Overview

DMLL is leading the BEACONING project (15 partners, 3 years, worth €5.9 million). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 687676. BEACONING stands for ‘Breaking Educational Barriers with Contextualised, Pervasive and Gameful Learning’ and will be focusing on ‘anytime anywhere’ learning by exploiting on pervasive, context-aware and gamified techniques and technologies, framed under the Problem-Based Learning approach. The project seeks to pilot such an innovation in a real operational environment, aligning with DMLL’s ethos in disruptive media and the impact on changing mind-sets and creating new models and practices of teaching and learning.

BEACONING sets a forefront in multifaceted education technologies through large-scale piloting of a digital learning platform that blend physical and digital spaces. As innovation action strategies, pilots combine opportunities for new ICTs in multiple ways that merge learning acquired in formal, non-formal and informal means, developing the skills for today’s abled and disabled learners and workforce. The BEACONING platform will be a ubiquitous solution that exploits advances in user experience design, mobile communication, location-based and context aware systems, procedural content generation, pedagogy-driven gamification, learning analytics and cloud technology through innovative integration towards a blended learning space.

The BEACONING demonstrator will facilitate, assess and author gamified learning activities, integrating existing educational tools and services of the participating organisations. Focusing on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), the cross-subject approach embedded in a Problem-Based Learning model will contextualise learning within real world problem solving and applications. The role of learners is amplified in the process of filtering and connecting concepts framed under practical, investigative and exploratory scenarios. Large-scale pilots will validate and inform the development of the BEACONING ecosystem that democratises learning across and among fully abled and those with mild to moderate physical and mental impairments (age 15 to 24), undergoing general and vocational training. BEACONING anticipates the benefits of making cross-subject matter more understandable, fostering the application of subject specialism to other domains.

The pilot substantiates the technical and economic viability and the impact of the innovative platform to strategise market adoption and replication. By integrating experiences in a highly engaging, contextualized and personalised manner, learning can go beyond the barriers of space and time.

Website: Beaconing.eu

Goals

1. To integrate technologies, pedagogical and social perspectives of using pervasive, context-aware and gamified approaches: ensuring that the BEACONING platform is innovative while also extending our scientific understanding and practice-based experiments of engaging a community of learners including those with disabilities with a more inclusive, connected and contextualised learning process.
2. To develop, implement and validate the BEACONING platform: that leverages cutting-edge approaches including the Future Internet technology, mobile, gamification, pervasive gaming, procedural game content generation, game authoring, human-computer interfaces, learning analytics and problem-based learning model; and to produce a platform that is usable, adaptable, extendable and sustainable.
3. To explore and measure the level of engagement, effectiveness and impact that is enabled by the BEACONING platform: towards incentivising learners and fostering acquisition and transfer of knowledge and skills, validate this through large scale pilots involving a community of stakeholders and practitioners in Europe, and provide an exploitation and business plan for the platform adoption.

Technology Application

The project will exploit pervasive, gamified and context aware technologies to support “anytime anywhere” learning, extending the learning context and experience from the classroom settings to the outdoors and personal spaces. Partners are bringing in expertise and technologies, which will be integrated to provide an infrastructure for the pervasive play-learn.

Project Timeline: