A Modular VR & AR Based Educational Toolkit To Help EU Adults Foster Climate Neutral Practices

The VITAL project was motivated by the EU's Green Deal Action Plan and the exploitation of two Erasmus+ priorities – facing climate change combined with digital transformation, particularly in the adult education sector. Though the main sources of greenhouse gasses are energetics and transportation, the behaviour and lifestyle of EU citizens in terms of consumption and use of products and services play important roles and can be influenced to be more sustainable and aligned with best practices leading to carbon neutrality (e.g. recycling, reuse, reduction, a shift toward circular economy). The VITAL project aimed to help EU adult learners better understand the basic principles giving rise to climate change, raise awareness of this topic, and provide examples of the best low-carbon practices in a compact, readable, and practical way. The outcomes can be used by relevant target groups (adult trainers, teachers and educators, adult training providing organisations, SME managers) as a set of customizable training resources that can help them transfer knowledge to adult learners efficiently and engagingly. An innovative feature of prepared materials is the exploitation of the emerging digital technology of augmented reality.

The main successfully reached objectives of the VITAL project are: • Promoting and using an activity-based learning methodology to stimulate and help adults understand (in simpler terms and with examples) what the EU Green Deal and climate-related activities are about. • To provide adult trainers with editable and adaptable teaching content, materials and relevant activity-based learning examples connected with the topic of climate change and suitable activities (farm to fork, sustainable industry, carpooling, waste management, building and renovating, eliminating pollution and single-use items, etc.). • Making use of augmented reality technology to develop content-rich training materials that support digital transformation and the increase of digital literacy skills and digital content creation at the same time.

The project implemented activities in line with the original time plan, with expected involvement of the individual partners and can be summarized in the following points. a) Within 4 transnational F2F project meetings (Olomouc 7/2022, Huelva 1/2023, Istanbul 11/2023 and Athens 6/2024) and 7 virtual meetings (ZOOM platform), the design, implementation and review of the set project results with respect to quality and knowledge transfer effectiveness were discussed and collective decisions were made. All meetings benefited from the multi-disciplinary expertise of the partner organisations and members of the partnership involved in developing the project outcomes. Each meeting served to continuously monitor the current stage of the project implementation, risk assessment/elimination, project and financial management. b) Internal experts in partner organisations, associate partners and adult training stakeholders were countinuously consulted to map their needs, which helped to shape the development of the project results. Thus, the results are relevant to the current needs of the target groups and the most up to date state of knowledge. c) To ensure the collective knowledge and skills of all project partners to further develop project results, a training session in the form of an LTTA was held in November 2022 in Malta to help project partner staff learn how to develop augmented reality content for the case studies and to share the skills within their local communities and educational needs. d) Partners collectively cooperated through the division of tasks and sharing of expected workload, to use their expertise and develop the project’s 3 main results. e) Partners set up and maintained dissemination channels (a project webpage https://vital.eumecb.com, Facebook and LinkedIn social media channels https://www.facebook.com/VitalProjectErasmusPlus and https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12743873/), issued 4 digital newsletters, organized 11 multiplier events in their country and one common project webinar to spread awareness of both the VITAL project and its freely available project outcomes, in particular the VITAL Open Educational Toolkit. f) Furthermore, to ensure the necessary quality, internal peer-reviewing of project results was used. External evaluation of project results, mainly the Toolkit and user's guide enabled us to improve materials and to find ideas about possible further development of the outcomes in the future. h) Throughout the project implementation project and financial management activities we carried out and coordinated by the main beneficiary. Project management guide was issued, and regular internal reports were carried out to continuously follow the project implementation. All project and financial management activities to keep the timeline, quality standards and proper use of the budget were successfully implemented. The main principles were enshrined in bilateral agreements between the partners and the coordinator.

The key project results are: • R1 Modular Training Resources to Foster Climate Neutral Practices; • R2 The VITAL Modular Open Educational Toolkit; • R3 VITAL Trainer’s Guide. Each of the outcomes has several parts and was developed through more particular activities. R1 Modular training resources consist of a set of training materials aimed at fostering climate-neutral practices with European adult training and environmental education like a green-oriented curriculum, a set of 14 AR case studies that promote climate-neutral practices, lecturing content in audiovisual format for 7 modules with submodules in all partners official languages (PowerPoint presentation slides) and a set of self-assessment quiz questions. Based on a survey of the needs of the relevant target groups and internal discussion within the partner consortium, the number of studies (14 instead of 6) and modules (7 instead of 3) has been expanded so that the materials produced contain all the necessary information in sufficient breadth and depth and contribute as much as possible to the fulfilment of the planned objectives of the project. At the same time, to ensure the accessibility of the project outputs, it was agreed with the national agency to create the outputs primarily in the framework of AR (augmented reality). R2 Open Educational Toolkit consists of all digital resources organised modularly and integrated for easy access by the adult trainers and other target group members from the project website. The toolkit was designed considering the mapped adult trainer’s needs for practical and integrative training tools, and user-friendliness but also in a modular form to mix and match resources according to respective training/level of training provided by them to their end-users. A key part is represented by online courses in all partner languages shared via LMS Moodle maintained by the Spanish partner INERCIA-ES. The toolkit also includes 14 case studies, examples of activity-based learning for the content modules, a skills matrix describing the skills and competencies developed in course modules and learning path examples for various training needs and contexts. Via the Toolkit repository, all resources are freely available to all possible target group users. R3 Trainer's guide is intended as a tool for adult trainers to introduce the way, how the digital resources developed through the VITAL project, and available on the VITAL toolkit, can be used for training target group participants. The Guide also contains information on the use of augmented reality case studies as training material and all the VITAL open educational resources to create own training programmes, guidelines on the creation of some own digital material using augmented reality, activity-based learning methodology, and how VITAL resources can be used in different educational settings and contexts. The final Guide is also available as an e-book, a part of the R2 Toolkit. All the planned outputs and results were delivered within the timeframe of the project. Thanks to the mutual cooperation of all partners and other actors involved, the outputs could be produced in the expected numbers and quality to foster the acclaimed project objectives.