<< Background >>Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges. There is often nothing about how people with ASD look that sets them apart from other people, but people with ASD may communicate, interact, behave, and learn in ways that are different from most other people. The learning, thinking, and problem-solving abilities of people with ASD can range from gifted to severely challenged. Recent research indicates that autism spectrum disorder affects around 1 in 100 people.Augmented Reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. The Virtual Reality (VR) is a realistic three-dimensional o artificial environment that is created with a mixture of interactive hardware and software. The user accepts the artificial (or virtual) environment as real and interacts with it on the same way that he/she interacts with real (or physical) world. These technologies can be useful for supporting visual and audio teaching methods.Different studies using AR and VR with children with ASD indicate that AR/VR facilitates practicing and learning social skills improves students’ selective attention for more time, helps children to learn new things and helps children to better understand the facial expressions and emotions.The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education has released a methodology report including 12 European-level policy measures, adapted for inclusive education.Among these measures we highlight the following:•to improve the cost-effectiveness of the education system, combining efficiency, effectiveness, equity and inclusion;•to improve student-focused measures, such as mentoring, personalized learning approaches and improved guidance;•to improve the school ethos (such as the creation of supportive learning environments, adapting learning environments to specific learning needs);•to support improvement in schools with lower educational outcomes;•to improve the quality of school staff, focusing on the quality of teachers, quality in continuing professional development, developing teacher competences and reinforcing school leadership;The project directly addresses two main EU education recommendations:1)Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027 – where raising the quality and inclusiveness of education and training systems and the provision of digital skills for all during the digital transition is of strategic importance for the EU and2) the “European skills agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience” where the 1 out of the 3 conclusions is to EMPOWER PEOPLE to build up their skills by developing innovative tools, making learning pathways more flexible and accessible.<< Objectives >>BITTHESPECTRUM project is aimed to match the experience and the skills of new technology and ASD experts for increasing the quality of the teaching process of students belonging to this target group. This aim follows the European proposal adopted for a “Council Recommendation” on high quality early childhood education and care systems, which one of the 5 key components is: “training and working conditions of staff in charge of early childhood education and care”.To achieve this main goal we have defined some specific objectives: 1.To increase the quality of the educational and “caregiving” process of staff working with people with ASD2.To provide innovative and proper tools (AR/VR) to teachers, trainers and other staff members, for reaching the aim 1.3.Increase the quality of the learning process of people with ASD in terms of Literacy and Social Emotion skills4.To increase the quality of the VET inclusive education in the countries involved5.To increase the cooperation among European different entities working in field of inclusive education, and technology developmentThe project will impact on the target groups in the following way:Schools and VET Institute (teachers, supportive teachers), NGOs or associations working with people with ASD (educators, trainers, psychologists): They will be more familiar with new technologies and will consider AR/VR potential investments to carry out their daily work and as training tools for their end-users. Social Enterprises providing tools for special needs (software developers, technology experts): It is expected that they will be aware and more sensitive about ASD topic. It is important that they could consider the importance of investing in research about special educational needs, fostering the development of these businesses, asking for public support in order to perform tools with social character.End users: It is expected that the learners with ASD that will be involved during the project development, and who will receive the indirect benefit to be learners of the trained educators, will gain faster and better learning outcomes. As consequence of those improvement, they will also increase self-esteem, self-awareness, awareness about AR/VR, and the most important aspect that to have a special need does not mean always to receive lower quality education, quite the opposite that they deserve learning tools and pathways, innovative, qualitative and, why not, funny. Other impacts on those end-users that we expect will be: ✔communicating with other people more effectively✔learning to ask for things that they want