UMARG

ABOUT UMARG

Using Mobile Augmented Reality Games to develop key competences through learning about sustainable development

Education in its dual role, both social and economic, has a key role to play in ensuring that Europe’s citizens acquire the skills needed to enable them to adapt. Implementing key competences in schools involves not only specifying them in curricula, but also developing structures, innovative teaching methods as well as proper ICT tools that are open to teachers and students. Given their cross-curricular nature, this involves a whole-school planning.

Mobile Augmented Reality Games (MARG) are gaming environments that embed virtual, location specific and contextual information into a physical site. These games require mobile or ubiquitous computing devices, such as hand-held computers or cellular phones, to enable game participants to access this virtual information. Instead of putting people in an artificial world, these games augment the physical world by embedding them with digital data, networking and communication abilities, and enhanced properties providing at the same time in-situ or inquiry-based learning experiences.

The project's objectives are to:

Explore examples of MARG for learning in the aspects of developing students’ key competences

Contribute to developing and implementing innovative technologies in formal or informal settings by developing user guidelines of MARG tools

Develop a learning design framework for teaching the following key competences through MARG: a) civic competences such as critical thinking, active citizenship, respect for differences b) digital competences such as information and data literacy, communication and collaboration and problem solving

Make use of the existing AR games platforms and provide educators with the necessary technical knowledge to create their own content for fostering students’ key competences through learning about sustainable development

Provide educators with the tools and methodology to implement, evaluate and assess key competences of their students as well as act as educators-researchers through action research based education