Abstract:

The flipped classroom and gamification have been identified as essential education methods since they improve students' level of motivation and engagement. The flipped classroom methodology enables teachers to extend their presence outside the classroom while encouraging students to dedicate their own study time to the development of the required hard skills to contribute to in-class problem solving and project development activities. Gamification is the practice of applying game design elements and concepts to non-game situations. It can also be described as a collection of activities and processes that use or apply game elements' characteristics to solve problems.

This paper presents two international projects, ELSE - Eco/Logical Learning and Simulation Environments in Higher Education and YBS – Your Business Success, and their main contributions to flipped classroom and gamification approaches. ELSE project establishes and disseminates a plan for achieving the overall European goal of redesigning higher education and promoting Bologna principles' implementation across Europe. The aim is to create an integrated curriculum in which academic content is delivered concurrently with, and enhanced by, digital age-appropriate competencies and soft skills. YBS is a project whose primary purpose is to develop creatives solutions to help aspiring entrepreneurs and micro and small business owners/managers create realistic and performance-focused business plans. This can be done by creating a new digital business planning platform and methodology, as well as a new VET course and learning materials. A survey was implemented to evaluate the educational impact/potential of the aforementioned tools among higher education students.

The feedback from higher education students who tried out both projects' tools was very positive, confirming that new education tools, mainly associated with flipped classroom and gamification, are effective in the teaching-learning process and increase students' engagement and motivation levels.

Keywords:

International projects, YBS, ELSE, Flipped Classroom, Gamification, Engagement, Motivation, Higher Education.