Towards Inclusion in Higher Education: The Case of the Skills for a Next Generation Project

Inclusion is founded on principles grounded on accepting individual differences and valuing human diversity, where all citizens have equal rights. The lack of inclusion has unfortunately been prevalent throughout the history of humanity. Poverty, unemployment, and other situations in which people are deprived of their rights as citizens are demonstrations of social exclusion. This is today a societal concern, and universities are also attentive to how this affects their students, aiming to grant their fundamental rights to learn regardless of individual characteristics, such as Gender, Sexuality, Language, Neurotypicality and Perceptual Accessibility. In short, fostering an inclusive and quality education. In this context, the project Skills for a Next Generation (S4NG), a European Funded Project, aims to promote academic inclusion and diversity at the University of Porto. Its Axis 4.2 aims to create a digital platform for sharing experiences and pedagogical content, some of it gamified as tools to be used to manage and monitor the inclusion. Methods: We developed a methodology based on Human Centred Design (HCD), co-creating with stakeholders and potential users. This helped us better understand how to reconcile their diverse needs and expectations, and to gather knowledge about their contexts. The S4NG Axis 4.2 methodology is composed of 7 steps: User Research, Platform Information Architecture, Monitoring and Registration of Contents, Gamification Strategies, Co-Design of Gamified Content, Platform’s User Interface and Functional prototype of the platform and games. As results we created a range of 40 games /physical, digital and hybrid) for teachers, students and staff. These games were divided into 3 categories: Informative Games, Sensitisation Games and Interventive Games.