Comenius Multilateral Project n° 518603-LLP-2011-IT-COMENIUS-CMP 

Website address: http://www.genius-project.eu/

OBJECTIVES

The project, addressed to teachers and students of upper secondary schools, wants to strengthen  learners’ skills by encouraging their initiative, their creativity along with their innovative spirit. Students surfing the Internet do not always give a critic approach to the information found from the web. They are often convinced of  reliable contents and are used to “paste and copy” for their reports, short thesis, etc.

GENIUS project plans to develop and carry out two online courses, one for students and another for  teachers, aimed at dealing with several topics as plagiarism or copyright and the correct use of Internet in the schools. A close attention is given to the “Battle of Minds”, a kind of play where two teams of pupils coming from different countries are asked to challenge on creativity level, and, at the same time, they have to find out the plagiarism of the rival team. 

The GENIUS partnership, (3 Universities, 2 associations of teachers, 2 secondary schools and a local National Education Board) from 7 different countries (ES, GR, IT, PT, RO, TR, UK), after having established  the competition rules, appoints a committee of judges along with two moderators to support the two teams. These latter, with the help of teachers of English, informatics and arts, will write two papers: one original and a false one. Each team will examine the work of the other trying to guess which is the original. The judges will evaluate the work of the two teams and elect the winner. The final competition will be carried out on a project e-learning platform, where didactic resources will be uploaded.

Finally the schools partners, the students and the teachers of the different countries will write a code of conduct, called “Code to Be GENIUS”, which will be inserted on the project website.

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MAIN ACTIVITIES

GENIUS develops a dynamic learning pathway for teachers and students separated at a first stage, joint in a second one, the competition. The main activities of this two-year (2011-2013) project are: 

• Documentary Desk Research at country level aims at identifying and comparing existing studies and data about Plagiarism phenomenon, existing sanctions and background causes, Copyrights and WEB, Digital fluency connected with lack of transversal students’ skills, pedagogical approaches to stimulate creativity, innovation, sense of entrepreneurship, cultural awareness (i.e. self regulation, student centred approach). Reference to all Open Educational Resources relevant for the field will be collected and assessed in order to be included into Units.
• Field work research (interviews/form online) aims at involving target groups (1.Secondary School Teachers, Students 2.trainers, academics, HEIs, Public and private Education Institutions, education services agencies)  from the beginning of the project. Partners design and administered multilingual exploration questionnaire to Target Groups. The questionnaires will investigate their knowledge about Plagiarism features, Copyright legal framework and WEB, perceptions on own behaviours, learning needs, lacks and expectations for learning pathway.
• Design of E-learning Platform which includes: identification of the technical requirements, design of Platform architecture, design of multilingual graphic interface and the collaborative synchronous/asynchronous online tools such as the forum and WIKI areas. WIKI areas will be essential during the competition. Each rival team will develop its activities in its own WIKI area. Students will draw up together the requested documents for first stage of competition splitting the tasks amongst members and sharing documents’ sections, suggestions and problems. During the next stage of competition, students will assess in team, through WIKI area, the rival documents, sharing comments and feedbacks.
• Production of the E-learning Platform which includes: 1) setting up the e-learning platform which hosts the e-learning courses delivered through an open source Learning Management System (LMS) and manages the transnational student competition; 2) the front-end (user) production that includes the multilingual graphic interface development, structure and tools to deliver the Learning Objects, collaborative tools for the individual study, WIKI areas to share documents/comments; 3) the development of a back-end (administrator) provides support service interface addressed to upgrade and update Platform’s functions. It also concerns enrolment procedures of students/teachers trainees and tracking of attendance.
• Delivery of online course for Teachers and Online course for students. Teachers attend the online course about Plagiarism, Creativity and Didactics. Later on, Students introduced by teachers in class, attend online course on Plagiarism Versus Creativity.
• Transnational “Battle of Minds” Competition. Students from different countries are split in 2 teams. A board of judges publishes the work plan, rules and award. Each team first draws up 2 documents in English, one original and one plagiarized. Then, each team assesses the rival documents detecting the original and the other. Judges will assess each final team’s response and declare the winner. A Cup and t-shirts will be given to winner team.
• Development and implementation of a dissemination strategy of the project and of the results achieved by means of

§  Paper Strategy: design, translation and distribution of GENIUS brochures/posters, a special issue of Scuol@Europa, GENIUS article in a local newspaper in Turkey, GENIUS article on FORMAMENTE, a further article on GENIUS outcomes in Scuol@Europa;

§  Multimedia Strategy: design, development, content translation of 3 Newsletters, GENIUS website, the electronic version of special issue of Scuol@Europa as well as the special article included on Scuol@Europa before final conference,

§  WEB TV Strategy: production of WEB/TV GENIUS video promo and WEB/TV Report on final conference and their Broadcast on Marconi Channel.

