The overall objective of the SYSTEMIC project (“Say Yes to STEM In the Classroom”) was to increase young Europeans’ interest in maths, science, engineering and technology education and careers and to provide teachers with the appropriate pedagogical tools to enable them to teach STEM topics differently and in a more attractive way. The project contributed to a European Science awareness campaign, STEM Discovery Week, targeting teachers, schools, industry and educational organisations, engaging students and teachers in the contextualisation of STEM teaching). SYSTEMIC was a joint initiative of both Ministries of Education (via EUN Partnership) and industry (through CSR Europe, the leading European business network for corporate social responsibility). SYSTEMIC was coordinated by EUN Partnership, in Belgium. Since 2007, STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Maths) has been one of its major thematic areas. The main SYSTEMIC outputs were:1) The development of two MOOCS, targetting both teachers and career counsellors, which provided information and knowledge on existing STEM jobs and skills needed to access them. These MOOCs were supported by videos and webinars.2) A European STEM awareness campaign including a European STEM Discovery Week in all European schools as a culminating event of a school year campaign. The aim of the campaign is to allow students and teachers to participate in various projects such as the contextualisation of STEM teaching in cooperation with industry with for example professionals from industries going back to schools to take part to events with teachers and pupils. Also, several STEM competitions have been organised with the support of other projects, to award outstanding achievements during the campaign. A guide aiming to help schools and other organisations interested to organise such campaign, was also published.3) The SYSTEMIC project developed four additional guides .Two on how to bring professionals to schools, one for schools and one for industry. Two on teacher placements (one on examples of successful teacher placement initiatives, and the second one on how to develop teacher placement schemes). These guides have been developed with the active support of the STEM Alliance, mainly via European Schoolnet, CSR Europe and a local Technological centre in Obidos, Portugal aiming to educate support industry in cultivating fruitful collaborations with schools.SYSTEMIC outputs have reached over 130,000 students across Europe through the different activities organised and have been made available through Scientix, the community for science education in Europe, to ensure they are used beyond the duration of SYSTEMIC.

The “Learn to Machine Learn” (LearnML) project is a three-year Strategic Partnership in the field of Education aiming to produce an innovative solution for the teaching and learning of crucial 21st century skills relating to digital literacy, computational thinking, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), so that Europe’s children and teenagers can develop into responsible citizens and insightful thinkers able to navigate the complex digital space and effectively contribute to its design. AI and ML are already ubiquitous in everyday life in fields such as speech and image recognition, personalised information on social media and search engines, and autonomous vehicles. They have the potential to bring unprecedented benefits to society. Concerns have also been raised, though, on the potential pitfalls and dangers regarding the decisions such systems might make, the autonomy of the AI agents, and the values embedded in their design. The new generation has to develop advanced digital literacy skills, to question and critically analyse and interpret data and information, recognise misinformation spread via social media platforms, emerging cultural and social biases embedded in the architecture and design of computer systems, and the ethical and political implications.To address these challenges, the LearnML project brings state-of-the-art innovation into schools, transfers the notion of AI literacy to primary and secondary education and aims to introduce students to the core principles of AI and ML through a uniquely designed game-based educational toolbox. Specifically, the core objectives of the project are to design an AI and ML framework within the primary and secondary educational context, implement an innovative game-based learning toolbox that realises ML training scenarios (games and game authoring tools), produce relevant and effective training, teaching and learning material for course development based on gameful ML activities, educate teachers to effectively engage students and promote creative reflection on AI ethics, data biases and societal implications, and widely involve students in ML training courses that include playful game-based learning activities so that they become AI literate but most importantly responsible citizens of Europe with regards to the ethics and threats of AI. To this end, the project brings together a consortium of five distinguished partners from three countries across Europe with extensive expertise and experience in both the technological and the educational aspects of the project: an internationally recognised institute on AI and games (Institute of Digital Games and Faculty of ICT, UM), a distinguished research department within a school (KORAIS), a department within the Ministry for Education and Employment with long experience in game-based learning activities and teacher training in Malta (SC), a University with expertise in AI and machine learning, and serious games development and evaluation (NTUA), and a University with renown work in ICT in education and game based science education in schools (NTNU). The project sets out by analysing the current research and education framework focusing on key digital literacy and computational thinking skills and competences such as algorithmic thinking, data- analysis and management, coding and educational programming, decision making and problem solving. Within the defined framework, the project implements the LearnML toolbox enabling teaching and learning that foster the development of AI literacy, and also produces teacher training material and content, as well as assets, resources, and educational scenarios to support student learning. This is followed by the training of teachers in the use of the toolbox and the material produced, the corresponding pedagogy, and the game authoring tools that will allow them to develop their own learning scenarios. Finally, the project involves students, through the trained teachers, in the gameful AI and ML activities and content exposing them to core concepts and operation of AI and ML and raising their awareness of ethical, cultural and social implications. Educators are actively involved not only on the piloting and evaluation phases of the effectiveness of the project outcomes, but also on the design of the toolbox and accompanying material and resources, throughout the project, through focus groups, workshops, and dialogue labs, promoting thus a culture of openness and participatory design. The approach and outcomes of the project will be widely disseminated through outreach activities and public events such as Information Days, seminars, conferences, and exhibition fairs. LearnML provides teachers, students, and the public with not only awareness and knowledge, but also practical tools and ways to envision and bring about positive change in Europe’s education systems and societies, utilising ICT and artificial intelligence as drivers for systemic change.

