SAILS: Safe and Autonomous Internet-based Learning Strategies

The aim of this project is to provide students, teachers, schools leaders and families with tools to make appropriate decisions facing the conflicts that COVID-19 has caused in the processes of learning, communication and socialization of the school community.

The greatest health crisis experienced by the world in this century has radically changed the way we relate to each other. Face-to-face interaction has been reduced to a minimum and it is increasingly common to communicate through a screen. The same has happened to millions of students, teachers and families, who have seen that from one day to the next they went from a face-to-face educational system to online classes.

This change, unexpected and hardly planned, has caused numerous problems in education:

1. students who have lost their learning group and their mentors due to connection problems, lack of appropriate and sufficient devices or technological inability to keep up with the pace of online classes,
2. teachers who have had to abandon their face-to-face dynamics and adapt in a few days to huge videoconference rooms full of people who do not know the codes of conduct and communication of remote classes,
3. families overwhelmed by a situation that disrupts all their work and home planning, who find many difficulties to support and facilitate the online learning of young people,
4. school leaders are under pressure to make center-level decisions to address the pandemic and are often unaware of best educational practices in these cases and are going in blind.

In this rough sea, we aim to provide clear guidelines for sailors to deploy or retract their sails when necessary. The aim of this project is to provide students, teachers, schools leaders and families with tools to make appropriate decisions facing the conflicts that COVID-19 has caused in the processes of learning, communication and socialization of the school community.

The methodology proposed in this project aims to be radically different from previous attempts to raise awareness among students about good behaviour on the net, the management of their autonomy and appropriate and safe social relations. With this objective, we will develop a fictitious social network in which we will reliably represent the potentially dangerous scenarios that can occur in this context (IO1). This network will be used as a social sandbox where different automated profiles (social bots) will behave inappropriately and interact with the fictitious profiles created by the students. From the interaction with these social bots, students will be able to understand which behaviors are not appropriate or safe in a practical way.

The transnational consortium that has been created to carry out this project is the key to ensuring its success. The experience in the coordination of projects and the research that the team of UDEUSTO has been carrying out in the development of games and in the development of key competences is going to provide a key piece to guarantee the success of SAILS. In addition, the experience of entities like and ESHA in their work with leaders in schools is going to help the changes and innovations become established at school level and enable that they transfer the barriers to society. Besides, the experience of IPA and and their connection with several networks of families and other agents will help to obtain an impact, not only in school environments, but at a higher impact level.

Deliverables:

• O1: Instalab: immersive video game for digital life skills development
• O2: SAILS Safe resource for parents
• O3: SAILS guide for teachers
• O4: SAILS Safe resource for school leaders

Project website:

https://sailsproject.eu

Project partners:

• ESHA
• IPA (Parents International)
• PantallasAmigas
• University of Deusto