Description
The Code RED Curriculum and learning material supports young people develop their employability skills. A Tutor Handbook also provides information on supporting young people re-engage in education and training.
Beneficiaries
Primary and secondary education practitioners.
Countries
Country/ies or organisation that developed the tool
The University of Nottingham (UK);
The University of Athens (EL);
Greenhat Interactive Ltd (UK);
The Province of Parma (IT) (subsequently replaced by Associazione Emiliano Romagnola Centri Autonomi AECA); and GM Eurocy Solutions (CY).
Date of creation of toolkit and periodicity of updates
It was created in 2013 however it is in part a transfer of the Game on Extra Time (GOET) project which ran from 2008 to 2010 coordinated by the University of Nottingham (UK).
Purpose of the toolkit
Guidance on what works (to help improve the design of policies and practices)
‘The toolkit transformed the methodology and the overall experience of the project into a structured curriculum unit that will support the improvement of the engagement of young people to education and will help to transfer and formalise the relevant employability skills-set. The aim of the project was to address Early School Leaving (ESL) and drop-out from education.’ In summary, the Code RED Units cover two courses that help introduce the co-design methodology and cooperative learning in general (Phase A), five courses that support the tutor in executing the game’s co-design methodology (Phase B) and four final courses that offer hard skills for well-known game authoring and other supportive software (Phase C).
Description of each of the tools
The Code RED Course Curriculum Unit has been designed as to extend and transfer the existing units of the project’s employability curriculum, by adding a ‘participatory digital (educational) games’ design’ unit, within a broader “ICT Skills” module and selecting and reviewing the existing units to fit Code RED users’ needs.
The tool contains a curriculum, a Trainers’ Handbook; a set of tools and exercises devoted to job seekers; A ‘Stencyl’ tutorial (which is used for the Participatory digital games’ design part of the curriculum); A ’game maker’ tutorial (which is also used for the Participatory digital games’ design part of the curriculum); and an “Aris” tutorial (which is also used for the participatory digital games’ design part of the curriculum).
- Curriculum – divided between general soft employability skills (e.g. personal development and personal hygiene) and hard (ICT) skills (e.g. participatory digital educational games’ design). For both categories, the curriculum provides a series of suggested lesson plans and time-frames and covering aims, learning objectives, learning activities, suggested content, teaching strategies, resources and assessment criteria.
- Trainers’ Handbook – this aims at enabling the trainers to properly and effectively utilise the intellectual outcomes of the Code RED project, in order to include them within the envisaged educational pathways towards re-engagement in education and subsequently employability.
- Tools for job seekers – exercises to be completed by students and subsequently discussed between teachers and students. There are 13 exercises which aim to gather information relevant to job seeking (e.g. ambitions, knowledge, skills, etc.) and to familiarise the students with the issues surrounding job seeking (e.g. writing a CV, completing application forms, etc.) .
- ‘Stencyl’ tutorial – instructions on how to create a game (2D platformer).
- ‘Game maker’ tutorial – coding instructions.
- ‘Aris tutorial’ – instructions to use Aris, an open source platform for the creation of virtual reality games.
Type of guidance given to users
No solutions provided as such – it is more of a framework to follow.
Source of information of the different tools
The partners designed it. Partners included IT companies.
Link/s to the toolkit and further information
http://codered-project.eu/public/?p=870
The toolkit is provided in PDF format.
Downloads
The Codered-project website
