Abstract:

JEU: Let’s play together for the European Union is a project financed by Erasmus+ under contract n.º 2019 - 1 - FR01 - KA201 – 062510. The project aims to foster European citizenship through education. The topics addressed are citizen/civil rights and duties, cyberbullying/sexism and plastic soup. It is committed to develop a serious game to be used in schools in order to raise awareness on these topics.

This project, as many others, was naturally impacted by the SARS-COV-2 virus and resulting COVID-19 illness. In order for the serious game to be developed, the project had a mobility planned for Antwerp, scheduled for March 2020. The lockdowns imposed throughout Europe made it impossible to organize the planned live mobility of students and staff. The mobility was initially delayed and later converted into an online one. The online mobility took place between the 15th of March and the 20th of March 2021. The solution put in place is based on the experience of the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) involved in the project. In fact, being involved in other projects that also involve mobilities of both students and staff, similar impacts were felt before by some of the participating organizations.

In J.C. Monteiro et all., “JEU: From blended mobility to online mobility,” presented at the 15th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference, 2021, INTED 2021, a description is made about the procedures adopted to shift the blended mobility to an online mobility. It is mentioned how a virtual learning environment was adopted, how a video conferencing platform was used and how a social virtual environment was created and put in place. In J.C. Monteiro et all., “From blended mobility to online mobility in JEU: the student’s perspective”, presented at the 13th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 2021, Edulearn 2021, the perspective from the students that participated in the mobility was presented.

This paper intends to report on the perspective of the staff members that organized and conducted the mobility. It does so based on a survey that was applied to the organizers of the mobility, professors from the participating higher education institutions and staff from the participating non-governmental organizations. The main question to be answered is if the tools applied were helpful in the acquisition of knowledge by the students that took part in the experience and if they provided support for the promotion of social contact and collaboration between them. Were these tools helpful in the development of relevant game concepts and provided a proper environment for the development of those games. The results obtained will influence upcoming mobilities in this particular project and will support other organizations that might be interested in the application of the methodology implemented.

Keywords:

Serious Game, Citizenship, Active Learning, COVID-19.