Looking for Enhancement of Virtual Environments for Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Looking for Enhancement of Virtual Environments for Learning

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

In the LEVEL project, the consortium tackled the problem of using a serious game to motivate & engage learners who struggle with maths. Our consortium consisted of two schools (PLATON M.E.P.E in Katerini, Greece; and Escola Secundaria de Lagoa from the Azores archipelago in Portugal) as well as a University (Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK) and an SME specialized in Serious Games (Ingenious Knowledge in Cologne, Germany).

Educational methods are very slow to change and don’t appropriately reflect the way that young people prefer to learn. For instance, many young people don’t read books for entertainment any more, so learning from a book feels “unnatural” for them. In order to offer chances of learning that resonate with young people, educational institutions should look to better integration of technology in the curriculum. In recent years serious games have shown great potential to motivate young learners. However, so far very few well-working examples exist that successfully combine high motivation & fun with a solid learning experience. For this reason it is necessary to continue the study of new game approaches that integrate learning content seamlessly into the gameplay.

In our project we investigated the curricula across our European countries and identified the key curricular outcomes in mathematics that teachers said were preventing disadvantaged and less able learners from succeeding. From a list of high priority areas, the consortium chose to focus on fundamental arithmetic as the core curricular content of the project. Learning is a complicated process with many important steps and moments required. Our research led us to recognise that a major problem with basic fundamental arithmetic was a requirement, for poor performers, to rely on thinking-through simple problems instead of relying on memory to perform these foundational operations. For many able learners, or those comfortable with maths, their memory is able to supply the answer to “7 x 9” but for a less able learner, they may perform a series of sub-steps of thinking that get them to the solution but that occupy most of their working memory for some time in the process. For example, one person may think “I know ten times seven is seventy and so if I take away seven from seventy I get sixty three” or another may simply do the multiplication via adding seven to seven until they reach the answer. This process occupies working memory and prevents the mind from working on higher order problems where the basic arithmetic is a foundational step. Research has shown links between one’s ability to rely on memory for these operations (instead of thinking) and performance in maths at later levels of schooling. I addition we discovered from interviewing teachers that many are of the opinion that they don’t have enough time in class to let their pupils practice so that even able learners perform poorly because simple calculations require too much time for them. As such, the team decided that a useful contribution would be to base our didactic approach on helping less able mathematics learners to improve their memory-based recall of simple arithmetic and at the same time support those who are good at maths in improving their skills. Thus we prioritised allowing for players to practice common operations that they already knew how to perform, in such a way as to incentivise moving from ‘thinking’ to ‘remembering’ and thereby training the brain to memorise these common operations and answers.

Integration of game mechanics and learning is crucial in serious games if the game is not to become a thinly disguised wrapper for traditional methods. We designed the game so that the main control scheme of the game plays out through the concept of casting a magic spell. The shapes of the magic the player ‘casts’ are the numbers of the answers to the mathematics operations required at any given time. Different operations cast different spells and thus, the player will read the game to see what spell they want to perform, carry out the mental maths operation, and finally ‘cast’ their answer by drawing a shape with their finger on the mobile phone or tablet device used to play the game.

Teachers and pupils were involved at every step of the project and contributions from pupils can be seen in the content of the game. For example, the idea of having ‘shadows’ as the enemy in the game came from a pupil. Teachers asked for features that would allow them to differentiate the game’s use for pupils of varying ages and thus, the game’s difficulty (in terms of maths operations) can be set, as can the speed at which the game plays (particularly useful for pupils who have physical special needs that slow down their interaction with digital devices). The game can be used in classrooms, but may be best used as a homework activity to replace traditional worksheets, and where pupils can access mobile phones or tablets, possibly belonging to their family.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 190167 Eur

Project Coordinator

THE GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Ingenious Knowledge GmbH
• Escola Secundária de Lagoa
• PLATON M.E.P.E