Social Seducement Newsletter #1 Portada de

OCTOBER, 2015
NUMBER 1
In this issue
1
Social Seducement
Newsletter #1
2
About the project
3
What is the Social
Seducement Game?
4
What is involved?
5
Consortium
6
Activities and results so far
7
Guide for developing the
game
8
Report on target need
analysis
9
What´s next?
Designing an online
role-play game to
develop, enhance and
promote social
entrepreneurial skills
Social Seducement Newsletter #1
Portada
de Noticias de los empleados
Welcome to the first issue of the Social Seducement newsletter!
In this first issue, you will be presented with general information about the
project and our consortium.
We will also provide you with an overview on the activities conducted during the
first year of life of the project, and the results achieved so far.
About the project
The Social Seducement project is co-funded by the European Commission in
the frame of the Erasmus plus programme and running for 3 years (September
2014 to August 2017). It aims to develop the key competences and skills of
adults with disadvantages, and in particular unemployed adults, to help them
start up a collaborative enterprise.
Our approach is to set up an educational process, which mobilises unknown or
hidden capacities via an empowering learning process:
We will do this by:
Designing an online role-play game to develop, enhance and promote
social entrepreneurial skills
Enhancing collaboration among training centres, employment
agencies, social economy enterprises to test the Social Seducement
online roleplay game
Establishing a European network of facilitators who will have the
mission to a) guide unemployed learners through the social seducement
game, supporting and mediating their learning process and b) promote the
use of the Social Seducement game in Europe to foster the acquisition of
social entrepreneurship skills in an innovative way.
With Social Seducement we aim to strengthen the cooperation between
education and training, work and the social economy, non-profit and voluntary
sectors, in a EU dimension, Social Seducement to maximise impact on
individuals and our game.
SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
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What is the Social Seducement game?
A serious online role play game:
•
Aims to train people with disadvantages, and in particular those long
term unemployed, to start a collective social economy enterprise
•
Aims to train some key soft skills (interpersonal skills, ability to
organise, learning from experience, problem solving, strategic
thinking…) as well as some key hard skills (governance, budgeting,
etc).
Will lead to:
•
Social Seducement
aims to train
people with
disadvantages,
and in particular
those long term
unemployed, to
start a collective
social economy
enterprise
•
•
At least 180 participants being trained through this online role play
game
20-30 new business plans being created.
40 facilitators (game masters) being engaged and trained, and
connected through a network
What is involved?
•
Players play in groups and complete the game in between 2 to 8
weeks
•
Each takes on a (business) role (and picks an avatar) to play
throughout the game
•
Together and individually they work through six ‘modules’ or levels.
The business canvas model serves as the training’ tool’, and the game
ends with a completed business plan.
o
The social economy,
o
Governance and HR,
o
Value proposition, customer segments, revenue streams
o
Customer relationships and channels
o
Key activity, key resources
o
Horizontal learning topics are social and economic impact
(including empowerment and inclusion issues)
•
Each of these stages has to be completed by the group as a whole.
Completed sections can be re-surfaced and improved at any stage.
•
Learning is supported by stories from real social entrepreneurs,
illustrating both successes and tricky situations (as well as how those
entrepreneurs overcame them).
•
Learners will also have access to external material to aid their training.
There will be missions associated to each ‘level’ that take the players into ‘real
life’ to test their ideas. Random events will complicate / introduce challenges
into the group’s process of setting up their business.
SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
Consortium
The Social Seducement Consortium is composed of organisations of
different nature (active in the social economy field, with expertise in
training and or e-learning, with expertise in game design and
development) to guarantee all the dimensions dealt with by the project
are properly tackled.
Coordination: The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (UK)
Business advisory: Coompanion Gothenburg (SE)
IT support: Ecobyte Techonlogy (IT)
Social economy: Reves (European Network of Cities and Regions for
the Social Economy) - BE, Le Mat (IT)
Gane design and Pedagogical model: Universidad Internacional de La
Rioja (UNIR) - ES
Activities and results so far
Since September 2014, when the Social Seducement project was
launched, the consortium has engaged into research and consultation
activities with stakeholders (traning agencies, employement centres, social
economy actors, game designers) in order to: a) identify the needs of the
target group of the Social Seducement Online Roleplay game and b) gather
all the necessary input and information to proceed with the design of the
game concept.