§  Valorisation contacts’ database developed and updated during the project life. It will include representatives of target groups, key contacts for dissemination and exploitation activities. 

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EXPECTED OUTCOMES

1. Multilingual Online course for teachers based also on Open Educational Resources (OER) for teachers about Plagiarism, Fair use of Web, Copyrights, citing, source’s reliability, Digital fluency/lack of transversal students’ skills, pedagogical methodologies to stimulate creativity

2. Multilingual Online course for students based also on OER about Plagiarism, sanctions, Fair use of Web, Copyrights, critic approach to Webpage, source’s reliability, citing, how to find out a fake, Creative writing, innovation against plagiarism in business.

3. “Battle of Minds” Competition. Students from different countries are split in 2 teams. Each team first draws up 2 documents in English, one original and one fake. Later on each team assesses the rival documents detecting the original and fake one. Judges assess each response and declare the winner. Students face everyday choice: reason and re-elaborate existing documents or lazily copy and paste content and ideas don’t citing the author. Students from different countries will enhance social and cultural integration, merging of experience and knowledge sharing, social and civic EU citizenship. Learning pathway improves students’ English skill and e-skills encouraging employability according to “New Skills for new Jobs”. Teachers’ participation in teams highlights that they belong to the same team not only in during competition but in the whole growth pathway. GENIUS enhances students’ key competences: learning to learn, social and civic competences, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression, language, English and digital competence.

4.  “My Myths” Best Practices supports students in evaluating the value of ownership, the hard work beneath the best ideas (i.e. inventors of Youtube, Facebook, Google or famous blogger).

5. “Code to be GENIUS”, based on Researches’ results, is a code of Conduct, reference document to run a fair transnational project and contribute in building fair European Citizens.

6. Open Educational Resources database concerning Plagiarism issues, reviewed and updated by teachers and students.

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PARTNERSHIP

This project, coordinated by USGM, is carried out by a multinational partnership including institutions from seven countries: Italy, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey and United Kingdom:

1. 1.    Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi (USGM), Rome is the first Italian Open University recognised by Ministry of Education, University and Research (March '04). USGM has a great experience in promoting and developing breaking learning methodologies such as Virtual C@mpus Platform, Mobile, e-Book and Web TV/Marconi Channel which offers thematic channels, play lists and high quality streamed audio and videos. Core aim of University is the promotion of the research in Education mainly focused on individual potential tailoring the best pathway. It promotes pedagogical methodologies to strengthen students’ transversal skills through Faculty of Education, Bachelor and Master degrees in Educational and Training Sciences and encouraging in depth articles publication among its professors, researchers and lecturers. Likewise, vocational training is also delivered trough national financed projects to enhance self-entrepreneurship skills, students’ employability or Fair Business, Ethic Finance and new forms of social economy.

2. 2.     Epagelmatiko Lykeio Axioupolis is a secondary public school located in Axioupolis, in the Central Macedonia region of Kilkis (North Greece). The school was founded in 1982, has 40 faculty members, involves 40 teachers & 200 students and has 7 different fields of study. These fields are: 1.Informatics & Networking, 2.Electrical engineering, 3.Mechanical engineering, 4.Office & Financing, 5.Vehicle engineering, 6.Health care and 7.Agriculture. The school has participated actively in numerous national and European projects and programmes, such as: CODIESE, Lingua, Leonardo da Vinci and Comenius.

3. 3.     Confederación Española de Centros de Enseñanza (Spanish Confederation of Education and Training Centres) (CECE), Madrid, ES, is a non-profit employers´ and professional organization founded in 1977. It represents a wide educational sector in Spain from nursery school to university level.  It has more than 5.000 Education and training centres among its members. Its institutional roles are the management of updating for educational agreements; the negotiation of the collective agreements for this sector; the representation of this sector in the collegiate boards with educational participation;  institutional presence in the Spanish Employers Organization (CEOE) and in some international organizations in which it takes an active role as well as the relationship and contacts with Education Public Authorities. CECE gives support to his members in 5 areas: (1) organization of lifelong learning courses for teachers; (2) implementation of technological innovation in its members; (3) internationalization of the members; (4) Assistance in the implementation of the EFQM Excellence Model in its member institutions. (5) Legal consultancy for the member institutions.

