Questions/Answers

Due to the spread of many wrong and unacceptable behaviors in schools, such as sexual harassment, negative, underachievement and others. As we don’t want to reach to the state of addiction, terrorism and fraud, Khalifa Empowerment Program (Aqdar) launched 360 Degrees of Student Awareness that provides a fully integrated program of information, awareness and understanding for students in grades K-12, which empowers them as responsible and thoughtful people. In order to strength national identity and build a conscious generation, stable family and self-immune generation, Aqdar launched an innovative initiative, smart awareness through different electronic means including electronic games, to contribute in building immune and empowered generation that is able to cope with current and future challenges. The general objectives are: • Developing effective integration between the institutions involved in the healthy upbringing of students. • Reinforcing patriotism and the sense of belonging to the homeland in the hearts of students. • Raising the student's positive awareness of the national, cultural, religious and health-related issues • Developing the students͛ personal and leadership skills • Developing the students͛ sense of social responsibility • Educational goals • promote of WSIS values in the Society that includes Personal Skills and economic awareness

Aqdar uses electronic means including electronic games as a mean of learning and awareness, which is considered as an innovative and unique in the UAE that promotes digital transformation. The main advantage of electronic games over other means, that it speaks the language of the current generation. Aqdar has partnership with over 50 organizations specializing in children’s safety and protection, to get the digital content. The initiative provided free games, and provided free iPads in most of the schools in the UAE to enable all students to access the learning material. Smart Awareness improved the effectiveness of awareness and learning.

The initiative contributes to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda by providing learning and awareness material that promotes healthy lives and wellbeing through awareness about good heathy habits and dangerous of drugs and harmful use of alcohol. The initiative provides free learning opportunity and inline with SDG that ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Our games promote components of the National Unity, and that we are all equal. The initiative objective is to spread educational contents, develop personal skills, strength national identity and dissemination of different cultures in an interactive and sensible way.

Before the launch of Aqdar initiative, many initiatives where launched in the UAE by different parties, but they are limited in scope, using traditional means and does not speak the language of the young people. These initiatives were independent, efforts are fragmented and create extra burden on students. Most of the initiatives are targeting only government schools and ignoring disadvantages people. It is significant to use the latest techniques in the implementation of the program. The use of an innovative and engaging delivery methods is a key to success. Video games mean is considered an innovative and engaging delivery method that speak the language of young people. Another reason of using videos games is the widespread of games on various devices and systems. Most young people have smart and mobile devices these days. Providing devices for all students is a key reason for success. Statistics shows that 81.2% of children from the age of 6-11 used the internet to play video games (Mediamark Research & Intelligence). Moreover 97% of children play video games, and 53% of Adults play video games (The Pew Internet & American Life Project). Therefore, video games are considered one of the important means for awareness.

The project uses an innovative and engaging delivery methods to communicate messages, concepts and different awareness lessons and strengthen national identity to different sectors of the community, specially students, through video games that runs on smart devices and PCs. These games contain awareness and learning messages in an interesting, enjoying and funny form for both kids and adults. Most young people in UAE have smart and mobile devices these days. It is considered innovative initiative as it is considered first of its kind in the UAE to electronic games inhouse in a public entity and use them for nationwide awareness.

The innovation is originally from Aqdar. The objectives of the initiative were identified after studying the school’s environment. Moreover, the practice has been validated through a rigorous approach during two phases: first during the research and development phase with 14-refereed publications (in many counties: UK, USA, Spain, France, Jordan, Poland & Belgium) and many practical prototyping experiments over the period of 5 years. The second phase was during deployment with many quantitative and qualitative results validation. Aqdar plays its part in sustainable development through social and community programs aimed at creating a real impact for a better tomorrow.

The initiative increased the interest in the using such technologies for other needs such as enhancing schools’ curriculum across UAE. The initiative started in the city of Dubai. It started with one school, then 7 schools (grade 8), and then covering all schools in Dubai. After the success, it is replicated to all other cities in the UAE. This initiative can be applied internationally. One of the important things in order to get the initiative, is to unite all awareness efforts in the country, to be under one umbrella.