The two main outcomes achieved with these activities are: the Guide for
developing the game and its environment (Intellectual Output 1 of the
project) and the Report on Target Needs Analysis (Intellectual Output 2 of
the project). Their full version is downloadable from our website
www.socialseducement.net.
Guide for developing the game and
its environment
The guide aims to present the results of desk and field research conducted
on trends and practices in online gaming for learning and on the potential
needs of the future players of the game as well as the game concept
workflow that will concretise into the Social Seducement online role play
game in a further project phase.
The results of desk research about trends in online games for learning
suggested that Social Seducement is addressing an area (social economy
and social entrepreneurship skills development) still covered to a limited
extent, in that most of the analysed studies and practices cover areas
mainly related to formal education and corporate training.
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SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
In addition, it suggests that using games to support learning processes has
a strong potential to support motivation and engagement much more than
traditional training would, provided that the game is so designed to
immerse the player in a fascinating environment, where s/he can
experiment virtually real life situations, with a new digital identity (avatar)
and can make mistakes as this will not have any implication in real life.
Enhancing the social dimension in the game (through interaction and team
work) is also key, and a particular effort will have to be placed on the way
the game and the learning content interact so that the player/learners is
aware of the fact that s/he is learning, but is motivated to do so as the
game keeps her/his engagement high until the game is over (and learning
is completed).
The results of desk research on practices (projects and online games for
learning relevant to the social economy field) also provided some
interesting inputs for the design of the game concept, particularly with
reference to: the use of storytelling as a strategy to support learning
processes while using the game; the suggestion to adopt incremental
learning processes to match the learning needs associated with the
training path and the technical needs of the game; the use of random
events to keep players active and motivation high in standby situations; the
key role played by the facilitator, that will be the “game master” and
support and mediate the learning process of learners, both at individual
and at group level.
Further elements emerging from the analysis of cases can be
summarised as follows:
Desk and field research results, coupled with internal consultation among
partners, led to the establishment of the following requirements for the
Social Seducement game:
•
Being developed in the frame of the Social economy and aimed to
develop social entrepreneurship-related skills, the Social Seducement
game will address long term unemployed adults aged 18+ with the aim
to make them social entrepreneurs and help them starting up, through
a collaborative and collective exercise, a social cooperative.
•
The Social Seducement game is a learning game, it does not want to
compete with the game industry (nor has the resources to do so). The
game will be the “window” through which learners/players will be
engaged in a learning process in a motivating way.
•
In order to allow experiential learning and at the same time ensure
engagement, the game will be designed around stories of real social
entrepreneurs that the players will have to revisit, taking their own
decisions and responsibilities to reach success.
•
The stories will be so designed and articulated to let players learn how
to build a business plan for a social cooperative.
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SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
•
Players/learners will not be alone in playing the game: they will be
supported by a virtual facilitator (and game master) who will mediate
their learning process and help them achieve their learning goals.
•
The facilitator will virtually support players, as the game will be
played online. Players will play individually and mostly in groups
as the collaborative and collective dimension is key in the social
economy and in the learning processes associated to becoming
a social entrepreneur.
•
Although it is proven that the more immersive is the experience, the
more chances the game has to be successful, in Social Seducement it
will not be possible to develop a 3D environment with the available
resources. However, taking inspiration from similar successful games in
the field, a captivating graphical layout will be used to depict the different
situations that the players will have to face within the stories.
•
Players will have the possibility to choose an avatar and their role within
the social entereprise they want to set up.
•
Players will be stimulated to work together to achieve the goals of the
game.
•
Random events will be introduced in the game to be used when the
player gets in a standby situation determined by its incapacity to choose
the right answer. This will give players the illusion to keep on playing
and facilitators the possibility to drive players to the correct choice.
•
Step-by-step incremental learning is a good solution to merge the
learning needs and the technical design needs of the game: building the
learning process through steps/stages will allow the player to pass from
one level to the next only when the knowledge and skills associated with
the prior level are demonstrated.
