Educating families is arguably one of the most beneficial things that could be done to reduce the overall environmental footprint of each individual. However, there is little value in educating some family members in the hope that they will impact the behavior of others. Educating families about the circular economy needs to happen in a whole-of-family approach and this can only be achieved through the design and implementation of a new comprehensive family learning programme that provides different learning materials and resources that are appropriate to different age groupings within each family context. To achieve the proposed ICE-CAP family learning approach the following compendium of bespoke educational resources will be designed, developed and implemented:
– for children between the ages of 6 and 10 years partners will develop a series of comic strips that introduce the concepts of reducing waste, reusing old products and materials and separating and recycling different items of waste in appropriate ways;
– for older children between the ages of 11 and 15 years partners will develop a series of online games that will be presented as Digital Breakout Challenges based on key circular economy themes;
– for older children between the ages of 16 and 20 years partners will produce a series of different online challenges using the WebQuest model and each challenge will seek to build a strong understanding of environmental issues, the need for environmental protection and the benefits that would derive for all if circular economy business models were more widely used.
– to complete the suite of proposed learning resources a comprehensive induction training
programme for parents will also be provided to develop their knowledge of the circular economy and to support their role as facilitators of the family learning model being developed.

5 partner meetings are envisaged as follows:
The first partner meeting will be held in M1 in Ireland hosted by SRC. All partners will give a comprehensive overview of their organisation; an overview of current circular economy education in their country – where it exists at all; an overview of adult education provision and in particular family
learning; a synopsis of attitudes to online learning and challenge-based educational resources within adult education. SRC (comic strips), DANTE (Digital Breakouts), CEX (WebQuests) and Permacultura Cantabria (Induction) will lead a series of discussions to inform the value proposition for the new resources. Hub Karelia will present an outline of the project website and the Facebook page. AEVA will conduct Impact+ workshops to agree indicators for IO1, IO2, 103 and IO4. The quality plan, dissemination plan and project branding will also be discussed. CEX will outline the reporting requirements for all partners to ensure compliance with the rules and regulations in force.
The second partner meeting will be held in M6 in Portugal and hosted by AEVA. At this meeting initial prototypes of the Comic Strips will be presented by SRC and CEX; of the Digital Breakouts by all partners; of the WebQuests by all partners and of the Induction Training by Permacultura Cantabria
and CEX. Partners will review all prototypes presented and agree a schedule for the development of the remaining Comic Strips, Digital Breakouts, WebQuests, and Induction Training Programme. AEVA will conduct an Impact Workshop to agree indicators for IO6. Hub Karelia will outline different
models for the online platform where the full suite of learning resources will be presented.
The third partner meeting will be held in M12 in Spain and hosted by Permacultura Cantabria. At this meeting the submission of the interim report will be discussed and all partners will ensure that all documentation required by the National Agency is provided to CEX. The 12 Comic Strips, 12 Digital
Breakouts, 12 WebQuests and Induction Training Programme will be presented for testing. AEVA will present the value proposition for the in-service training programme. AEVA will conduct an Impact+ Workshop to agree indicators for IO5. A development and testing schedule will be agreed to ensure that the in-service training materials are available for piloting at the transnational training event in Croatia in M17. A prototype online learning portal will be presented. Partners will agreed the media formats for the production of the resources developed and a translation and production time-frame. Arrangements will be made for the first iteration of the in-service training in Croatia in month 17. The first impact assessment exercise will be conducted by AEVA.
The fourth partner meeting will be held in month 18 in Finland and hosted by Hub Karelia. This meeting coincides with the completion of all development and production work and with the implementation of the in-service training in each partner country. The main focus of this meeting will
be to plan the ICE-CAP Circular Economy Awareness Raising Symposiums to be held in each partner country in M22 and the final conference in the United Kingdom in month 25. Partners will focus on dissemination and exploitation actions to ensure that the full benefit of the tools and resources developed can be enjoyed by the target group.
The fifth partner meeting will be held in month 25 in the United Kingdom and hosted by CEX. At this meeting partners will complete all reporting requirements and review the second impact assessment carried out by AEVA. The Final Conference will be planned to coincide with this meeting.
Face-to-face partner meetings will be augmented by online full-partner or bilateral meetings through Skype as and when required. All partners will send one representative to each partner meeting. Asproject coordinator, CEX will send 2 representatives to all partner meetings. The Project Management Committee will meet at each partner meeting and the risk management analysis will be reviewed and updated.

