INES - Innovative teaching and learning paths for the prevention of new drugs abuse

Scientific coordinators: Prof. Luca FERRARI (Principal Investigator - EDU) Prof. Laura MERCOLINI (FaBiT), Prof. Roberto MANDRIOLI (QUVI)

Project Team:

EDU: Luca FERRARI, Roberta BIOLCATI, Elena PACETTI, Alessandro SORIANI, Marco NENZIONI, Stefano D'AMBROSIO, Andrea REGGIANI, Lorenza MALUCCELLI

FABIT: Laura MERCOLINI, Stefano GIROTTI, Marco CIRRINCIONE, Giusy TESPIO

QUVI: Roberto MANDRIOLI, Lorenzo MARINCICH

Applicant: Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna - Department of Education Studies "G. M. Bertin" – EDU, Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology -FaBiT, Department for Life Quality Studies - QUVI

Partners: ITCS Gaetano Salvemini (IT); Productions Associees (BG); Transilvania University of Brazov (RO); Colegiul Tehnic Mircea Cristea (RO); University of Porto (PT); Escola Secundária João Gonçalves Zarco (PT)

N.r Partners: 7

Partners’ Countries: IT, BG, RO, PT

UNIBO’s role: Applicant

Project Duration: 36 months

Start Date: 01/12/2021

End Date: 30/11/2024

Status: active

Grant Agreement: 2021-1-IT02-KA220-SCH-000032570

Total Budget: 383.085,00 euro

UNIBO Budget: 81.040,00 euro

EDU Budget: 45.730,00 euro

Project’s Topics: Digital content, technologies and practices; Inclusion, promoting equality and non-discrimination; creating new, innovative or joint curricula or courses

Description: New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) represent a large and increasing group of compounds mainly of synthetic nature, characterised by pharmacological and toxicological properties particularly dangerous for the health of consumers. As underlined in the last European Drug Report (EMCDDA, 2018) the “New psychoactive substances continue to challenge public health. The ESPAD Report (2015) identified, for example, a growing number (3-4%) of 15-to 16-year-old school students in 24 European countries which frequently use NPS.

With the aforementioned premise that the majority of the “new consumers” of NPS comes from the age group 15-16 years old, the school can certainly represent a significant context where to improve knowledge and propose effective strategies to tackle the abuse of the above-mentioned substances. In order to promote “secondary school system” processes of didactic innovation, also mediated from a transversal use of digital technologies, the INES project aims to create the conditions to support the collaborative networking of teachers, external experts, and students to find, test, adapt and use (within common teaching workflows) didactic strategies and resources to tackle the NPS problem.

Expected outcomes:

• The creation of a European syllabus on the NPS topic addressed to school education. The expected result will be to incorporate the above-mentioned topic into the curriculum of each partner school
• The publication of a short-blended learning course on NPS - addressed to teachers, students and educators available within the open-source INES online platform (based on Moodle)
• The design and development of a hybrid board game. In order to address an issue as complex as NPS, it seems appropriate to mobilize the personal experience of each actor by creating an immersive structure that guarantees a strong involvement of the player in order to foster active learning on the part of the student
• The design and publication into the INES micro MOOC platform of Open Educational Resources (OERs) co-produced by teachers, academic partners (e.g. academic staff and researchers), and external experts (e.g. case reports, video interviews, multimedia presentations, proposal of didactic activities and game) and published with open licenses (e.g. Creative Commons, GNU, etc.)
• The publication (online/paper) of the INES Collaborative Handbook (ICH) contains all the learning contents, the teaching strategies, and game structures developed during the project lifecycle
• An open-access publication (Book) with the presentation of the project, the results of didactics experimentations, and the main organizational, technical and didactical recommendations to transfer the results to other educational experiences.