Empowering Education Through Gamification: VMU Education Academy in the WePlay Project
Vytautas Magnus University‘s Education Academy is proud to be a core partner in the WePlay project, a forward-looking European initiative funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission (Project No. 2025-1-ES01-KA220-SCH-000351661) that reimagines learning through play and collaboration. At its heart, WePlay is a free, open-access educational gamification platform that empowers teachers and students across Europe to create, play and share gamified learning experiences on any subject or level, combining digital challenges with real-world exploration to make learning more engaging, inclusive, and meaningful.
The aim of the WePlay project is to address key educational challenges — especially in rural and geographically isolated schools — by offering innovative tools that boost student motivation, encourage active participation, and foster collaborative learning across borders. The platform enables hybrid learning journeys that blend virtual tasks with activities in students’ local environments, promoting team work, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and intercultural dialogue among learners from different countries.
The WePlay platform itself features an intuitive gamification editor that allows educators to design rich learning activities without technical expertise, integrates cross-school collaboration spaces where classes can jointly participate in shared challenges, and supports multi-device access so activities can be used on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices alike. Moreover, as part of the project’s development process, ready-to-use pilot experiences are being co-designed with partner schools and tested in real educational settings to ensure practical impact and relevance.
Our consortium brings together diverse expertise to ensure the success of WePlay: Estela Cántabra and Universidad de Deusto from Spain, Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania, Roscommon Leader Partnership in Ireland, and Istituto Comprensivo di Bobbio in Italy. These organisations combine knowledge in educational research, digital innovation, rural development, and school networking. The project also collaborates with associated partners, including rural and urban schools, INDIRE (Italy), and the Foróige youth network (Ireland), to increase reach and foster co-creation of quality learning resources.
At Vytautas Magnus University, our involvement in the WePlay project reflects our commitment to educational innovation, inclusive pedagogy, and international cooperation. By contributing to the design and implementation of this gamification platform, we support the creation of engaging and accessible learning opportunities that can enrich educational practices across Europe and help reduce inequalities in access to quality digital resources. We invite educators, researchers, and learners to follow the project’s progress and explore the possibilities that gamified, collaborative learning can offer to modern education.
Find more information about the project here https://weplayproject.eu/
