional competence (target group of health professionals) and in the well-being of bereaved clients.These activities will strengthen the capacity to disseminate and implement good practices to support the bereaved population most affected by this pandemic situation.<< Results >>Our project results align with the purpose of stimulating a more compassionate community to enhances a wider, more accepting grief and bereavement culture, while at the same time respecting the idiosyncrasy of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Project Results are sustained in three main axes: 1) the development of training manuals (that will be the project outputs) that will then be used in 2) local training activities for the different professionals, direct and indirect agents that intervene with bereaved people, and 3) to disseminate Good Practice guidelines for intervening with bereaved people. All these materials will be available in 5 languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Danish).Particularly, our main project results will be: i) a training manual for psychologists (R1) in order to develop the competences and skills to perform adequate interventions in this context, particularly and targeting the bereaved population with complicated grief reactions; ii) a training manual for direct agents (R2), i.e., health professionals working with bereaved people (such as doctors, nurses, social assistances, and other welfare professionals) to facilitate an adequate intervention and to prevent and assess people with complicated grief reactions, who might need to be referred to specialized intervention; iii) a training manual for indirect agents (R3), namely social gate keepers and key community members (such as pharmacists, informal caregivers, priests and religious people, social educators implicated in the support system of bereaved people in the general population). Together, these training resources will be applied in the most affected countries by the pandemic (Spain, Portugal and Italy) and train the different target groups (i.e., mental-health professionals, and other health professionals or educators).A piloting stage will also be carried out within this partnership to apply the main project results developed, including through: a. Clinical Study intervention for bereaved people to assess the effectiveness of these interventions to prevent and alleviate complicated grief reactions during the COVID-19 pandemic; b. Local Training events with psychologists with 2-days, in-presence training (as a result of R1); c. Local training with direct agents (as a result of the R2) with 2-days, online training; c. Local Training events with indirect agents (as a result of the R3) with one-day, online training; d. Finally, with the knowledge and input from the training events and the overall development of this project and community strategy dissemination, we will develop a Good Practice Guidelines Manual for Bereaved people (R4). As the DNCG states, “grief does not have to destroy lives”. The AURORA@COVID19-EU proposal aims to contribute for this endeavor by increasing and facilitating a unified, articulated response to grief and bereavement support in the aftermath of COVID-19, strengthened by the interchanging of experiences and expertise to will reinforce good practices in all partners.

"As a result of the global dynamics and urgencies we are facing today, universities are prompted to interact more closely with their immediate surroundings and take more targeted and responsible actions for tackling the so-called ‘grand societal challenges’. However, HEIs research and education still responds primarily to the concerns of academic disciplines rather than civil society needs. On the other hand, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play a growing role in economic, social and environmental issues and have an increasing influence on global governance issues. But most of these organizations face scarcities in terms of financial and/or human resources that are critical to their ability to expand and improve their actions. Providing research support to local communities strengthens the capacities of CSOs to expand their developmental impacts. Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL), e.g. via Science Shops, is proven to be an effective mechanism to strengthen higher education institutions' social responsibility, to strengthen civil society and to develop active citizenship in the scientific and student community. The ENtRANCE project (2018-2021) increased and improved collaboration between CSOs and teachers/researchers/students, by developing and disseminating a training programme for teachers (and their students) on what CERL entails and how to put it into practice in courses and on institutional level.ENgaged ReseArch coNnecting Community with higher Education, that’s what ENtRANCE stands for and has been working towards, resulting in the achievement of its objectives: (1) increase skills/competencies of higher education students (and staff) to solve actual problems faced by civil society(2) boost participation of CSOs in collaborative research projects and bringing those issues on research agendas(3) embed scientific research results into local community actions, contributing to knowledge transfer(4) design, assess and recognize a flexible and multidisciplinary learning approach that can lay the foundation for effective partnerships between HEIs and civil society(5) share successful factors and challenges for supporting public engagement and transfer educational strategies and participatory methods to geographical contexts with scarce experience in the fieldThe ENtRANCE project started with a large-scale study of research needs in CSOs and an impact study of Science Shop research on CSOs (345 CSOs took part in the studies). This work allows stakeholders to better address and adjust their solutions towards civil society development, enriching the research agendas with societal topics. Based on the results of the studies, the ENtRANCE team developed an open, flexible and multidisciplinary CERL learning approach and training materials, incorporated in a training programme for teachers on how to design and execute a quality Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL) project, increasing the civic and social skills of students and staff while answering the societal issues raised by the CSOs. In the context of the trainings, all