Name: Digital laboratories for Students at Risk (DigiLabStar III)

Duration period: 2024-2025

The main idea of the project:

The project is dedicated to the development and testing of game digital content (gamified digital content) for the basic discipline "Biochemistry," suitable for use for online and offline learning at the universities of Ukraine.

The content will cover the full standard biochemistry course, which is an integral component of a number of educational programs in Ukraine and Germany, as well as biology, biotechnology, and medicine. Biochemistry in Ukraine is a core part of the curriculum for two semesters and covers up to 12 ECTS. The program of the discipline is quite standardized, which allows you to introduce the developed course into the curricula of biological and medical faculties of public and private universities throughout the country.

The proposed course "Basic Biochemistry" is developed using a number of advanced digital gamification tools. The educational material will be presented in the form of fascinating stories created using artificial intelligence. Alternative scenarios and missions will allow access to the following tasks depending on the choice of student responses. The theoretical material will be offered multimodal interactive tasks in accordance with the storyline. The educational material will be available on the basis of the Moodle platform of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, access to which will be provided to students and teachers. A version of content available for smartphones and tablets (based on the ActionBound application) has also been developed that does not require a student to connect to the Moodle platform. This content can be used by students for self-study.

The goal of the project:

1) Production of the gamified course on the basics of Biochemistry using cutting-edge digital tools

2) Online workshops for Ukrainian academics to familiarise them with digital gamification tools

3) Implementation of the digital course in Ukrainian universities and evaluation of its effectiveness.

Target audience:

Students of the 1st or 2nd year enrolled in the educational programs "Biology," "Biotechnology," "Medicine," etc.

The proposed course can be used partially (as compensation for missed classes), completely (if the student cannot attend offline classes at all), as an additional educational resource for extracurricular activities, independent work and pre-examination self-training, as well as integrated into new formats of digital teaching and learning (with the support of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine).

Project manager from UzhNU: Assoc. Prof. Angela Kolesnyk, Ph.D,

Applicant: Ruhr University Bochum (RUB)

Partners:

1) Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

2) Dnipro State Medical University

3) Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

4) Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design

5) Uzhhorod National University

6) The Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy

7) Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University.