InterGames Next

From Conflict Video Games to AI & Digital Society Game-Based Learning

InterGames Next is a 24-month Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in school education that helps secondary schools teach “AI & Digital Society” as a shared, cross-curricular theme. Working with teachers of History, Languages, Civic/Social Education, STEM and Geography, the project turns widely available serious games into classroom cases that strengthen AI literacy, critical thinking, digital citizenship and democratic resilience among learners aged 14–16.

The challenge

Young people’s everyday lives are increasingly shaped by recommender feeds, synthetic media and algorithmic systems, yet classrooms often lack a shared language and ready-to-use routines to examine these realities within ordinary subjects. Too often, the treatment of digital life stops at “ICT use” or “online safety”. InterGames Next responds with common concepts, case-based routines and assessable criteria for credibility, fairness, privacy, accountability and digital wellbeing — embedded in compulsory subjects and aligned with the EU AI Act’s expectations for AI literacy, the Digital Competence Framework (DigComp 2.2) and the Better Internet for Kids (BIK+) strategy.

What the project does

Building on the earlier InterGames partnership, the project frames “AI & Digital Society” through three sub-themes — Misinformation Ecosystems; Digital Wellbeing and Online Behaviour; and Sustainability and Sustainable Futures — and four analytical lenses covering information integrity and persuasion, human agency and wellbeing, rights and ethics, and systems thinking for sustainable digital futures.

Between 12 and 15 serious games are repurposed as instructional cases. Each is analysed for its meaning and its underlying decision structure, then mapped to subject tasks through a simple play–reflect–connect–apply routine that fits a 45- to 90-minute lesson and works in mixed-ability classrooms, including low-tech settings and with the support of Universal Design for Learning.

Teachers are at the centre of the approach. A multilingual Virtual Learning Lab (VLL) Teacher Hub, a self-paced MOOC-lite pathway, a transnational training in Sweden and school-based cascade training equip educators to deliver the method with confidence, with recognition through a 15- to 20-hour micro-credential. Classroom validation across partner countries then tests whether the approach produces measurable learning gains and can be sustained under everyday school conditions.

What the project will deliver

InterGames Next will produce a validated pedagogical framework and curriculum mapping for five compulsory subjects, two unit packs containing more than forty ready-to-use lesson plans, and an upgraded VLL Teacher Hub with at least six interactive modules and a MOOC-lite pathway available in five languages. A 15- to 20-hour teacher micro-credential will make the learning portable and recognisable, while a cross-country evidence report and a peer-reviewed academic paper — published with an open, anonymised dataset — will share what works with educators, researchers and policymakers across Europe.

The partnership

InterGames Next brings together seven organisations from five countries, coordinated by Südwind (Austria): C.I.P. Citizens in Power (Cyprus), HELIXCONNECT Europe (Romania), Progettomondo-ETS and Istituto Istruzione Superiore Michele Sanmicheli (Italy), Borås Stad / Björkhöjdskolan (Sweden) and the Zillertaler Tourismusschulen – HBLA und BFS für Tourismus (Austria). The consortium combines global-citizenship and teacher-training expertise, innovation and skills-ecosystem capacity, and heterogeneous, inclusion-focused schools for authentic classroom piloting.

CIP’s role

As a Cypriot education and research organisation, Citizens in Power leads teacher capacity-building and replication — the MOOC-lite pathway, internal testing and classroom pilots — and runs the project’s cross-cutting quality assurance. CIP integrates the project’s resources into the Virtual Learning Lab, co-authors the scientific outputs, and leads dissemination and exploitation across Europe. CIP also connects the project to its Cyprus school network, its HRDA-accredited training centre and its wider civic-education partners.

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority (OeAD – Austrian National Agency). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.