European Scientific Research Game Project
The “European Scientific Research Game Project”, a Lifelong Learning – Comenius project, revolves around informal education, situated learning and learning by doing approaches, conjugating science and ICT to motivate secondary school students by replicating the excitement of scientific research. The project sought to develop a new approach to teaching the scientific method as applied to the study of ecological science and biodiversity in particular.
Research Game has been involving about 500 students and 70 teachers in a fascinating competition on the scientific method and biodiversity during the last three years.
During the project a serious and training game, ‘Research Game’, on the application of the scientific method to biodiversity has been developed, accompanied by a series of documents to support the learning process. During the game students collaborated internationally across Europe, to build hypotheses, research and test the validity of their hypothesis and finalize a theory based on their findings. Students’ research findings had been shared with other groups on the project platform. After carrying on a research project applying the scientific to biodiversity, teams participated to an online European competition and received prizes during an official ceremony.
Although all activities foreseen by the project have been successfully accomplished, such as the European competition among schools and the workshops and training programmes for teachers, the materials and tools developed by Research Game are fully available and exploitable on the online platform (www.researchgame.eu/platform), and represents a great opportunity to introduce the scientific method and biodiversity study in an informal and motivating way in daily curricular school activity.
You will find on our platform:
- training and final games
- research projects carried out by the participants
- supporting documents on biodiversity, the scientific method, teachers and game guides, a glossary, videos, brochure, etc.
- training and workshop materials for teachers.
All available products are free and we encourage teachers to use them to foster students’ comprehension of the scientific method and biodiversity.
Have a look to how an English and a Science teacher have been using Research Game for their own projects and learning objectives.
Visit the project platform: www.researchgame.eu/platform
Visit the project Facebook page: https://it-it.facebook.com
Partnership: University of the Salento (Italy, coordinator), University of the West of Scotland (United Kingdom), Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), Bildungswerk der Sächsischen Wirtschaft (Germany), European Ecological Federation (United Kingdom), Kariyer Danismanligi ve Insan Kaynaklarini Gelistirme Dernegi (Turkey).
The project ‘The European Scientific Research Game’ has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.