Abstract:

Our motivation is to present how to transfer from real environment mobility designed for many Erasmus + projects into online events and come back to a real-time event once again. The second point is how to strengthen the real-time approach with the experience derived from the online event. Nowadays, it is crucial for many projects with the mobility of students and mentors planned as a milestone. Avoiding travel restrictions, social distance limitations and universities closed to real-time classes we show how to achieve mobility goals by transferring and organizing international and intensive mobility as an online event.

In the paper, the successful approach of implementing a real-time Erasmus+ intensive project mobility and the results of the online mobility are described. Both mobilities involved 42 students from four EU colleges, eight academics from the same colleges, and staff from three different NGOs. Participants in the project were from France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, and Portugal. The first mobility CitizenGames’21 was conducted online while the second one CitizenGames'22 happened in real time in Portugal. Improving students’ communication soft skills in online and real-time environments meant that the projects needed to be very well organized and planned in a real-time environment. The online pre-initial actions were used in the real-time event as well.

Organization, Terns of Requirements:
Both versions of the mobilities were based on the same pattern of preparations. They began six months ahead of the event. Before each event, high school pupils were presented with a set of NGO-related topics and asked to select the ones that they felt were most relevant to them. They had chosen three topics: citizen rights, cyber-harassment, and plastic soup. The project organizers created for each mobility a “Terms of Reference” (ToR) document for the students to use during each project and were slightly differed due to the project conditions. There were three sections of the ToR document: technical, educational, and content requirements. There was an annex provided with a detailed example.

Technical requirements:
- The students should follow the process detailed in the annex.
- The game should be created in 2D/flat graphics.
- The game must be developed within the JEU game engine.
- The game should be created to be played on a computer and should be single-player.
- The game should last between 5 and 10 minutes maximum (cf. educational requirements, C. below).
- The students should provide a complete set of assets as described in the annex.

Results:
In the project 42 students and 12 mentors from universities and academies took part. We achieved 9 projects for the final presentations. The jury also received a set of rules on how to assess student projects and presentations to focus on the the important issues that the students and their teams had to follow i.e. their requirements of the games. Each category has its own score, that summed up to 100.
- The game follows the educational requirements with 50 points.
- The game should be teasing and entertaining in order to engage pupils It should draw the attention of youths from the beginning. (30 points).
- The game should provide an innovative idea. (15 points).

The project of the game “Gender Adventure” that won was then developed by the international team of the academics from Ireland and Poland.

Keywords:

Serious games, intensive projects, multinational projects.