PROJECT GENIUS: AN EXPERIENCE ON INNOVATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTEXTUAL EDUCATION USING GAMES DEVELOPMENT

The GENIUS (Innovative Interdisciplinary Contextual Education Using Games Development) project uses active learning methodologies to increase the level of soft-skills in higher education students. The soft-skills that this particular project aims to develop are some of the most commonly referred to in the literature as being relevant to higher education students. They are the ability to work in multicultural and interdisciplinary teams, the capacity to communicate to different audiences, critical thinking, creativity and entrepreneurship. These skills are relevant to students because they are the ones referred to as needed for their future employment, as stated in "The Future of Jobs Report 2018", from the World Economic Forum. With this specific purpose in mind, five different higher education institutions, University of Lodz (Poland), Artesis-Plantijn University College Antwerp (Belgium), Centria University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Dundalk Institute of Technology (Ireland) and ISPGAYA Polytechnic Superior Institute (Portugal) were awarded a grant, under KA203 Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership, to document an approach for implementing an intensive mobility format that would enhance students' soft-skills. The project, which started in November 2017, comprises a set of different activities. Students involved have virtual workshops to help them prepare for the work they have to do in each of three different ten-day mobilities. In these mobilities, the objective is for students to work in multicultural and interdisciplinary groups. The students are accompanied by professors/mentors from those same institutions, who, based on what they lecture in, also possess different areas of expertise. During their mobility, students are challenged to develop mobile apps for a specific pre-defined topic. With this methodology, we expect the participating students to develop the soft-skills referred to at the start, while also further developing their own technical skills that relate to the area there are studying. To date, we have completed two of the three mobilities that are part of this project. In this article, we make a detailed description of the project, present its main objectives, the methodology used to implement it and to monitor it, the tools used to assess it and present the expected outcomes from it.