There will be 6 intelectual outputs, each one of them carried by a Organisation: Comic Strips, Digital Breakouts, WebQuests, Training for Parents, In-service Training Programme and a Online Interactive Portal.

Objective: give a comprehensive overview of their organisation; an overview of current financial literacy provision in their country – where it exists at all; an overview of adult education provision and in particular family learning; a synopsis of attitudes to online learning and challenge-based educational resources within adult education.

Agenda:

Virginia, Ireland 11^th & 12^th September 2019

Objective: Partners will review all prototypes presented and agree on a schedule for the development of the remaining Comic Strips, Digital Breakouts, WebQuests, and Induction Training Programme.

Agenda:

Objective: At this meeting the submission of the interim report will be discussed and all partners will ensure that all documentation required by the National Agency is provided to CEX. The 12 Comic Strips, 12 Digital Breakouts, 12 WebQuests and Induction Training Programme will be presented for testing.

Objective: Partners will focus on dissemination and exploitation actions to ensure that the full benefit of the tools and resources developed can be enjoyed by the target group.

Objective: At this meeting partners will complete all reporting requirements and review the second impact assessment.

Targeting young family members between the ages of 6 and 10 years, a new comic strip that addresses raising awareness of environmental issues will be developed. The suite of comics strips developed will comprise 12 monthly themed comic strips addressing different environmental themes. The monthly narrative of the comic strips will be adapted to ensure that age appropriate content is presented. The narratives for the comic strips will be written by SRC and CEX who together will produce the visual elements to make the comics attractive to the young audience.
While the proposed comic strips are being developed as part of an holistic family learning
programme they will also be extremely relevant to schools seeking to address key environmental themes and incorporate them into their range of services. The comic strips will be available in PDF for printing and as flip-books for online use. All comic strips will be available in all partner languages and will be accessible to any education provider through the project website and learning portal. The comic strips provide an opportunity to introduce the key ideas and concepts that are central to the development of the circular economy digital literacy to young family members. It is expected that the impact of these resources and the message they portray will be significant.

The digital breakout challenges that comprise this innovative learning resource will address key environmental themes and introduce the concepts and philosophy driving the circular economy. Scenarios for each resource will be developed that adequately address key environmental themes in both positive and negative scenarios. Resources developed will be pitched at introductory and intermediate levels to introduce best practice in environmental awareness. These resources will lead on to more challenging tasks in the WebQuests that follow. Designing these digital resources from scratch allows partners to introduce different levels to ensure that learners can engage with the tools developed regardless of prior educational history and that a sustainable educational experience for learners is provided allowing them to build their skills by advancing through available levels. A minimum of 2 resources will be developed by each partner. This will allow partners to provide gender
specific resources where necessary. A typical introductory digital breakout will have 3 individual challenges that get incrementally more difficult. While an intermediate resource will have 5 individual challenges that get incrementally more difficult.
Each digital breakout will attract an appropriate award as a recognition of achievement. The precise nature of this award will be agreed by partners at the first partner meeting and incorporated into the digital breakout challenge. Each end-user who engages with the resources through the online interactive portal will have the opportunity to create an online portfolio as a record of their learning achievements.
Although digital breakouts are beginning to attract the attention of educators in formal educational settings they are still regarded as being at the cutting-edge of pedagogic innovation. The provision of digital breakout challenges specifically targeting family learning to build environmental awareness and promote the philosophy behind the circular economy is a definite first in a European context and therefore represents a significant innovation.
The primary target group of the project are parents, guardians and their digital native children.
Designing bespoke game-based educational resources that can be directly accessed on smartphones and other mobile devices significantly increases the chances of making a lasting impact on the target group in all partner countries and building high-value skill sets that are much sought after in the labour market. The resources developed will be fully mobile and therefore fully transferable to any family members in any country. The fact that a wide selection of resources will be available in 5 partner languages and as open educational resources increases the potential transferability. These resources will be designed for access through all of the most popular social media platforms where today’s young people ‘hang-out’. While partners have decided to focus on the development of resources to support the acquisition of good environmental and circular economy habits the model developed could easily be applied to the acquisition of other key competences.

