Month: April 2021

One step closer towards inclusive education and employment for disabled and disadvantaged people in martial arts!

(PRIMAE) Participation and Recreation through Inclusive Martial Arts Education and E-learning seeks to revolutionise the martial arts sector. The project, funded by Erasmus+ and awarded by the British Council and Ecorys, will create the first-ever accessible and inclusive E-learning platform with courses and qualifications that embed inclusion into the coaching of people through martial arts.

Inclusive pedagogy, flipped learning and blended learning support an innovative spiral curriculum that develop cross-cutting skills and employment opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged people in martial arts.

The €330,000 project (n.2019-1-UK01-KA204-061975) is a direct response to the European Commission’s call to increase the employment of those aged 20-64 to 75% and the education and employment of people with disabilities.

The team comprises a diverse range of partners with unique skills and experience. These include Ikkaido (UK), Ikkaido IMA (Ireland), Aux Couleurs Du Deba (France), Areadne (Greece), University of Cyprus, SVIF (Sweden) and EURO-NET and Futuro Digitale (Italy). The project is halfway complete, and we would love to share the progress we have made.

The organisations collaborated extremely well during the first year of the project, with each playing to their strengths and providing useful knowledge and insight in their respective fields. The partners researched good practices in E-learning that would lay the foundations for the development of the inclusive Intellectual Outputs.

Raymond Sweeney, Ikkaido CEO and Project Coordinator said “The objectives of the project are very ambitious and so we have been working extremely hard, despite all the challenges that COVID-19 has created in partner countries. We all aspire to develop a project that we are proud of – one that will create genuine and lasting improvements to the quality of life of disabled and disadvantaged people through accessible and inclusive health-enhancing physical activity, education and employment.

Our ultimate goal is for the project to be officially recognised by the CEN (European Committee for Standardisation) as a good practice case study for inclusion and accessibility in sport and E-learning. All of our partners are passionate about this, and with their help we are on track to achieve it.”

This Europe-wide initiative can be viewed at www.primae.eu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IkkaidoPrimae.

For more information, please contact christian@ikkaido.eu

For the validation (pilot trials) of the final release of the EASIER project, a trial with external end users has been carried out. An online webinar was organized on December 17th, 2020 to recruit online participants even beyond the direct contact of clinical partners. Each participant has taken part in the validation of one or more case studies, depending on their particular profile. Users have tested the EASIER platform and have been requested to complete a questionnaire that comprises sets of questions to address:
1. Usability validation
2. Functionality validation
3. User’s perception and satisfaction
4. Pedagogical model validation

The results were overall positive! In terms of the Assessment Module of the EASIER LMS that the SEIT lab has developed, most participants (53%) have stated that its functionalities provide feedback in a meaningful manner, facilitating its comprehension in relation to the acquisition of surgical skills.

The chromatic agreement or disagreement helps to define the device in terms of usability.

Furthermore, the choice of colors predominantly affects the emotions and predisposition of the subjects. The display is the interface with which we interact most and enhancing its appearance facilitates its usability.

People with senile dementia or Alzheimer’s cannot deal with complex or confusingly colored devices. Another aspect on which eSticky has focused with particular attention is the font of the texts, which participate in the effectiveness of the device.

Colors are an expression of our state of mind and what we want to convey: psychology is influenced by colors, and this internal dynamic is widely demonstrated by numerous scientific researches. In this context, the need emerges to develop a system aimed at enhancing the user through the digital experiential dimension, building a responsive display with a simplified interface. This is one of the topics covered in the eSticky meeting held in February and April.