clearly and specifically✔having more focus at school✔showing more interest in people around them<< Implementation >>BITTHESPECTRUM includes a very well balanced entity profiles (technical, social science and humanities and disabilities) including: The University OvGU Faculty of Humanities with experience in VR applied to TVET; 3DBear, a VR/AR tools provider focused on the education sector; SkillsDivers, a consultancy company expert in ICT training for non technical skilled people; IRSEI, a non for profit academy devoted to research & innovation in education and LOUVI, a national network of VET school for disable people including students with ASD.BITTHESPECTRUM will implement activities related to development of innovation in the field of training of students with ASD by using AR and VR tools:The project will train teachers who deal with those students, special education teachers and ICT developers. Some activities devoted to develop innovative and interactive blended training about these topics will be developed.A Human Centred Design methodology will be designed in order to allow those teachers to develop their own therapies and exercises by using AR/VR. In addition, a set of 30 exercises of AR and 5 for VR will be developed following our methodology. Those exercises will be tested in special education VET schools monitoring the impact on the students in relation with literacy and social emotion skills.The project plans to arrange different promotional activities such as one face to face multiplier event per country and one virtual event in order to reach a broader audience. We expect to reach audience from countries where AR/VR in education is risen awareness such as India or USA. Our strong links with those markets and international entities such as UNESCO-UNEVOC will ensure a strong impact of those activities. Other dissemination activities such as newsletters, social media, press releases, etc will be implemented and are described in further sections.<< Results >>The project is aimed to create innovative learning pathways that will increase the quality of the work of educators and staff members that deal with learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This process is composed by 5 results:R1 - The development of an Open online training related to AR and VR features for teachers of ASD students. This guideline will be an important tool for staff engaged in educational work (trainers, teachers, etc..) with people with ASD, to understand the theoretical aspects of the technology they are going to learn through Bit The Spectrum Project. The training will be very user-friendly for people who are not habit with the study of this kind of subjects, and it will give a basic knowledge about 3D virtual environments, 360º immersive experiences and Augmented Reality: theory, story, types, main use, etc... The guide will incorporate introductory aspects from the autism spectrum in order to introduce this disorder to the ones that are more related to technology or basic training rather than the disability. Part of the training will come in the form of video pills and interactive content produced by authorizing tools for e-learning (e.g. H5P). R2 -Human Centred Design methodology to create exercises using AR and VR for students with ASD. Two twin methodologies to create exercises using both technologies will be developed. Those methodologies will take into account the ASD students and their teacher’s needs during all stages of the design. The methodology will have two versions (one for AR and one for VR). For that aim, different data will be gathered, according to the properties of each technology. As a result (together with the training of R1), the teachers will be able to create brand new exercises based on immerse VR or AR.R3 - Set of 30 exercises using AR for students with ASD to cover all possible impacts of the project. Following the R2 methodology, 30 exercises of AR will be developed. The exercise will be based on 3DBear app that will leave them available for all users of the platform with no restrictions and without fee. The exercises will cover all possible impacts of the project from literacy to social emotion. R4- Set of 5 VR environments for students with ASD to cover impacts of the project related to social emotion. 5 immersive VR Environments will be created within this project and addressing real life situations that will train the social emotions of the students. Technology such 360º cameras will be used for that aim. The exercises will be displayed in VR glasses for a fully immersion and available in 3D in a website. R5- Study of the impact of the exercises in ASD students (pilot test). The 30 AR exercises and the 5 VR environments will be tested with students with different ASD levels. The VET school LOUVI will have a leading role in this result and will receive all the technical and pedagogic support from all the partners. The participation of associated local associations is foreseen. During the process, and following the indications of the R2, R3 and R4, different data will be gathered to feedback the R3 and R4 such as face and eyes recognition though the VR/AR devices. The likely progresses in literacy skills and social emotion skills will be monitored and studied.