institutions conducted CERL pilot projects with multidisciplinary team of students, staff and CSOs. In total, 62 staff, 400 students and 81 CSOs were involved in those pilots, that were described in case studies documenting the collaborative research and knowledge transfer process. As a result of the CERL collaborations, the CSOs embedded new products, services or processes in their operation and spread their new knowledge to their local and international networks facing the same societal challenges. Because the CERL approach ENtRANCE developed put an emphasis on the equality between all partners (all learn from each other), CSOs were not 'helped' but 'empowered'. The training programme was assessed per institution: participants were overall positive and brought up areas of improvement, that will be applied in the future versions, as the programme will keep on running after the end of ENtRANCE. All ENtRANCE results were collected in an e-handbook for teachers and policy advisors who want to introduce community engaged research and learning into their modules, curricula and higher education institutions, titled ""How to embed CERL into your institution"", freely downloadable on the project website entrance-project.eu (and 8 other websites). On an institutional level, CERL was embedded in curricula and awareness of science and education decisionmakers increased, leading to institution-wide follow-up projects on CERL. Also, teachers and researchers’ networks of societal partners was expanded, leading to new collaborations also after the end of ENtRANCE. On a national level, other HEIs were inspired by the CERL training material and some proposed a similar approach to their staff/students. Dissemination also led to new collaborations between HEIs and, internationally, to much interest and fruitful discussions, and to two new approved Erasmus+ projects on CERL."

While stress is an inevitable part of life, it is very present and becoming more prevalent among university students [1]. In addition to anxiety and stress, depression can also impact higher education students’ life to such an extent that in-depth research is necessary in order to help future students. Studies show that in some cases almost 10% of university students have been diagnosed with, or treated for, depression over the past 12 months [2]. In a recent study [3] the students completed a survey consisting of demographic questions, a section instructing participants to rate the level of concern associated with challenges pertinent to daily life (e.g. academics, family, sleep), and the 21-question version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale. The results indicated that the top three concerns were academic performance, pressure to succeed, and post-graduation plans. Academic pressures of meeting grade requirements, test taking, volume of material to be learned and time management has been shown to be a significant source of stress for HE students. While academics can be perceived as a positive challenge, potentially increasing learning capacity and competency, if viewed negatively, this stress can be detrimental to the student's mental health and wellbeing. Researchers urged for the need for universities to implement a systematic and continuous method to monitor the mental health of their students [3]. This type of monitoring, along with increased availability of programs, would allow universities to evaluate the mental health needs of their students as well as assess and improve the efficacy of their existing counseling programs.The project’s objective is to design and develop a 3D virtual world using the potential of a gamification-based approach in which university students will anonymously engage in activities that will help them be better prepared for University curricular activities and ultimately help them reduce anxiety while simultaneously monitor their mental health. Inside the environment, students will engage in gamified activities that usually induces anxiety such as preparation for an exam. Visualization of activities that causes anxiety through the virtual world will help the participants to get better prepared for the actual activities. Additionally, successfully completing the activity in the virtual world will reduce the anxiety in real life when the real activity will take place. Psychological counseling will be designed inside the environment using proper setting. The 3d virtual world environment presents numerous benefits for psychological counseling, since it removes the restrictions of physical representation. The student and the counselor -each in the convenience of their own space (campus or home)- can log in in the environment and be represented by virtual avatars that can be transformed as the individual user wishes and feels comfortable with (appearance, outfit etc.). Furthermore, the environment will comprise a visually appealing and relaxing virtual environment consisting of rivers, mountains, waterfall, flowers, trees, beaches etc. Additionally, the environment provides anonymity for students that are afraid to engage in a traditional face to face phycological counseling. Finally, the Counseling Center of each University can monitor the overall mental health of their students by examining students answers in virtual world surveys. Students will have the option to choose if they prefer to take the surveys or not.This 3D virtual world will be developed using an iterative development process (alpha, beta and final version) after a thorough needs analysis involving students and professionals. Students from all partner countries will participate in various sessions inside the environment. The project will have a significant impact to students, educators, university counseling centers and mental health professionals. The final version of the environment will be multilingual, open and expandable to other languages and game scenarios, allowing broader long-time benefits. References[1] Mackenzie, S., et al. (2011). Depression and suicide ideation among students accessing campus health care. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 101. [2] Wolfram R. (2010). Depression Care: Using the Chronic Care Model in a University Health Center. Doctoral dissertation, Valparaiso University.[3] Beiter, R., et al. (2015). The prevalence and correlates of depression, anxiety, and stress in a sample of college students. Journal of Affective Disorders, 173, 90–96.