Augmented Reality Enhanced Toolkit for Sustainable Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Augmented Reality Enhanced Toolkit for Sustainable Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The ARTSe project addresses two crucial priorities within the European Union, namely the need to encourage a higher level of sustainability on our lifestyles and to promulgate digitalisation within member states. Following the European Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan (2018) this project seeks to develop relevant digital technological tools that can be used to enhance the teaching/learning experience in schools. It also seeks to fulfil the targets in ET2020 about lifelong learning and mobility, improve the quality and results in education and work towards social integration, by meeting peers in other countries, and enhance the understanding of sustainable lifestyles in our students.
ARTSe pursues a specific goal of developing an AR assisted curriculum for Sustainable Development which is cross curricular and extends beyond national boundaries in its applicability. Cognizant of the fact that many educators are not as conversant in creative digital pedagogical tools, this project also seeks to address the problem by :
a. Training a number of educators from 3 European countries on the use of AR assisted educational resources
b. Widening the effectiveness of this new approach by creating a guidebook for educators in general to assist in moving beyond traditional class based methodologies for teaching and learning.
Research into the effectiveness of the resources will involve the participation of a group of students from Malta, Italy and Finland. This will help corroborate the multiplier effect of the project when the intellectual output and resources produced are then rolled out to other secondary and post-secondary institutions and specific national NGOs. This dissemination will ensure effectiveness and long term positive impact of output developed in this project. Such output includes a curriculum for training educators in using AR for sustainable development, a guide on how to develop AR content for SD education, an e-Learning platform that provides open resources and training material for teaching SD through the use of AR together with an open digital toolkit for Sustainable Education.
Although educators will be major beneficiaries in this project, the overarching objective is to stimulate and motivate student learning by presenting them with enjoyable and relevant learning experiences. The current Gen Zers and the forthcoming Generation Alpha students are challenging educators to provide them with a learner centred environment that respects and caters for various learning capabilities, diversity of individuals and ways of learning. This requires a paradigm shift in our educational approach from using one or two dimensional educational resources to one that is more in sync with our physical three –dimensional world. This project focuses on the importance of using Augmented Reality (AR) technology in the teaching/learning experience to help create an educational environment where physical and virtual worlds intermingle to enhance the effectiveness and attractiveness of this experience by providing more realistic scenarios. AR enhances the interactivity between student and learning, and introduces innovative methods to the learning process.
A final objective is that these resources extend beyond the physical confines of classrooms to render themselves valid and relevant for use in virtual classrooms. This year’s pandemic has put a spotlight on the need to enhance the flexibility of education to move into a virtual scenario. This project seeks to address this by ensuring that the connotation of ‘educators’ extends to the realm of home schooling scenarios.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 251751 Eur

Project Coordinator

Giovanni Curmi Higher Secondary School & Country: MT

Project Partners

• MACDAC ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY BUREAU LTD – MECB
• Diversitas IT sustavi d.o.o.
• Harjunrinteen koulu
• IIS TOMMASO D’ORIA