"<< Background >>The problem the project seeks to address is the high number of youngsters in VET pathways who are unmotivated or do not feel well at school. This problem has been emphasized by the pandemic and VET organizations have found themselves dealing with it during this last year of blended training, but more importantly they will have to deal with it at the beginning of the next school year when they return at school in presence. As schools reopen in September, they will be faced with the challenge of managing the reintegration of unmotivated students who have been in difficult situations over the past year and a half.There are still few studies and research on the impact that Covid will have on school drop-outs, but some data is starting to emerge: in both Italy and Spain, for example, Save the Children warns that early school leaving could increase again due to the coronavirus. UNESCO even estimates that around 24 million students worldwide could be at risk of not returning to school as a result of the interruption caused by the pandemic. However, these are general studies, not specific to VET, which, as we know, especially in the Spanish and Italian contexts, has the function of gathering and training the most fragile young people at risk of marginalisation.In two recent articles (""September is here"" and ""Coronavirus: Distance learning increases dropout risk for vulnerable learners"") Cedefop insists that VET providers should:a) be able to MOTIVATE STUDENTS during their training in a context that has become very uncertain both socially and economically due to Covid;b) put emphasis on the PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TRAINERS to support students in this challenge.With regard to the professional development of trainers, CEDEFOP highlights the importance of socio-emotional competences such as developing a resilient approach, being able to include inclusive teaching practices especially for students at risk of dropping out. While European countries had made significant progress in lowering drop-out rates from VET before the pandemic, these efforts risk being challenged by the Coronavirus. What is needed are tools, methodologies and, above all, an improvement of teachers' skills in motivating and promoting well-being at school, which is essential to manage and prevent early drop-out.Based on these premises, the 3-H project focuses on socio-emotional aspects, i.e. the development of practices to promote the MOTIVATION and WELL-BEING OF PUPILS AT SCHOOL. The aim is still to prevent school drop-out, by involving individual pupils in their personal motivation, working on methodologies that facilitate the acquisition of socio-emotional skills and on the other hand addressing student demotivation and malaise at school. In concrete terms, the project will work ona) Development of knowledge and methodologies to enable teachers to work on social-emotional aspects;b) Outlining a strong welcoming model, dedicated to the first months of pupils' entry into the VET pathways;c) Developing/adopting good practices that promote pupils' well-being at school (from welcoming onwards) and motivate students;d) Developing meaningful PBL experiences in a joint way between teachers and pilot class groups from various European VET centres, so that students and teachers have new opportunities to connect with each other, develop social-emotional skills and learn content in an authentic and contextualised way.<< Objectives >>Assuming that VET should provide a holistic education (one that equally considers the intellectual-cognitive, social-emotional, and technical components), The 3-H Project aims to:A. DEVELOPING SKILLS IN TEACHERS AND TRAINERS to know how toA.1 Introduce methodologies for managing student demotivation within the classroom group;A.2 Introduce the social-emotional perspective in daily work with students.B. IMPROVE LEARNING CAPACITY OF PUPILS throughB.1 Developing skills for managing social-emotional aspects.The objectives of the project fall within the priority of national relevance identified by INAPP and called ""CONTRIBUTING TO THE INNOVATION OF THE VET"". In fact, this priority supports - among other things - those actions aimed at innovating teaching and learning processes.Because of the Coronavirus emergency aspects such as motivation and ""wellbeing at school"" are again at the heart of the political agenda. Training providers will have to deal with these issues from September, after a year of distance learning. Managing these issues will be increasingly important for training providers and teachers and it is an issue that, if not faced, can lead to increased dropout rates. Social-emotional learning can be a tool to address this.In Europe, a distinction must be made between curricula that explicitly teach social-emotional skills (typically in northern Europe) and those that implicitly and transversally teach them. The systems that recommend teaching them in a transversal way are unlikely to achieve significant results, as happens in Spain and Italy (countries where the 4 institutions from which the project idea originates operate). The Italian and Spanish VET system does not provide in the curriculum the development of these skills in an explicit way and teachers/trainers often do not have the skills to deal with and manage aspects related to the social-emotional field (such as demotivation, etc.).Thus, the 3-H project aims to contribute to reducing the number of VET learners who are unmotivated or do not feel well at school through the adoption in Spanish and Italian VET contexts of teaching methodologies that value socio-emotional competencies, possibly also taken from the non-formal and informal education. This can lead to significant innovation in the VET contexts of the two countries.In addition to responding to the European and national priorities of the Erasmus+ programme, the project is in line with many European and international recommendations, studies and proposals:-the Council of the EU has included social-emotional aspects in the recommendation on key competencies for lifelong learning of May 22, 2018;-the European Commission has built a framework of competencies under the Entrepreneurship framework (Entrecomp);-the WHO has identified ten so-called life skills, among which still self-awareness, effective communication, empathy and stress management.In differente European countries there are significant experiences of schools that are strongly incorporating social-emotional aspects into their learning paths. The project wants to study some of these experiences and the approaches that underlie them in order to replicate them in other contexts.