The partners of the STEP_UP | Stop Epidemic Growth Through Learning project met on September 1 and 2, in the second transnational meeting of the project. The session took place in hybrid format, with some partners meeting in person in Gouda, in the Netherlands, and the others meeting online.
STEP_UP is a European project, funded by the European Union program, Erasmus+, and is being developed by a consortium of several European partners. It has SHINE 2Europe as coordinator and AFEdemy from the Netherlands, ISIS from Germany, Wise Angle from Spain and CIPH from Croatia as partners.
During the meeting days in Gouda, it was discussed how the educational game platform will be built, which is intended to be a training tool for the social sector and community stakeholders on the best ways to prevent and deal with pandemic situations. The game scenes and their formats were also reviewed, based on previous research carried out by the project partners. In the game there will be a different perspective of action for different characters such as policy makers, volunteers, third sector employees, and healthcare professionals.
The game resulting from the STEP_UP project intends to present several scenes similar to those that happened in the real process of the pandemic recession. The player will be asked to choose between more correct and less correct actions, so that through the game he will be able to learn behaviors that in real life would help to fight a pandemic, such as how to distinguish between fake and true news or how to better understand government measures. The game platform is intended for professionals in the social sector but can also be used by any citizen and will be an important tool in adult education.