UMARG

UMARG is a new Erasmus + project that explores the educational opportunities of Mobile Augmented Reality Games (MARG) in developing digital and civic competences of students through learning about sustainable development. Science LinX and ISEC are partnering up in this project, together with seven other partners from Romania, Greece, Cyprus and the Netherlands. The aim of the project is to contribute to the MARG intervention in the teaching practices by not only creating 20 free available MARG, but also by creating teaching toolkits, learning design frameworks, educational trainings and research reports for evaluating the implementation of MARG.

MARG

Mobile Augmented Reality Games are games played in the real world with the support of digital devices (PDAs, smartphones) that create a fictional layer on top of the real-world context. Hence, instead of putting people in an artificial world, these games augment the physical world by embedding them with digital data, networking and communication abilities.

The augmented reality systems are divided into image-based and location-based systems. The image-based augmented reality is focused on image recognition techniques through the device’s camera. Using such technologies, a smartphone can for example turn into a museum guide, displaying the universe in a planetarium or cities from ancient history while walking through ruins. In contrast, location-based augmented reality uses position data such as data from wireless network or GPS to identify the location. The famous game Pokémon GO for example displays Pokémon on players’ smartphones when they approach certain locations.

Research on the use of MARG has shown potential benefits in fostering key competences such as collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, social and civic competences as well as cultural awareness. However, there is a lack of an organized effort to sum up the potential benefits of these games and more importantly to incorporate them in the teaching practice as teachers’ toolkit to foster students' key competences.

Implementation of MARG

The essence of UMARG is to make an organized effort to incorporate MARG in the teaching practices of educators. In doing so, the project produces five specific instruments that stimulate and support educators with this MARG implementation.

• An Augmented Reality teaching toolkit for the creation of MARG;

• A learning design framework for MARG and educational scenarios;

• 20 MARG;

• Implemented research report on the MARG intervention to evaluate the added value of MARG in teaching key competencies;

• Trainings for European educators.

The UG team is specifically responsible for creating a learning design framework and to organize trainings for European educators. The purpose of these trainings is to present to the teachers attending it the available technologies, applications, open-source platforms and good practices through which they can make use of the Augmented Reality technology and create their own Augmented Reality Games.