• 4.     Norwich City College of Further & Higher Education (CCN), Norwich, UK, is a progressive college of Further and Higher Education, offering provision in 14 of the 15 Skills Funding Agency’s areas of learning and attracting approximately 14,000 students onto programmes ranging from pre-entry to post graduate level. The College’s Schools include Creative & Business Industries; Technology, Environment & Sport; Health and Community Studies and Hotel, Hair & Beauty together with a Sixth Form Centre which houses A Level and GCSE students. CCN is proud of its reputation for innovation, responsiveness to the Student Voice and employer engagement and was one of the first FE colleges to secure the Training Quality Standard for excellence in employer responsiveness. New Media investigates and implements new ways of using technology (software and hardware) to enhance personalised learning and the learner journey. They provide theoretical, strategic and practical guidance and resources for eLearning development and support. The service provides teaching staff with the tools and the skills-set to become more creative and connected professionals both inside and outside the classroom through Staff development publications and activities.

• 5.     Federazione Nazionale Insegnanti Centro di iniziativa per l’Europa – FENICE – Naples, Italy – a non-profit teacher association which supports any initiative favouring the integration of the intellectual resources of schools in the cultural growth of society, promotes and plans initiatives, training projects, refresher courses, the cultural improvement of  teachers as well as research and experimentation in the teaching field, and takes part in the research and development of technologies aiming at making learning easier, education and vocational training more accessible thanks to the modern means of communication. During 30 years of activity, it designed and carried out more than 30 seminars and public conferences, 135 in-service courses and training courses for teachers both initial and in-service, most of which had been authorised by our local educational Authorities. Furthermore it publish a newspaper called «Scuol@Europa» sent to all the secondary schools of Italy and a newsletter sent out in three languages (IT, EN, FR) all over Europe to institutions and policy makers with information on its activities in transnational partnerships in European Projects (20 until now) with the aim to promote the products and the methods developed by transnational partnerships to a wider audience, and to encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences.

• 6.    Faculdade de Filosofia da Universidade Católica Portuguesa, (Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University), FACFIL, Braga, PT is heir to the centuries-old presence of the Society of Jesus in Higher Education. In 1967 joined the Portuguese Catholic University as its first faculty. The Faculty of Philosophy is now offering six undergraduate courses: Philosophy, Psychology, Artistic and Cultural Studies, Portuguese and Spanish Studies, Information and Documentation Sciences and Communication Sciences; Twelve master degree courses in various areas of Philosophy, Humanities and Sciences of Education and Psychology, postgraduate degree in Information Science and Documentation and Communication Skills and Human Relations; and doctoral programs in Philosophy, Religious Studies, Linguistic, Portuguese Literature and Classic Studies. Its tradition in teachers training (in Philosophy and Portuguese domains) and recent research projects in educational fields (in Psychology and pedagogy fields) make it an important added value to GENIUS partnership.

• 7.     Technical College "Mihai Bacescu", Falticeni, RO, provides educational services for young generations, which are based on responsibility, performance, equal chances at a high quality standard, both in national and European contexts, developing human values and improving professional competencies. The school has different branches: theoretical, mathematics-informatics, natural sciences, social sciences and philology. The vocational department comprises: electro mechanics, technician, transports, and tourist-services. Thanks to a solid cooperation with other European institutions, school has awarded in 2010 the second title of “EUROPEAN SCHOOL” by The Romanian Ministry of Education and Youth. During school year 2010/2011 it engages 55 classes with 1540 students and 95 teachers.

• 8.    Istanbul Provincial Directorate of National Education (ISTANBUL IL MILLI EGITIM MUDURLUGU - ILMEM) Istanbul, TR, is responsible of all educational activities, administration issues covering all forms of education; formal education (pre-school, primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, technical/vocational schools), non-formal (adult education, apprenticeship training, in-service training in Istanbul), under the Ministry of Education. It monitors and directs 39 education authorities within the 39 district of Istanbul, which consists about 2600 schools with about 10.000 teachers. Projects Coordination Unit is the one which is in charge of the activities related to EU Projects. Core activities of department concerns: Training teachers and vice/principals to design, develop and run EU Projects; Organizing different kinds of projects within EU Education and Youth Projects and projects under IPA program; -Establishing partnerships for EU Projects; Following the news and developments of EU Education and Youth Projects and IPA;

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