•
The game will lean on a LMS platform (Moodle) through which all
training activities will be performed and facilitators will be able to
manage and monitor the learning progress of players.
•
Given the specific nature and needs of the Social Seducement action,
the game will be played locally, although virtually, at least in the piloting
phase. This depends on the need to train learners on specific
legislations related to social cooperatives that differ from one country to
the other.
For details about the game concept design and the functional analysis of the
game, and to get more information about the desk and field research carried
out, please consult the full version of the report available at
www.socialseducement.net.
Please note that the report is downloadable in full or in single parts so
articulated: Part 1 dealing with the results of desk and field research; Part 2
presenting the game workflow design and Part 3 introducing the functional
analysis of the game.
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SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
Report on Target Needs Analysis
Our second intellectual output report analyses the training needs of the Social
Seducement target group – disadvantaged people, with a particular focus
during the project on those in long-term unemployment.
Our desk research has shown that collective social economy enterprises can
address some prevalent barriers to employment for disadvantaged people, by
promoting cooperation and team work, contribution of individual competences
to a group effort, focus on human being and related principles of solidarity and
mutual support, meeting the specific needs of a community, being partners of
civil society and local or regional authorities social economy enterprises.
Therefore, for people with disadvantages, including those who are longterm unemployed and contemplating starting their own business,
collective entrepreneurship can be a precious option. However, often this
requires training to address some of the challenges they might face (such as
lack of confidence or knowledge, e.g. about accessing financing). As our
Guide to Game Development shows, serious online role play games in
particular can offer empowering simulation of the entrepreneurial process in a
safe, risk-free environment.
These findings from the literature are confirmed by our survey which suggests
a strong potential of serious games by promoting curiosity, creating less
resistance to express opinions due to the use of avatars and providing
opportunities to practice collective decision-making without real risk-taking.
However, our survey also shows that even at the level of content there is
rather scarce supply for this demographic in the countries covered by the
Social Seducement project, including a dearth of serious games that are
publically accessible and free.
A particularly striking result of our survey was the perceived discrepancy
among respondents of the topics that should be covered by a serious online
role play game to train unemployed people in becoming social entrepreneurs
and the supply of related training provision locally:
•
In terms of competences considered most relevant for setting up
and running a social economy enterprise, Our respondents
considered soft skills such as planning and goal setting (56.5%),
problem solving (54,1%) and strategic thinking (51.8 %) as the most
relevant, closely followed by ability to make decisions. Yet local training
provision on these appears to be low.
•
In terms of general professional competences, interpersonal skills
(e.g. capacity to work in team, empathy, capacity to listening …) are
considered as the most relevant by four out of five respondents, followed
by the ability to organise (e.g. self-organise and organise teams and
activities) selected by about 70% of respondents. These are considered
far more important than the more hard or technical business skills, such
as “understanding and monitoring the business environment” (selected
by about one out of two) and digital skills (one out of five). Once again,
the local provision for the soft skills mentioned is quite limited. Thus,
covering this training need is especially relevant. This is the case
independent of country context.
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SOCIAL SEDUCEMENT NEWSLETTER
The key approach of the Social Seducement online role play game, based
on experiential learning in groups, is therefore supported by the primary
research we carried out.
Because of the very nature of the game (a group game played in the online
space), target group and subject matter, playing the game will require a
facilitator. This is corroborated not only by our review of other SORPG but
also by our survey and focus group interviews where respondents felt that a
facilitator / moderator to help people play the game was the third most
important factor for engaging people into playing (45.2 % of survey
respondents rating this item as one of the top three engagement factors).
Our facilitator competence portfolio lists the range of competences (and
levels) that this role requires, and can be accessed in full in the report on this
intellectual output.
The Social Seducement survey is still live: please contribute to our growing
knowledge base on the potential of serious games for labour market access
of people with disadvantages: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HC6FC2F.
What’s next?
In the coming months we will focus our activities on the development of the
game and on the design of the training materials supporting the learning
process within the game
More information about these key activities of the project will be available in
the next issue of the Social Seducement newsletter!
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