Digital games are an integral part of most of our students’ life outside the classroom. Throughout the years, games have been increasingly recognised as powerful learning tools to facilitate students’ learning. Most notably, games allow students to be at the centre of the learning experience, allow room for trial and error and make learning fun and engaging. This Strategic Partnership targeted efforts that challenge traditional pedagogies and encourages the use of innovative game-based learning (GBL) methodologies for learning purposes. The Erasmus Plus Strategic partnership developed a Game Creator Tool (GCT) that can be used on a range of devices, developed for ease of use in classrooms to help enrich the educational and skills portfolios of local and European educators. Furthermore, this partnership promoted sharing of best practices, cooperation and cross-fertilisation between the fields of technology and education. The impact of this partnership is aimed at bridging the gap between the complex world of programming and designing games with the availability of an open and easy-to-use tool for game authoring. The project outputs are meant to throw light on the need for further research into the positive potential of actively designing games for learning purposes, enhance the digital competences of students with particular focus on media literacy and STEM education via GBL learning. The synergistic working relationship created between European partners from Malta, Austria, Germany and Luxembourg strengthened the cooperation between organisations, post-secondary schools and also facilitate the exchange, testing and development of best practices in the field of education. The team will work together towards the development of a user-centered game-based learning framework. The GCT will allow students and teachers to work on game projects to dive deeper into the subjects of Fake News and STEM. The Fake News Game will serve as one of the pilot demonstrators for the Game Creator Tool. This will allow both teachers and students to create their own games related to the subject. Based on the current impact of fake news across social media and news portals, it is essential that the general public, in particular youth learn how to identify reliable news sources. On the other hand, the STEM pilot game will be based on and inspired from a current theme in the education STEM syllabi currently being adopted in Malta at post-secondary level of schooling. The game will serve as a precursor to and underpinned by an inquiry-based learning approach, where students will practice both STEM-related process skills and critical thinking skills. A total of 7 multiplier events were planned however due to the Covid-19 situation only 4 were organised as planned, 2 were organised virtually and 1 was cancelled. Originally, 3 transnational partner meetings were planned however the final transnational meeting had to be organised virtually due to the pandemic. One joint training staff event was planned and held in Austria. All of these events involved the participation of various individuals and entities from the European Union with the aim to increase awareness of the project and its goals. Results of the meetings and training events, as well as project progress, were disseminated online to the relevant audiences. Following project closure the consortium took stock of the lessons learnt and the outputs emanating from the project to be in a position to continue disseminating and raising awareness of the game creator tool. A needs analysis report identifying the best practices recommendations document was drafted and published online. The intention of this is to amplify the project’s aims by reaching out to decision makers on curricula in relation to GBL as a powerful learning methodology. The Partnership aims to enhance the level and quality of digital competences and relevance of students' knowledge and skills and promote students' centered learning approaches through ICTs. Through this project, the consortium sought to create an innovative method of teaching as well as learning. ICTs will be used effectively to enable educators to diversify their pedagogies and enable students to learn using a tool that is modern and attractive, thus motivating students' appetite to learn. This Strategic Partnership involves the appropriate mix of complementary project partners with the necessary profile, experience and expertise to deliver successfully all aspects of the project. The consortium consists of a team of academics, researchers, education consultants, and ICT experts. The commitments and tasks have been distributed diligently and responsibly to successfully produce high quality innovative deliverables.