Project info
Project info
Project Description:
The VITAL project is motivated by the EU’s Green Deal Action Plan and the exploitation of two Erasmus+ priorities – the fight against climate change combined with digital transformation in this case in the adult education sector. Various studies, statistics and surveys show that the rate of natural resource extraction is rapidly growing and our planet and the home of mankind can come to exhaustion of its finite resources. In a nutshell, the behaviour and lifestyle of EU Citizens in terms of consumption and use of products and services needs to be influenced so that we all contribute daily actions that are more sustainable and aligned with best practices leading to carbon neutrality. Conscious of this need, European Member States have defined their National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) strategies with clear targets and milestones. For these targets to be achieved, all those concerned whether at their home or place of work need to take appropriate daily actions. These targets are also putting pressure on economic operators in different EU Member States to ensure they take the necessary actions to comply. Although best practices such as recycling, re-use, reduction and a shift toward Circular Economy principles are practised by some adults, to effectively reach the necessary NECP targets, much more effort is required. Thus more structured knowledge, practical examples and a deeper understanding of how to apply such principles and concepts leading to low carbon activities in everyday life in education, businesses and leisure are mostly missing. Thus, to contribute towards fighting climate change and reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 (EU Green Deal), the VITAL project aims to help EU adult learners understand better the basic scientific principles giving rise to climate change, so that better informed daily actions and decisions can be taken. At the same time, adults are busy individuals who do not always have the time to attend courses to acquire knowledge on for instance ‘low carbon’ best practices. Compounded with this fact, adult trainers need a set of training resources that can help them transfer knowledge to adult learners in an efficient and engaging way yet customised to learner needs. One way of how this can be overcome is to exploit the emerging digital technologies of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies to better engage learners. However, many EU adult trainers are still not familiar with these technologies and thus the VITAL project aims to address this need too by providing training on AR/VR to relevant target groups (adult trainers, teachers and educators, adult training providing organisations, SME managers) so that they can reach out more effectively to the EU adult population to help Europe gradually shift towards more climate-neutral practices.