<< Background >>Homework is a relatively widespread and common educational activity, especially among elementary and high school students. It facilitates both students’ engagement and performance (Magalhães et al., 2020; Hagger et al., 2015). Despite the apparent benefits of assigning homework to students (learning, consolidation, and application of learning content, better time management in the classroom), it appears to be a tremendous discomfort to students. Trying to make students get their homework done was always a big challenge -not only during the pandemic- faced by teachers and by parents as well. Therefore, the need to address this issue strongly emerges. Research data have shown the effectiveness of gamification techniques in the educational process because they are highly engaging, motivating and thus they enhance learning compared to traditional learning techniques (Hamari et al., 2014; DomíNguez et al., 2013).However, converting educational material and exercises into online educational games for online learning and assessment for each course is a virtually impossible task for teachers and school institutions. The project’s objective is to develop an online gamified environment that overcomes this challenge (the transfer of physical learning material and exercises into digital form) while conserving the motivational mechanics of games to help students better engage with their homework improving their learning outcomes. The proposed gamified homework environment will allow the easy creation of gamified experiences independent of the specifics of each course, thus providing a versatile educational tool encouraging the take-up, use, and adoption in all schools regardless of the courses they provide. This goal will be achieved by eliminating the difficulties of creating educational games that incorporate all the learning content and by associating the gamified elements with the homework activitiesThe GameWork project aims to help alleviate students’ reluctance to do homework by developing a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to engage and motivate students to do their homework.Therefore, this approach promotes innovative pedagogies and methods for teaching, learning, and assessment and supports students and teachers to use digital technologies in creative, collaborative, and efficient ways. Moreover, the GameWork project is about developing digital learning materials and tools, particularly Open Educational Resources and Open Source Educational Software.Finally, the GameWork proposal is also about tackling learning disadvantage, early school leaving, and low proficiency in basic skills since the use of the gamified homework environment will help teachers gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually, the progress they record, and the time completion for each task. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student. ReferencesMagalhães, P., Ferreira, D., Cunha, J., & Rosário, P. (2020). Online vs traditional homework: A systematic review on the benefits to students’ performance. Computers & Education, 152, 103869.Hagger, M. S., Sultan, S., Hardcastle, S. J., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. (2015). Perceived autonomy support and autonomous motivation toward mathematics activities in educational and out-of-schoolcontexts is related to mathematics homework behavior and attainment. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 41, 111-123.Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences(HICSS), 3025–3034.DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J.-J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380–392.<< Objectives >>This project aims to motivate students to work on their homework and alleviate their reluctance to do homework. Towards this goal, we will develop a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to motivate students to do their homework. The GameWork project focuses on three precise objectives:1) Homework organisationLearners can access the environment with their smartphone or tablet and see the daily list of activities that they must perform to prepare for the next day, ticking the completed ones. Each activity can provide details that will help the student better organise their time while doing their homework. Some of such details can be: the estimated time to complete an activity which would give students an indication of how to fit each activity into their schedule better, a suggested activity order that would provide a proposed order in activities that depend on each other, complex activities can be divided into subactivities that will better guide the student towards completing them references to educational material that the student already comprehends before completing each activity, etc. This functionality will allow the student to see a complete overview of their homework at a glance and support them to better estimate, organise, and, in the end, complete their homework.2) Student engagementTowards this aim, the GameWork project will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide the gamified features and courses included in the development creating a gamified homework environment that will engage students in doing their homework. Some gamification features that could be included in the environment could be: rewards: upon completing their homework, students can earn points that will increase their level in the environment, prompting them to complete their homework to earn more rewardsrankings: based on the students’ performance, a ranking system can indicate the relative performance of each student, motivating them to do better than their classmatescontent unlocking: content can be unlocked when a student reaches a certain level that can include fun material not related to homework, such as a funny video or an imagenotification: student can receive notifications when they level up to motivate them to continue their progress3) Progress monitoring (for students and teachers)A verification process will be designed for a student not to skip the assignments and declare them untruthfully complete. The platform will ask for answers to one or more questions essential for each task. This verification process serves two purposes: a) it is a safety measure against cheating, b) it constitutes an incentive for students that would not otherwise do their homework learning at least the minimum of the essential questions.Furthermore, performance analytics will be provided for each student, alongside their classroom performance. In addition, students will be held accountable to the teachers, the parents but most important to themselves. Teachers can also add complementary material and content according to their students’ needs (pictures, external links, videos, voice recordings, etc.) to facilitate the learning process. Teachers will gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually and the progress they record. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student.