Abstract:

Agriculture entrepreneurship skills and spirit of youth can result in jobs creation, can produce wealth for society and can also produce vital social capital. In addition, with the current high levels of youth unemployment in Europe, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a vital way for young people to be active in the labor market, get income and realize their potential. The aim of this work is to introduce an innovative educational platform and provide an approach to train and support young people to run successfully their own agribusinesses. The educational platform will utilize and use advanced ICT-based educational methods like 3D virtual reality. This will contribute in ICT-based innovative teaching and training as well as assessment. Teachers will be offered new and more attractive ways of teaching, through the 3D Virtual reality educational environment that will be developed. Learners will have the opportunity to learn more efficiently and improve their skills on agriculture and entrepreneurship by using advanced ICT technologies.

The courses that will be created aim to assist young people and young farmers in formulating and successfully running their agribusiness. The courses are the following:
i) Agricultural startup formulation and funding opportunities,
ii) Utilization of ICT Technologies in Agriculture ,
iii) Organic production and organic Agribusiness Formulation,
iv) Crop Management and Resource Economics,
v) Fundamentals of Agriculture Accounting, Management,
vi) Regional and International development of Agricultural.

In the virtual world, students can find the courses and the specific learning topics of each course, a wide range of different types of educational material in various formats which complement each other. As an example, the students while studying the functionality of agriculture procedures and the production of various crops, have the opportunity to study in the virtual world, the theoretical parts via proper text-based presentations and in addition can examine the functionality of the corresponding virtual farms, crops and agriculture procedure. The courses are formulated The virtual world has many games and gamified learning activities that aim to assist students in learning aspects of entrepreneurship. The games and simulations performed in virtual worlds require the active participation of the student. Students cannot be passive when engaging with a gamified activity or participating in a simulation. Students involved in educational games and simulations interpret, analyze, discover, evaluate, act, and solve problems. This approach to learning is more consistent with constructive learning, where knowledge is perceived by students as it is active in solving problems in an authentic text rather than traditional teaching.
The results from a experimental study revealed quite promising findings regarding the efficiency of the virtual world and the gamified learning activities.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, gamification, game-based learning.