Enhancing Digital Skills of Hard-to-Reach Adults for Better Life Chances

"CONTEXTTechnology revolutions are transforming our world and changing the way we live, work and interact while leading to new opportunities with many challenges as well, and this is happening at an unprecedented pace. According to European Economic & Social Committee, ""Information technology is on the rise everywhere, yet its potential for economic growth, employment, innovation and, above all, improving European citizens' quality of life, has still to be fully exploited."" The committee also refers to ""Digital Single Market Strategy"" which will carry all Labour Market to the world of Internet and create a fully engaged digital society. As EC states, ""those who could benefit most from education and training are the ones less likely to engage"". In this process, in order to foster digital skills, training hard-to-reach adults is crucial, yet very challenging as well. Lessons learned from the previous attempts and European adult education experience in the last decade show us that these millions of adults can't be trained directly or taken to the 21st century labour markets. Motivational ways are urgently needed to reach those adults, re-mobilize them and increase their capacity to learn to learn and change the flow of their lives for better life conditions. Here, gamification practices both in face-to-face interactions and e-learning spaces are very promising to reach, motivate and re-mobilize these adults.OBJECTIVESHereby the main goal of this project is to provide hard-to-reach adults with flexible learning opportunities through face-to-face interactions and an interactive e-learning platform and a mobile application equipped with gamification strategies to foster them digital skills. The project will also bring together small groups of these adults in events and show them how to transfer their digital skills into real life situations and how to use technology to improve their lives.The project also aims to• provide adults with 21st century skills and encourage them to take action and gain self-confidence, by enabling them to perceive their situations as a serious game in which they should play to win,• encourage them to see that they are ""capable of changing their situations"" by using their digital skills and gamification strategies in the society more effectively,• build the capacities of adult educators through trainings about gamification strategies in fostering hard-to-reach adults' digital skills and integrating these strategies into real life situations.TARGET GROUPSThe target group will include 50 hard-to-reach adults who need practical experience to gain digital skills and integrate them into their lives to become capable of changing their situations and 50 adult educators who need capacity building to facilitate hard-to-reach adults to develop their digital skills and motivate them to re-mobilize in the community.ACTIVITIES & METHODOLOGYMethodology includes the following steps in general.1- Gathering needs, experiences and generating inspirational scenarios through workshops with target groups2- Developing Interactive e-learning Platform ""My Digi Space"" via literature reviews and joint work of partners and target groups3- Developing Mobile Application ""My Dig Box"" through compilation and simplifying the content of e-learning platformRESULTSAt the end of the project practice we will have obtained a guideline including inspirational scenarios, a gamified e-learning platform and a mobile app, which will serve adults to gain digital skills and facilitate them to integrate their attainments into real life situations/tasks. Thus they will be able to be re-mobilized, their engagement in 21st century skills will provide them with more self-confidence and motivation to take more action in the community.IMPACTInvolved adults will make progress related to their work and life situations, like mentality change, producing practical digital solutions to facilitate daily life situations/responsibilities/interactions.Adult educators will have a chance for further professional development to facilitate hard-to-reach-adults to gamify their own real life tasks through digital skills. This will empower adults more and lead them to take initiative more easily.Project owners will be able to reach wider European audience thanks to interactive e-learning tools that will be developed in the course of the project and provide many European Citizens with effective and engaging learning tools to gain basic digital skills."