WebQuests are a structured learning experience that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate learners’ investigation of an open-ended question for the development of individual expertise and participation in a process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. The best WebQuests inspire learners to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own meta-cognitive processes. WebQuests are frequently described as ‘scaffolded’ learning structures to support learner performance beyond their capacities.
The ICE-CAP WebQuest challenges will be designed to support family members between the ages of 16 and 20 years to develop an acute understanding of key environmental issues, the emerging circular economy and circular economy business models. A typical WebQuest has an introduction and 5 essential parts: task, process, resources, evaluation, and conclusion. The WebQuests will present real-world scenarios related to environmental issues in both positive and negative scenarios and set tasks for learners to complete. It is important to understand that these are challenge-based exercises and the challenges can be themed to address specific topics or subjects that have specific local resonance in partner countries.
Each partner will develop the learning content for 2 WebQuest challenges at advanced and expert levels to build on the skills developed in the earlier Digital Breakout resources. The same thematic concepts will be addressed in the WebQuests as were addressed in the Digital Breakouts just at a higher level of complexity. This will help to ensure that a progression between the levels is easily facilitated and that the development of the specific theme is coherent. The compendium of resources developed will therefore comprise 12 WebQuest challenges. Each end-user who engages with the resources through the online portal will have the opportunity to create an online portfolio as a record of their learning achievements. DANTE and Hub Karelia will share the task to review the WebQuests developed and asses their quality against an agreed WebQuest Evaluation Rubric (see sample attached as an appendix).
Although WebQuest learning is beginning to attract the attention of educators in formal educational settings they are still regarded as being at the cutting-edge of pedagogic innovation. The provision of WebQuest challenges to raise environmental and circular economy awareness in a family learning setting represents a significant innovation in all partner countries and perhaps throughout Europe.
The primary target group of the project are families with young digital natives who have mobile
technologies embedded in their daily lives. Designing bespoke game-based educational resources that can be directly accessed on smart-phones and other mobile devices significantly increases the chances of making a lasting impact on the target group in all partner countries and building greater understanding of the environmental and circular economy themes selected.
The resources developed will be fully mobile and therefore fully transferable to any learner in any country. The fact that a wide selection of resources will be available in 5 partner languages and as open educational resources increases the potential transferability. These resources will be designed for access through all of the most popular social media platforms where today’s digital natives ‘hangout’.

The final element of the proposed educational materials for the ICE-CAP Family Learning
Methodology to promote environmental awareness and the circular economy will be an induction training programme for parents and guardians. This induction training will have two key objectives as follows:
(1) To raise awareness of environmental issues and the circular economy of parents and guardians
(2) To support parents and guardians in their role as facilitators of family learning

Resources to address the first objective will comprise a series of workshop lesson plans for use in small group settings that are based around information provision followed by role playing exercises. These exercises will focus on a minimum of 6 negative environmental scenarios and 6 positive circular economy scenarios. These workshops will play a crucial role in developing an understanding of environmental issues and raise awareness of the circular economy among the parents and guardians who participate. The training will comprise 6 half-day workshops.
Resources to address the second objective will be presented in 2 half-day workshops. These
workshops will introduce the
(1) basic concepts of pedagogy
(2) how to manage the learning of family members in online environments.
A series of tip sheets will also be provided as reference tools for parents.

