Entrepreneurial skills through gaming

AGROPOLY is a new online game, a virtual place which reunites the fun of playing with games and usefulness of learning entrepreneurial skills and competences for students in the agricultural sector. Those who are planning to start their own business, can play the game to get an idea about real life situations and competences to be developed.

PLENTIS (Play & Learn Entrepreneurial Skills in the Agricultural Sector) has been financed by the European Commission in the framework of the ERASMUS+ programme. The project is led by TREBAG (Hungary) and counts on the collaboration of 7 partners from 4 different countries: VM KASZK Vocational School and PROMPT-H in Hungary; Soros Educational Center in Romania; the University of Life Sciences in Czech Republic, as well as Inveslan and HAZI in Spain.

Entrepreneurial skills are considered one of the basic key competences set out in the Lisbon Strategy, and essential to be included in the formal and non-formal learning itineraries. As entrepreneurship cannot be identified as one competence, but as a set of competences, the PLENTIS project aimed to develop an online educational platform, which is basically a gamified competence development land (literally), with actual content (knowledge base) and individual games to help teachers and students develop those skills and competences essential for entrepreneurship.

 

The main outputs developed include:

 

AGROPOLY GAME - is a virtual place which reunites the fun of playing with games and usefulness of learning entrepreneurial skills and competencies for students of agricultural sector. If these students are open or plan to start their own business in the future, they will already have an idea about real life situations as well as they get an idea about their competencies to be developed.

The game itself has a framing story serving as a starting point to give them motivation to perform well and achieve points. This framework is about building up their own enterprise depending on their collected points they earn based on correct answers.

Besides the tests – based on different types of game engines – real life simulations, decision trees can also be found (and played) on the platform. The platform contains 6 knowledge bases, covering the important topics of agricultural entrepreneurship and the essential competences belonging to it.

What do Dian Fossey, Jeanne D´Arc, King Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci, Phileas Fogg and Sherlock Holmes have in common? They all are MENTORS on the AGROPOLY platform, chosen by their outstanding capabilities to support gamers with their advice and specific knowledge and skills. Players receive hints and tips from the Mentors regarding how to develop their skills and use them in agricultural entrepreneurship. These form the base of a thematic knowledge Garden, which functions practically as an e-Learning Library.

 

TRAINERS´HANDBOOK - is the core tool to guide teachers in the use of games, and particularly AGROPOLY game, in their classes. That is, the handbook provides help for the application of the Agropoly game as a framework without describing ready-made, instant solutions but integrating the game into the tool system of modern methodology and giving the reader instructions as to how to prepare for its adequate use.

The Handbook presents firstly the educational segment supported with the creation of the system, then the teacher can become acquainted with the competences and skill sets which can be developed by the game.

It is important to outline that the most significant aim of this guiding book is to show the diversity of its use and the endless opportunities that Agropoly presents. PLENTIS partners do not offer a single recipe, since every student, every class, every lesson, every school, every town and every country is different. Only one thing is constant: the role of the teacher in finding the best possible method to match their students’ actual state and in order to achieve their learning aims.

 

The project came to an end in November 2016, but the PLENTIS team continues working on the AGROPOLY game and project outputs, to put them into practice in all the participating countries. We invite you to take part and joint the PLENTIS COMMUNITY on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Plentis-project-799739936780431/

 

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