What is the Viral Skills project about?
In a nutshell, the partnership of the Viral Skills project aims at bringing the digital era of innovation to the adult education sector. We want to foster necessary skills of adult educators that allow them to integrate Virtual Reality (VR) in their training offers and make the use of Virtual Reality “viral” – it should spread quickly and effectively in order to make learning attractive again.
How can Virtual Reality improve learning?
Imagine a training were you do not need to memorise theoretical content anymore, but where you can experience a topic as if you were right in the middle of events. You could explore extra-terrestrial planets, visit every landmark of earth in a matter of seconds, travel through the human body as a red blood cell – or simply create 3D drawings in a virtual 360-degree environment with no limitations of your imagination.
These are just a few impressions on the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) in an educational setting – and there are a million more!
The challenge is to find suitable software apps that can be used in an educational setting and decide on a VR hardware system that suits individual needs. This is where our project comes into action, as the Viral Skills partnership want to provide adult trainers with this information and support them every step of the way!
How will we achieve our aims?
Over the period of two years, we will develop three main results and the Viral Skills E-Thek:
VR Digest: An overview of VR systems, requirements, and how to set up your own VR studio.
Compendium: A useful handbook for adult educators and managers on how to integrate VR in adult learning.
Viral Skills E-Thek: A collection of VR software apps that suit the needs of your adult learners including a focus on low-skilled/qualified persons.
Training Programme: A 10 days blended learning programme (5 days guided learning in a classroom, 5 days self-directed learning via webinars) which certifies participants as "EU Viral Skills Educators" and grants 3 ECVET credit points.
All results will be available for the public for free!
How can you benefit from the Viral Skills project?
The Viral Skills project is addressed to anyone who is involved in adult education such as adult trainers, educators and education managers in organisations for further education.
Our results are handmade to be used by them, will provide necessary background information about requirements, and will offer not only the pedagogical background on how and why VR should be integrated in adult education settings, but also guidelines on how to implement this in real life.
We want to prepare the ground and support educators to find suitable VR hardware systems and complementary software applications to be used in adult education settings. A special focus is set on fostering basic competences for low-skilled and low-qualified adults.
What is the background of the project?
The Viral Skills project is an international cooperation project funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission. Seven partners from six EU countries work together over a period of 2 years to achieve the results mentioned above. The project has started in October 2018 and will be finished by September 2020. There are many ways to participate – so if you are interested, please contact us at info@viralskills.eu or via Facebook!