<< Implementation >>The following project activities are planned (details on the project Gantt Chart, see Annex): A01: Project Plan (UPatras) A detailed Project Plan (first version M2, final M22) will describe the working process of the project, tasks, activities, and deadlines. It will be a living document being continuously updated throughout the project.A02: Project Quality Plan (UPatras) The Project Quality Plan (PQP) (M2, M6) will describe the internal procedures (peer review process of outputs, communication plan, risk management, internal monitoring procedures, tangible project results templates, etc.) that need to be followed by all partners to ensure the fulfilment of the objectives and the scope of the project. A03: Project Promotion Plan (Arsakeio) Development of the Promotion Plan which will be a living document (first version M4, final M24) describing the sharing and promotion strategy to ensure the widest possible promotion of the project. The plan will describe the envisaged sharing and promotion activities that need to be carried out during the project, but also after its completion. A04: Online PM tools (UPatras) Online Project management (PM) tools will be deployed by UPatras (M3) to facilitate communication between partners. The PM tools will include the use of a project email list, an online project management system that will include project tasks and activities combined with a monitor mechanism, and a secure file sharing system for the storage of project documentation and files, and a virtual classroom system. A05: Project website (ISMAI)The project website (M3, continuously updated until M24) will be created by ISMAI with the contribution of all partners and it will provide information regarding the project and its goals, expected outcomes, and partnership. It will also provide access to project results. A06: Project Social Media (KJGAG) Project pages in social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) will make use of Web 2.0 technologies for the promotion of the project. These media pages will be created by KJGAG (M3) and will be continuously updated during the project lifetime including contributions from all partners.A07: Project Logo, and leaflets (Freixo) The Project Logo (created by Freixo at M2) will be used in all formal and informal communication of the project. Project leaflets will be released in two versions at M6 and M18. A08: Project newsletter and video (UPatras) During the project lifetime, 4 newsletters (M6, M14, M19, M23) will be created and communicated through project communication channels to stakeholders. A promotional video will be released (M10) in English. A new version, including features from the final version of the environment, will be available at M18. A09: Internal Evaluation Reports (UPatras) UPatras will control the internal evaluation of all major events, tangible project results, and activities and will collect all responses from all the partners and will combine them into a report. This report will be delivered periodically (every 6 months) and will serve as the internal monitoring of the Quality Assurance Procedure of the project. A10: Progress Report (UPatras) The coordinator will prepare the interim progress report for the National Agency (M12). A11: Partnership Agreement (UPatras) Partnership Agreement which will reflect the major principles ruling the cooperation among project partners and the exploitation of existing & project generated value will be created by UPatras (first version at M2 and final version at M6). A12: IPR Agreement (Arsakeio) The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Agreement will reflect all intellectual property rights of all elements created within the project. The first version will be available on M2 and it will be agreed upon, but the final version will be signed after the final version of the system (M20). A13: Closure Report (UPatras) Closure Project Report for the National Agency will be prepared at M24.<< Results >>The GameWork project will include the following project results:PR1: Needs analysis, course selection, gamification featuresThis PR will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The work underdone will be included in the report “How students would like to have fun with their homework,” which will combine the literature findings with the students’ views collected from the GameWork schools. This report will also identify the courses selected to be included in the implementation phase (PR3), based on the feedback from the schools. Furthermore, following the feedback from students (Arsakeio, KJGAG, Freixo), the psychologists (ISMAI) of the consortium will work along with the developers to analyse the findings and conclude to a set of features that would be implemented into the gamified environment. We expect that the needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide more features that could be included in the development. All these will be included in a report called “Analysis of the gamification features” and, based on a typical software engineering approach, will be used as the analysis and design blueprints for the development of the various versions of the gamified environment.Therefore, the work on this PR will be presented in two reports:· How students would like to have fun with their homework· Analysis of the gamification featuresPR2: Development of the environment Alpha, Beta, and Final versionFollowing the work on PR1, a gamified environment for homework will be developed. This environment will offer features and functionalities that will be defined in detail in PR1. Such features could be (based on preparation analysis): allowing students to self-evaluate their homework progress, further motivating students that delaying, introducing a healthy competition among students (using awards and leader boards), offering rewards to students, allowing the teachers to monitor the activities (both progress and correctness), and allowing teachers to modify future homework based on students’ progress. The environment will offer a gamification-based approach in which the students will engage in homework-related activities that will help them be better prepared for their studies and the exams.The main outputs of this PR are:· The environment (Alpha, Beta, and Final Version)· A technical report for the future content creators that will use the environment after the end of the funding period.· Three demonstrative videos of the environment for the three roles (student, teacher, creator) that will explain the system features.PR3: Implementation, Students’ feedback, and ReportingFollowing the iterative development of the gamified homework environment, which is the focus of the PR2, in this PR, the GameWork partners will start inviting students, teachers, and course creators (primarily teachers) into the environment. This PR is the one most related to the impact of the gamified homework environment. The innovative character of this environment will be demonstrated to educators, students, and all types of stakeholders (education providers, local administration), thus having a multiplying effect. The main output of this PR is a report on “Implementation and Students and Teachers’ feedback.” This report will present all data collected anonymously. The report will include implementation strategies, success stories, dos and don’ts, best practices, and the results from the environment evaluation. These results will be analysed (both statistically and qualitatively) and will be reported. The report will focus on cultural differences and will compare results across countries. Due to its nature, this report is expected to be innovative, highly influential, and will probably lead to scientific publications.

