by Mario Horvat, Aurélie Gimbert

Does a GBL approach succeed in involving people who have difficulties with the classical teaching approach?

The objective of the project is to prepare young people to sign a training contract in the field of customer service in hospitality and tourism. The idea is to help the trainees to work on self-awareness, self-confidence and soft skills development with an innovative pedagogic approach, mainly a game based approach. The second part of the path is focused on the preparation of the professional project of the trainees.
The main target group of the project are young people who are out of work or NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training).
The insights can be applied in teaching practice connected with soft skills development for a people excluded from work. The tools and methods developed could be used and adapted to other contexts.
One of the project outputs is a kit containing a description of the methods and tools developed during the project. This kit will be produced to assist teachers to reuse and adapt GBL material and developed contents.

The biggest challenge for our work was the involvement of teachers. The main issues included:
• ensuring that teachers are granted sufficient time to develop the pedagogical content;
• getting teachers to adapt or even change their teaching practices to use GBL tools and methods.

GBL can…
facilitate a better involvement of the target group. According to neuroscience, GBL combines the 4 pillars of the learning process (to pay attention, to be committed, to get an immediate feedback, and to consolidate through repetition of experiences.

GBL cannot…
free you from the necessity to create a knowledge base.