<< Implementation >>The project activities will be included in 6 Work Packages, whose responsibility will be entrusted to different partners.Specifically, the first three WPs will be transversal, while the last WPs will be implemented in separate periods and will lead to the realisation of the three project results.WP1 PROJECT MANAGEMENTENAC as Project Leader will have the role of general coordination of activities and partnership. Within this WP are also included the administration and reporting activities.WP2 DISSEMINATIONENAC will also coordinate the communication and dissemination activities of the project results. Throughout the project 5 multiplier events will be organised: the first one will be organised approximately in the middle of the project and it will be a Consensus conference to validate the first two project outputs, while the last ones will be organised at the end of the project, two in Spain, one in Italy and a virtual one at European level.WP3 MONITORING/EVALUATIONThe Catholic University will be responsible for monitoring and evaluation activities.WP4 TRAINING / EXPERIENTIAL ACTIONSTEP Institute will be the partner in charge of coordinating the training activities and the realisation of the first output (collection of good practices). It will also be in charge of organising and coordinating the online training activities (virtual coffee breaks).However, each of the four provider partners will be responsible for the design and implementation of the training activities in their own organisation.The user partners will be responsible for the selection of the training participants, their preparation and the recognition of the results. In turn, the training participants will contribute to the development of the output.WP5 CREATION TOOLSENDOFAP will be responsible for the creation of the tools through which the good practices can be tested in the context of the promoting partners (Italy and Spain). However, all partners will be called upon to collaborate in the creation of the output (toolkit and guidelines).WP6 TOOL TESTINGFinally, Centro San Viator will coordinate the testing of the tools in the centres and the creation, together with the Catholic University, of the relative output (policy recommendations).<< Results >>Three project outcomes are planned, corresponding to WP3, WP4 and WP5.COLLECTION OF GOOD PRACTICES - COMPENDIUMThis output represents the collection of good practices on the topics addressed during the training events that will be held in the context of WP4 (Self-Directed Learning; PBL on social-emotional competences; well-being and motivation at school; welcoming/guidance activities). In addition to organising the training events, the Partner Providers will provide material which will be organised in a series of descriptive cards/materials/videos etc. and which will represent a collection of existing good practices. The recipients of these good practices will be trainers of training centres who want to promote within their class group/organisations practices to promote well-being, motivation, etc.TOOL KITS and GUIDELINESOn the basis of the training received and the good practices studied, organisational GUIDELINES will be drawn up to enhance the best experiences in the four project areas (Self-Directed Learning; PBL on social-emotional skills; well-being and motivation at school; welcoming/guidance). Together with the guidelines, a toolkit will be produced in whicha) the collected good practices (PR1) will be inserted, revisited and adapted to local contexts and other practices that will be created by the teams of trainers of the institutions involved in the project;b) the BP compendium will only be a starting point, the teams of trainers of the individual centres, working as a team, will be able to develop new formats and materials of their own invention using the skills developed during the training sessions. In this way the toolkit will be an extensive and articulated toolbox.POLICY RECOMMENDATIONSIt is a document which aims to influence the institutional level on the one hand and other VET providers on the other hand. It will be a kind of manifesto of social-emotional education in which principles and values will be reaffirmed as well as practical advice to carry on the developed good practices. They will be based on the results of the project and the feedback collected during the implementation of the project. They may be tailored to the country and the local context."

Developing Capacity for VET Systems in Western Balkans is a follow-up initiative of the project of INTERVET WB (EAC-2019-0671) coordinated by Uniser and implemented in cooperation with the organisations from the Western Balkan countries involved here. The general objective is to innovate VET systems in Western Balkans through the exchange of practices and a pervasive capacity building action.The specific objectives are:1. To increase the quantity and quality of Work based learning and activities in collaboration with companies.2. To equip schools with tools to deal with the inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities (Special Educational Needs; cultural obstacles; gender equality).3. To improve the internationalisation strategies of VET schools in WB.In order to achieve these objectives, the project will unfold in five work packages, two of them are transversal and will concern project coordination, quality management and dissemination, while the three core WP will be addressed to the capacity building action promoted by this call. They will focus on: improving work based learning and strengthening the collaboration with companies; fostering social inclusion and improve the internationalisation of vet. Each work package will include a research activity, an intense exchange of practices, training activities to upskill teachers and testing of new methodologies. The project will deliver the following outputs: a comparative analysis of Work Based Leaning approaches; video guidelines on how to set up WBL activities; an online gallery of virtual study visits of companies in IT, electronics and automation; an online repository of practices on WBL implemented in the testing phase; a toolkit on social inclusion for practitioners in the VET field; an E-Learning on internationalisation of VET systems in WB; Step-by-step guidelines on how to plan and implement a blended mobility projects.