There is a significant difference in the sports industry between men's and women's federation licences in 90% of sports in most European countries. It is not easy to pinpoint the factors that influence this (financial issues, gender stereotypes, etc.), but what is clear is the looming influence and pressure exerted by the patriarchal discourse on gender equality in sport, not to mention the influence of the media.IIt is not the case that modern sport has managed to do away with sexism and it is still essential to design an equal perspective that allows for the elimination of the gender gap in federated sport, while also tackling the role played by the media as an informative and co-educational tool that needs to be nourished by the presence of women role models who also reflect achievements, efforts and, sports habits and offer new sports examples based on equal, diverse and multilateral participation. GAP WOMEN is geared towards achieving a primary objective centred on promoting women’s participation in sport in order to increase the number of women’s federation licences while also promoting inclusive and sustainable sport. To this end, it will take as its starting point a preliminary study about the current situation of the gender gap in sport and will empower federations and other organisations by offering training (online to drive digitalisation in the industry) and tools to further good practices. Effective communication strategies and inclusive and sustainable gender-parity sport events will be set up to raise awareness, sensitise and stimulate women’s involvement in sport while encouraging the community to dismantle preconceived sexist mindsets and stereotypes.GAP WOMEN is aimed at adult women aged 18-50, including ones from vulnerable groups, and also organisations, federations, clubs and public authorities which need to take on board the commitment to promoting sport for equality, social integration, sustainability and economic development.

The 2016 Project had 24 months of duration, which allowed us to finance flows from two different academic years. Thus, the achieved number of flows meet the number foreseen in the contract, which results in a very positive internal evaluation of the Project, despite the financial achievement of 86%. Students who participated in the mobility for studies have mainly chosen to spend a semester abroad instead of a complete academic year. This tendency is strictly related to the financial constraints that still affect our students and explains their preference for low cost countries when choosing their Erasmus+ destination, which also results in lower mobility grants. In this Project we had the first four student flows from the Polytechnic Institute of Maia – IPMAIA, recently created that starts to participate in our Project. Our International Office has created a network of partnerships in order to cover the growing academic offer of this Institute, whether for first and second cycle studies, but also for the wide list of short cycles taught in our Institute. This action will continue in the future Projects with the aim of achieving a growing number of flows of IPMAIA student and staff community. We are also proud of the good performance of our traineeship flows. Recent graduates performed two of them and three of them were extracurricular, thus reflecting the awareness of our students regarding the importance of this opportunity. With the exception of one flow, students with previous Erasmus+ experiences performed the rest of the internships.Regarding staff mobility flows, the achieved flows had the teaching purpose. We will implement internal measures in order to stimulate non-teaching staff to go abroad with the training purpose, considering the importance of involving the whole community in the Programme, counting on the benefits of a global approach.The balance between incoming and outgoing flows also reveals the maturity of our partnerships, the strong institutional support to the outgoing flows and the attractiveness of our institute among our incoming participants. The high percentages obtained in the evaluation performed by the participants of both incoming and outgoing flows reflect the commitment of our institutes in a responsible and transparent management of the Erasmus+ Programme.

