Meeple School: Development of soft skills in the primary school with modern board games

<< Background >>This project aims to develop and apply an alternative methodology for the acquisition of key competences in school education through the use of modern board games. This methodology, which is already being tested in Spanish universities, has the advantage that it does not have generational barriers, so its application will extend throughout the lives of the participants. Thus, modern board games have been used in previous European projects for the work of social skills in the search for employment, and are used in older people for the exercise of memory. << Objectives >>The main objective is to create a European consortium to design, implement and transmit a methodology to acquire several key competences through learning based on modern board games. It will also allow the development of soft skills and encourage active participation in learning in an inclusive environment that will respond to the different profiles of students.The specific objectives are: 1. Carry out an analysis of key competencies in order to develop the appropriate tool or indicator to assess it. In this way, it will be possible to know the success of the methodology applied. 2. Select the right board games, designing the necessary support material to apply the methodology and work on the key competencies. 3. Develop the methodology and the tools to support it, which allow it to be applied and replicated in any school at the primary stage, emphasising the continuous exchange of experiences between students from the 3 countries through digital media. 4. Create the necessary physical and digital training and documentation to train any teacher as a facilitator in the application of this methodology. The project is aimed at school teachers, providing them with adequate training so that they can apply the methodology developed.<< Implementation >>The main objective of this project is to create a European consortium to design, implement and transmit a methodology to acquire several key competences through learning based on modern board games. The methodology will also allow the development of soft skills and encourage active participation in learning in an inclusive environment that will respond to the different profiles of students. The specific objectives are: SO1. Carry out an analysis of key competencies in order to develop the appropriate tool or indicator to assess it. In this way, it will be possible to know the success of the methodology applied. SO2. Select the right board games, designing the necessary support material to apply the methodology and work on the key competencies. SO3. Develop the methodology and the tools to support it, which allow it to be applied and replicated in any school at the primary stage, emphasising the continuous exchange of experiences between students from the 3 countries through digital media. SO4. Create the necessary physical and digital training and documentation to train any teacher as a facilitator in the application of this methodology. The project is aimed at school teachers, providing them with adequate training so that they can apply the methodology developed. The direct beneficiaries will be the students of the two primary years in which the intervention is carried out, and since the methodology will be replicated in successive years, all primary students in the corresponding years will benefit. In addition, the app developed in the project can be used by the parents of the students to reinforce the skills worked on at the school, in a family leisure environment. Thanks to the consortium formed in this project and the incorporation of simultaneous activities, students will be able to interact with their classmates from other countries, creating an environment of empathy, acceptance and collaboration. These activities involve the students, together with their teachers, preparing adaptations of the games to be applied in the other schools of the consortium. The idea of the consortium is that the project transcends beyond the classroom, giving guidelines to parents on how they can use modern board games in their family environment, since the family and the school environment are two of the main agents of socialisation at this stage of life. In addition, thanks to the transnational implementation of the project, we will be able to share the good teaching practices applied in each country, how they contribute to the development of the project, and what impact they are having on each student. It is intended that the methodology developed contains all the tools and characteristics so that it can be applied in any educational centre, regardless of the country. At the same time, in this project, an App will be developed that will help to implement this new methodology in a practical way. Thanks to all this, through a comparative analysis, it will be possible to observe the difference in the achievement of the learning of the basic competences and soft skills of the students (those that are fundamental for the personal and social development of children) of the different countries of the consortium. The benefits of transnational cooperation derived from this comparative analysis lie in the transfer of the strengths of the methodologies used by the countries with the highest scores in terms of student learning.<< Results >>The results of the project are: 1. Outcome of the project: a toolkit will be developed, called Meeple School, which will allow the application of the ABJM methodology to enhance the acquisition of key competences and soft skills (meeple is the name given to the wooden doll with a humanoid shape that appears in many modern board games). The kit is made up of: - Methodological guide: it is a multimedia manual hosted on a web platform and adapted for teachers and educators in the field of school education, which includes theoretical and scientific justification, work methodology, evaluation and impact measurement tools and audio and video tutorials posted. It will include pre-review research on the acquisition and promotion of the eight key competences selected by the European Commission and on the promotion of soft skills. It will also include research on the use of board games as an educational tool and its effects on education. Special attention will be paid to generating an accessible methodological guide adapted to groups with fewer opportunities to promote inclusive, motivating and innovative education. This multimedia guide will be the necessary resource to instruct you in the application of the methodology. - Meeple School application: this mobile application will be a regular reference aid during the application of the methodology. It will contain in a schematic way the basic steps to apply it. By developing a learning methodology based on board games, you will have basic information about each of the games included in the project, as well as a database of other games that could also be used for the acquisition of competencies and skills. The app will have the necessary information to carry out and record the reflection that the teacher makes with the students after each session. The project will ensure the maintenance and updating of the app for at least 5 years following the end of the project. To guarantee and measure the success of the methodology created, a test will be carried out in each of the countries that make up this strategic partnership. The scheduled sessions with the students will be held in person in each country. Regular video conferences will be held between teachers so that they can make the necessary observations about the strengths and weaknesses of the Meeple School methodological tool. Both the Methodological Guide and the mobile application will be available free of charge in the mother tongues of each of the countries participating in the project (Spanish, English, Romanian and Greek). 2. Impact on partner organisations: the professionalisation of teachers and educators in the development and implementation of an innovative methodology. Once the project is completed, all the organisations participating in the project will be able to carry out activities that use the methodology developed to work on key competencies and soft skills, they will be able to train other teachers and educators in this methodology and will have in their portfolio a great experience in this field, combining non-formal education and formal education. for greater efficiency in improving the learning of content related to the key competences and soft skills of school education students. These results will remain available also after the completion of the project, as described in the field aimed at sustainability. By training teachers as facilitators of this methodology, in successive years the new students who go through the selected course will benefit from the methodology, since their teachers will be prepared, and the centre will have the necessary material, which is non-fungible and can be used indefinitely.