Social skills in blended learning for better student achievement

First of all the project aims to raise awareness on the importance of social skills in blended learning. We realise we still have a long way to go to make people more aware of the importance of social skills in blended learning. Hence, this project aims to raise awareness at all levels from students, teachers, educational experts to policymakers. Next to raising students and teachers awareness, the project aims to enhance both students and teachers digital skills and to empower teachers to implement concrete tools in specific online educational situations, we will motivate them to try out new things, to share experiences with their colleagues or to share experiences in an online community specialised in this topic. In order for participants to get to that stage however, our project will strive to equip them with the necessary PSL competences ( Personal, Social and Learning to Learn competences) and transversal skills needed for participants to develop the building blocks for responsible and efficient citizenship and problem solving as well as the disposition to collective contribution.This will partially be achieved through the different toolboxes developed in this project. The library toolbox will provide background information and will provide teachers more knowledge on the importance of social skills or transversal skills in education and especially in online education. The teaching and learning toolbox will provide practical and simple tools aimed at raising teachers digital skills. Un-experienced teachers can see this toolbox as practical guide with step by step guidelines for tools easy to use or implement. But also more experienced teachers will learn how specific tools are more suitable in specific situations. The discussion toolbox is a concrete toolbox supporting online discussions. The Gamified toolbox enables teachers to search for educational games to be used in concrete classroom activities. In short the main aim of these toolboxes is to empower and equip teachers to implement more blended learning activities in their classrooms, while paying attention to social skills en the active inclusion of all students. We acknowledge that in order for these efforts to have a wide enough reach we need to approach this project in a way that emphasizes and is guided by the philosophy of Inclusivity and Diversity in Education. Creating a project that is inclusive is one of our main objectives which is why we will structure our project in a manner where its transferability potential is not limited to educators and school students but will extend to groups of people beyond the two aforementioned categories (including people with fewer opportunities). In a further effort to ensure Inclusivity and Diversity, we have added an international dimension objective to the project where we will strategically network with educators and students from countries whose cultural and historical background with citizens with fewer opportunities will provide the project creators as well as participants with further insight into how to break inclusivity barriers. Barriers that
we will address in our project will include economic, education & training, geographical, cultural, and discrimination
related barriers. We anticipate that doing so will lead us to develop a baseline for educational practical guidelines that aim to equip young people from all walks of life to on the one hand, individually address life’s challenges successfully and on the other to collectively address common global issues.