Blockchain technology is basically blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash (i.e. a one-way function, that is practically infeasible to invert) of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data; therefore, every block is highly resistant to modification of the data. For these characteristics it is also known as “Distributed ledger technology” and is characterised as any technology that enables the keeping and sharing of records in a distributed and decentralized way, while at the same time ensuring its integrity through the use of a validation consensus protocol with cryptographic signatures.In Europe, within the educational sphere, there is little standardisation of student records. Currently, education received at tertiary level is represented by credits of learning using one of two credit standards, namely ECTS (in Higher Education) or ECVET (in Vocational Education). However, metadata standards (i.e. a common understanding, interpretation and use of the same type of data) do not exist for these credit systems.All degrees issued within the European Higher Education Area are accompanied by a diploma supplement that describes the degree in standard terms. However, again there are no standards for computer-readable data for diploma supplements. Paper-based higher education diplomas, school certificates and extra training course certificates get lost and the original can be lost over time, while their common digital version can be counterfeit or not easily recognised. When put in blockchain, the information about a student’s grades and the courses that have been undertaken will not get lost, and it is impossible to change or falsify the information. The EU has launched in 2018 the ‘EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum’, with the aim to accelerate blockchain innovation and the development of the blockchain ecosystem within the EU, mapping relevant projects and initiatives with the intention to build a European knowledge hub on blockchain. According to the paper “Blockchain in Education” report, issued in 2017 by the Joint Research Centre (the European Commission’s science and knowledge service), using the blockchain for the automatic recognition and transfer of credits would make a learner’s entire educational history in terms of those credits instantly visible and verifiable.TRUE aims to develop an integrated training strategy for the uptake of blockchain technology in HEIs across Europe. The project seeks to develop the necessary outputs to implement its solution, such as:-a baseline knowledge pack about the potential of blockchain technology adapted to HE sector, including a Competence Framework for the Blockchain Expert;-training contents and tools addressed to HEIs’ staff about blockchain technology through a MOOC (Massive Online and Open Course);-a Serious Game providing an innovative learning experience on how the blockchain technology works for HEI’s staff.This is also in line with the wide Bologna process reform and the latest goal of creating the European universities of the future: a unique platform in which HEIs cooperate creating links between higher education institutions, research institutions, employers and the wider community. HEIs staff should possess the right skills to enable blockchain technology potentials.Right now, the only way to know if someone graduated from your university is to verify it personally by contacting the registrar or university administrative personnel. What if individual faculty or programs could play the role of “authorized credential issuers,” time-stamping accomplishments on the blockchain that can be validated instantaneously? In short, blockchain can help to solve one of higher education’s most burdensome challenges: making the case for a system where many people keep verified, trusted information. Universities will no longer need to spend thousands of hours verifying alumni's study paths and degrees for external bodies, as they do today.

G-Guidance project is designed to address the need to implement integrated, comprehensive and effective career guidance services and methodologies in educational settings, identified and underlined both at European and national level in a report by the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (Oomen & Plant, 2015). In the report, career guidance is considered across the EU state members as a focal point for preventing the widespread problem of early school leaving, poor qualifications and disadvantage, which will have an impact on societal and economical problems (productivity, criminality, employment, health, social exclusion, etc.) across all the European state-membersG-Guidance has three main objectives: a) create, develop and implement web based, gamified platform, which will be at the centre of a comprehensive career guidance methodology for middle and high school students, with ages between 13 and 17 years old, that will enhance and broaden the reach of career guidance in schools; b) train and support school psychologists, teachers and parents/caregivers, on different levels and with different roles, on the use of the platform as a tool to actively participate and contribute to youths’ career guidance and vocational and personal development; and c) create an open source multimedia database with high quality career/vocational information, presented in the platform through gamified elements and on and offline activities to carry inside and outside school. To achieve these objectives, G-Guidance will develop a Professions Guide (IO1), a Career Guidance Method (IO2) and a Digital, Web Based and Gamified Platform (IO3), using a methodology traditionally used as a reference in the production of learning technologies, based in a 5 phases structure, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE). After Analysis, Design and Development phases, the career guidance method and the platform will be implemented on a national level, in school setting, to a group of 300 youths, 30 teachers, 5 psychologists and 300 parents/caregivers (one per youth), across the 5 participant countries (local piloting intervention, A4), that comprises one university and one school partners per country. The implementation phase includes training Psychologists on the career guidance method, and Psychologists, Teachers, Parents and Youths on how to use the platform for career guidance. For this purpose, a training manual and a users’ manual (IO4) will also be developed and used on the local training activity of the project (A4). Finally, an Handbook of Good Practices on Technology-Based Education for Teachers and Policy Makers (IO5) which will collect and share realiable guidelines for other schools or professionals to apply or be inspired to apply in their context.We expect that G-Guidance’s gamification orientation will make career guidance more appealing, motivating and useful, since it empowers and engages youths in their self and career development, and thus with higher chances of causing positive impact in short, medium and long term. At the same time, career guidance becomes more inclusive, as these tools will allow career guidance experts and educators to reach a wider range of kids, especially those less engaged, more absent and at risk of dropping out. The fact that all career related contents will be available in multimedia format (text, images, sounds, video) also promotes interest and engagement in career guidance, and foster inclusion for students with different characteristics and/or learning disabilities. Also important is the expected positive impact on higher levels of participation and support from teachers and parents/caregivers to youths’ career guidance, which will contribute greatly to the quality and success of career guidance in schools.All the outputs (content, manuals and tools) developed in this project will be made available in english, besides in portuguese, greek, spanish, italian and bulgarian, in digital format, on the platform and on an open access format. That, together with the multiples ways by which this information can be disseminated, makes it easy to replicate G-Guidance, and the career guidance method and platform to be used in any school/educational context internationally. All aspects of the project are designed to be used beyond G-Guidance, in any educational context, thus contributing not only to enhance career guidance, but also as tools to help psychologists and teachers develop new and efficient skills, namely in terms of digital literacy, tools to assess the impact of technology in education and evaluate and monitor technology based interventions. Therefore we believe that G-Guidance will have a positive impact at various levels and in a long term.