The Open Mind project aims at facilitating access to social entrepreneurship training for students from all fields of study with a special focus at women through an INNOVATIVE GAMIFIED OPEN ONLINE COURSE.

Gamification is one of the latest trends in the e-learning community that uses game mechanics and human-focused game design elements to measure, influence and reward target user behaviors. It takes game characteristics like (goals, rules, playfulness, elements of fun, feedback, reward and promotions), applies them to solve the real-world business problem.

According to the European Internet Foundation the key to adequately preparing learners for life in a digital world is to “redesign education itself around participative, digitally-enabled collaboration within and beyond the individual educational institution”. They predict that by 2025 this will have become the dominant worldwide educational paradigm, as “technology does not only affect what we will need to learn, but also how we will learn in the future.”

The report The Potential of Digital Games for Empowerment and Social Inclusion of Groups at Risk shows the positive impacts of digital games and gamification in learning and social inclusion.
The gamification pioneer and guru Yu-kai Chou has listed the Top 10 Social Gamification Examples that will Literally Save the World. Among them are:
• The puzzle game “Foldit” made a breakthrough in AIDS Research that scientists couldn’t solve for 15 years. With over 240,000 “players” the solution was found in 10 days.
• The role playing game “Pain Squad” encourages children who combat cancer to log their pains, thus providing data to doctors on the efficiency of treatment.
• Khan Academy enhances learning through gamified online education. The huge collection of educational videos has attracted millions of learners.
• Zamzee makes Kids active by making running around epic. Activity rate for children decreased by 60%, leading to obesity, diabetes or even worse diseases.
• CrowdRise is a platform that Gamifies charity. It attracted over 33 Million players and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for non-profits worldwide.
• OPower makes people responsible with their energy consumption.
• RecycleBank encourages people to recycle by awarding points, which are redeemable for real goods. The project, backed by Al Gore, has won numerous innovation and business awards. It now has 3 Million members and over 180 employees.
• FreeRice feeds the hungry by quizzing the intellect. Through the site UN World Food Programme and has donated rice, enough to feed 10 million people.

The Open Mind gamified platform will:
• Create an attractive and engaging learning environment that will put students in the “shoes” of social entrepreneurs and give them the chance to experience the essence of being a social entrepreneur;
• Involve students in exploring business concepts and fundamentals of social entrepreneurship through real cases and challenges, thus allowing them to embark on an exciting and motivational learning journey;
• Sensitize learners about the important social issues, and help learn how to identify needs and opportunities and turn them to shared value ventures;
• Encourage collaboration and competitive dynamics among students, foster creativity and experimentation, enhance leadership and critical thinking, thus helping them to develop the specific soft skills & entrepreneurial mindset, while dealing with concrete situations in gaming environment.
• The features of the game design (collaboration, sharing, feedback, awards, etc.) will help provide a highly participative and friendly learning environment, so that female students and those from non-business studies obtain generic entrepreneurship skills and more specific business competences, while solving specific social problems in collaboration and competing for achieving better results. The gamified platform and the developed methodology will allow to link learners’ accomplishments with ECTS points, to enable better recognition of results for students.

Stay updated to learn about the project accomplishments on the Open Mind page in Facebook.