Partners will develop a bespoke in-service training programme to ensure that adult educators are fully trained to harness the potential of the ICE-CAP educational resources. Once the sample content for the prototype resources is developed and signed-off at the partner meeting in M6, AEVA will define the key learning outcomes of the in-service training for adult educators and the skills, knowledge and competences to be developed. AEVA and DANTE will between them produce the Learner Manual containing all the required learning content. The in-service training will begin by introducing the basic principles of the circular economy before switching its attention to the family learning model developed and the different age appropriate resources developed. The new challenge-based resources will be media-rich and interactive and the in-service training will familiarise the adult educators with the new approaches required to effectively use and integrate the new resources into everyday activities. Working with the local stakeholder forums partners will present in-service training materials for sampling and validation before including them in the final training programme.
The in-service training will place a significant emphasis on the use of new challenge-based
educational resources. The focus of the in-service training will be to ensure that the adult educators who participate build the necessary skills to develop their own resources using widely available open source software, but also develop an understanding of how challenge-based learning works best for today’s digital natives. The in-service training will comprise 60 hours of instruction made up of 25 hours of hands-on workshop learning and 35 hours of online self-directed learning. The 25 hours of workshop learning will be broken down into the following learning elements:
(1) a 4 hour introductory workshop introducing the circular economy and the basic principles of good family learning practice
(2) 2, 7 hour workshops that demonstrate best practice in constructing a Digital Breakout and a WebQuest
(3) a 7 hour workshop where adult educators have to develop an outline of the different steps
required to develop their own challenge based resources.
A significant part of the online self-directed learning will be allocated to the adult educators to
develop their own resources as a skills demonstration. The in-service training programme will be available online as a hand-book in pdf format for printing and as a flip-book for online use. It will be available in all partner languages.
As the EU economy continue to evolve at a rapid pace educators are increasingly expected to
provide new training to meet emerging market needs however, in many cases appropriate in-service training is not provided. ICE-CAP proposes a comprehensive educational intervention where the needs of adult educators as key intermediaries are considered to be just as important as the needs of the end users of the resources. The proposed in-service training to support educators to maximise the potential of the new dynamic, media-rich challenge-based educational resources represents a significant innovation in the adult education field. Providing bespoke training supports addressing issues like the circular economy is a challenge for adult education organisations especially if there is insufficient demand or critical mass of potential learners in a local area. Harnessing the potential of online learning through the myriad of online platforms and social media environments that are available can have a major impact on the accessibility and viability of adult education provision. Ensuring that educators are confident working in these environments can have an ongoing impact into the future and positive implications for the provision of adult education in all locations.
As the reach of online platforms continues to grow the demand for suitably trained adult education professionals who are happy and able to work in these environments will also grow. The in-service training developed will be transferable to adult education providers throughout the participating countries and the model developed will be relevant to other countries.

Hub Karelia will develop an online interactive portal as a one-stop-shop providing instant access to the full suite of resources developed. The proposed portal will support a wide range of innovative online course-ware. It will incorporate a learner tracking mechanism to enable adult educators monitor the progress of learners through the various different resources provided. It will support the delivery of the in-service training programme and will include all the standard and expected social media features that are now an essential part of online learning.
The portal will be an online hosted environment running on a web server tailored for the purpose. It will be built on open source software, such as Moodle, allowing future updates and upgrading to meet new client needs as they emerge. As the core technologies are open-source, the object-based and modular nature of the portal and the services built on it allow for flexible combining of the available modules as well as cost-efficient creation of new ones should the need for special purpose built extensions arise. The fact that the portal can actively track usage levels for each of the individual resources developed will allow partners to identify the most popular resources from a content and presentation perspective which is important information for future developments in this specific area.
A report of usage will be available as part of the quantitative evaluation process. The portal will be optimized for mobile access and will function equally well on laptop, tablet or smartphone. There is a considerable body of research that highlights the potential and suitability of online learning environments, especially those optimized for smartphone usage, for delivering learning materials to young digital natives. Thus the potential impact of this learning portal for learners in a variety of different circumstances is considerable.
The challenge-based educational resources developed will be relevant and useful for adult educators looking to provide training to raise awareness of environmental issues or the circular economy in any country and the potential transferability of the resources developed is significant. Maintaining the online portals for a period of 5 years after the project has ended also aids transferability.

The project work-plan envisages one major multiplier event in each country to coincide with the completion of all development work. Ever event will ‘piggy-back’ on some bigger event that attracts a significant attendance it is difficult to pinpoint an exact date for this multiplier event but it will only be scheduled after all development work on the full suite of family learning resources has been completed.