Abstract:

Youth entrepreneurship is vital for creating employment and sustainable growth and has become a priority in the EU policy agenda as a tool to combat unemployment and social exclusion as well as stimulating innovation among young people. According to Eurostat, the youth unemployment rates are much higher than unemployment rates for all ages. Particularly, unemployment rate among young people (18-24 years old) in Slovakia reached in March 2015 26,5 %, in Romania 21,7%, even in Greece 49,8%. In spite of high unemployment rates not only in mentioned but in many Member States, there is evidence of skills shortages in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields.

The paper presents the project “VR4STEM - Virtual Reality for STEM Entrepreneurship Training”, which aims to assist young people to gain entrepreneurship skill in STEM domain and the related ICT industry. The project main aim is to offer an educational environment for teaching/learning STEM entrepreneurship aspects that will use advanced ICT-based educational methods, like 3D virtual reality. This will lead to more effective ICT-based teaching and training and will also offer new and more attractive ways of teaching, through the Virtual 3D World that will be developed. The VR4STEM project will offer to young people the chance to improve understanding and skills on STEM entrepreneurship, through the use of augmented technologies and will contribute to improve the quality of learning.

Keywords:

STEM, youth unemployment, augmented technology, virtual reality, 3D virtual worlds.