General Objectives:
The current generation of STEM students, who have been impacted by the pandemic, require a strong drive and the ability to swiftly adjust to changes to succeed in today's technology-driven economy. A collaboration between partners has been established to develop a methodology for constructing digital tools that employ gamification to enhance creative thinking among BSc ICT students. The objective is to enhance teachers' abilities to incorporate innovative methods in the partners elearning system.
The activities to be implemented include a training program for teachers in the domain of ICT. Proof-of-concept with creative thinking and gamification techniques for STEM courses will be developed.
During the first year of this three-year project a teaching pilot project will be implemented, followed by partners using the tools developed by the other partners and the dissemination of the results.
Outcomes:
By incorporating digital innovative tools and adopting a student-centered approach, teachers will enhance the value of classical learning, empowering students to personalize their learning path and select engaging options. This strategy is expected to ignite students’ creativity and stimulate their interest and motivation, leading to lower dropout rates and greater success in a fast-paced and constantly evolving environment. The tools will use the European e-CF for measuring competences and proficiency levels.
This is a three-year project which commenced in November 2023.
The five partners are from universities in Romania (project coordinator from the Universitatea Dunarea de Jos Din Galati UDJG), and another university in Romania), Spain, Portugal and Malta.
The academics involved in this project from the University of Malta are Professor Sandra Dingli, Dr Margaret Mangion and Dr Vanessa Camilleri.
The first partners meeting was held in Malta (12 – 14 March 2024). This included a training session in gamification and creativity for which 28 persons attended.
Prof. Sandra Dingli from The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation recently organised a training workshop and partners meeting for the Erasmus+ ThinkGame project (Cooperation to implement creative thinking and gamification for innovative online training of STEM students) at the University of Malta’s Msida Campus.
Dr Vanessa Camilleri from the Faculty of ICT and Dr Margaret Mangion from The Edward de Bono Institute are also involved in this project, together with Professor Dingli.
Twenty-eight persons from five countries including Malta attended the two-day training session on gamification and creativity which was delivered by Assoc. Prof. Adina Cocu from the University "Dunarea de Jos" of Galati in Romania (project coordinator), together with Dr Vanessa Camilleri, Dr Josef Bajada, Dr Margaret Mangion and Prof. Sandra Dingli, all from the University of Malta.
During the partners’ meeting, which was the first for this three-year project, the five partner representatives discussed the manner in which the project will develop, and tasks were allocated. The goal of the project arises from the need to enhance the abilities of educators to incorporate gamification and creativity in their e-learning systems. A number of online tools will be developed by each of the partners, and these will be evaluated and tested. Once completed, the online platform may be used by academics to enrich their courses and by students to motivate the development of their creative thinking skills.