The developed of the electronic awareness games are done inhouse. The Human resources costs for developing the games is $200,000. The program run in 8 cycles. The following shows the effectiveness of implementation and efficiency of fiscal spending in the 4th, 6th and 8th cycle respectively: • Budget (1,700,000, 1,200,000,800,000) • Events (12,18,25) • Lectures (158, 207,305) We had 40 focus groups with more than 1200 students from different cities in the UAE. We tested different games prototypes on students and used Psychologist and Scenario writers to design the games, determine the targeted ages, awareness and educational content and to know the affects

Our games provide a free learning opportunity and its inline with SDG that ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. One of the objectives is health & safety. This theme aims to educate students about public health and a equip them with the skills to have a balanced diet, formation of a positive attitudes towards compliance with traffic safety and laws, and the environment in its entirety. Student will be able to distinguishes between different nutritional elements, deduces the economic, social, psychological and health-related effects of stress, discovers nutrition-related illnesses, demonstrates methods of using clean renewable energy, explains the manifestations of environmental depletion, lists methods of recycling and their effects on keeping a clean environment, and explains food safety and preservation techniques. The initiative aims to promote Personal Skills that includes economic awareness. Life skills are behavioral patterns that enables students to take more responsibility, in relation to their lives, by doing healthy life choices, or to acquire a greater ability to resist negative pressure, including personal and social skills that young people need in order to deal with confidence and efficiency with themselves or with others

Yes

A third-party specialist certified by the UAE government evaluates the program in accordance with the following mechanism: • 360-degree evaluation on students, parents, lectures, teaching staff, schools administrators and partners. Feedback collected either in schools or online through games or social media, are used to improve games. • Kirkpatrick model to evaluate learning: consisting of 4 levels, level 1 (Participants Reaction) by measuring satisfaction level, level 2 (Learning Assessment) by measuring the extend of reaching awareness messages, level 3 (Behavior Evaluation) by measuring the extent of the application of learning through everyday life, level 4 (Return on Investment) by measuring targeted indicators.

Some of the indicators are: • The number of downloads of the games and the rank they researched in the educational category. • The association with the strategic objectives of stakeholders. • The percentage of knowledge about different subjects from the games. • The availability of games in the schools in UAE. • Providing lectures and workshops to all community sectors including Parents, Teachers & Students. • The involvement of stakeholders in the planning, implementation and evaluation.

Some of the Results: • Games downloads reached 25 million globally, ranked no.1 in 74 countries in Educational category. • Games are available in PCs and iPads in most schools in UAE. Students with limited budget where provided free iPads. • Evaluation results of student’s knowledge about different subjects increased such as: Drugs (97.2%), smoking (91%), Security service (87.3%), coordination with police (87.2%), Academic excellence (91.5%), Successful personal (93.9%). Results associated with stakeholders’ strategic objectives such as police. • Number of juveniles that have registered cases against them decreased from 415 cases, to 232. • Number of fire incidents decreased from 595 incidents to 393.

The program works to achieve its vision through the activation of the role of all stakeholders related to student. (120) meetings were held with stakeholders through seminars, forums and consultative meetings. (41) Internal and external party, (305) trainers, (115) coordinators participated in the program. More than 40 community partners collaborated in the initiative and played a role in planning and implementing. The following demonstrates examples of the rule of each partner: • Ministry of Education: The ministry played an important role in assigning scenario writers to provide the scenarios of each game and making sure that each game target different age groups, assigning phycologists to study the effect of the developed games, providing the learning and educational material that it included in the games. • Parents of Handicapped Society: Preparation of scientific material for people with disabilities. • The Ministry of Youth, Culture and Community Development: participation of cultural convoys and presenting the electronic games. • Student Counselling Department within the Ministry of Education: Preparation of scientific material and include them in the electronic games. • 1200 students played a role in focus groups. • Stakeholders where members of executive Committee of the program, that was responsible for planning, implementation and evaluation.

Human is the main resource and most important element in achieving comprehensive development. On the effect of its construction, communities are developed, and on the raise of his abilities and ideas, civilization is built. Aqdar took the lead and launched electronic awareness games initiative. This program reflects the main theme of empowering young people to face challenges in the real world. The initiative increased interest in using such technologies for enhancing schools’ curriculum across the UAE. We are planning to increase partnership with other organizations, and to target university students, to cover all public and private universities and colleges.