Enhancer project
Enhancing Social Entrepreneurship Capabilities Through Digital Educational Escape Rooms
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union
Why Enhancer
Europe faces an increasing number of societal challenges such as migration, inequality, and climate change. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is viewed as an essential and valid tool to address these societal challenges. They contribute to inclusiveness, equal opportunities, civic participation, and help tackle ecological problems. Hence, students in European need to be prepared with the required skills to contribute to solutions in tackling societal challenges, either as social entrepreneurs themselves or with a social entrepreneurial mindset on the labor market.
What do we do?
We identified digital educational escape rooms (DEER) as an up-and-coming and suitable method to prepare students with the required skills. DEER are digital versions of “live-action team-based games where players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited time” (Nicholson, 2015, p.1). They are suitable to address learning objectives related to content knowledge and 21st-century skills.
We develop a digital pedagogy (i.e., critical pedagogical approach, which examines digital tools in learning and their impact on applied pedagogies [Vitoulis & Laloumi-Vidali, 2016]) for digital tools and technology to allow the educational experience to be transformed so students can learn better and be more engaged.
The objectives
PR 1. Determine the vital SE capabilities by researching and creating a representative overview of characteristics of SE in different European national contexts,
PR 2. Develop an innovative digital (online teaching) pedagogical and didactic model, proposals, and practical guidelines for using DEERs for teaching SE in HEI in different European national contexts,
PR 3. Create a DEER for teaching SE in HEI in different European national contexts,
PR 4. Create a teacher’s training toolkit to enable teachers to adopt the SE DEER in their curricula.
Meet the team
Partners
Project leader
At the AUAS, we educate tomorrow’s professionals in a wide array of fields and disciplines of higher education. With our distinct focus on applied sciences, the AUAS enables students, lecturers and researchers to develop cutting-edge – and practical – knowledge and innovations that is sustainable, diverse, inclusive, and digital for the future. With the city as their laboratory, our students and lecturers work closely with countless industries, companies and organisations to come up with smart solutions to challenges facing our city.
Lead Quality & Assurance
We are a team of professionals with over 50 years of collective experiences in the fields of Education, System Rationalization, Information & Communications Technologies, Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation, Global Health Process – Life Sciences, Business Forensic Intervention, Youth Development & Motivation, and Resource Realignment with Goals and Objectives. Our members bring all these experiences to the support the identification of systemic problems and to the development and implementation of smart and sustainable solutions to difficult social problems.
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Lead PR4
The Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre (S2BMRC) is an integral part of the Münster School of Business at FH Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Acting globally, the S2BMRC is a world leading centre dedicated to interactions between Science and Business + Science and Society.
Lead PR3
The team of Questomatica create real life escape room experience in Amsterdam. They mixed the technology with the gaming to get a real immersion where the game objects are real, tasks challenging and players must not only escape from a locked room, but lose themselves in the quest.
Lead PR1
The team from University of Aveiro is composed by Prof. Dr. Marta Ferreira Dias, Prof. Dr. Marlene Amorim, Prof. Dr. José Joaquim Alvarelhão, Prof. Dr. Ana Dias, Prof. Dr. Cláudia Silva, Prof. Dr. Gonçalo Gomes and Research Fellow Cristiana Alves. This multidisciplinary team was assembled with the aim of contributing to different areas of expertise in the scope of social entrepreneurship for the development of this project.
With experience in other projects, such as UNLOCK, University of Aveiro team, as the leader of the PR1, is working together, to create the best first approach to allow the creation of innovative tools for the future of the higher education institutions.
Co-Led PR1
The University of Zaragoza is the main centre of technological innovation in the Ebro Valley. Through the Vice-Rectorship for Internationalization and Cooperation, the University of Zaragoza participates in various exchange programmes, collaborating with universities and research centres from Europe, Latin America and the USA, thereby strengthening its international standing.