ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0
Final Report Public Part
Project information
Project acronym: ARGuing
Project title: ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0
Project number: 133909-2007-UK-COMENIUS-CMP
Sub-programme or KA: Comenius Multilateral Project
Project website: http://arg.paisley.ac.uk
Reporting period: From 01/11/07
To 31/10/09
Report version: 1
Date of preparation: 26/11/09
Beneficiary organisation: University of the West of Scotland
Project coordinator: Professor Thomas M Connolly
Project coordinator organisation: University of the West of Scotland
Project coordinator telephone number: +44(0)141 848 3541
Project coordinator email address: thomas.connolly@uws.ac.uk
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission
cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained
therein.
Executive Summary
The aims of this project are (1) to bring about a more flexible and inclusive approach to
teaching languages and linguistic diversity by supporting teachers to use innovative,
collaborative approaches that will motivate and engage young people; (2) to help promote
language learning and linguistic diversity at secondary school level across Europe. More
specifically the project aims to develop an innovative platform for motivating school students
to learn second languages and cultures through the use of Web 2.0 technologies that they
use on a regular basis in their social activities, while at the same time teaching teachers how
to use these new technologies within an educational environment. The main Web2.0
technologies proposed was Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), which are a highly
collaborative and social genre of game and one that holds considerable promise for
education.
The first year of the project focussed on producing the requirements for the ARG, identifying
suitable technologies for the development of the game platform, and then implementing the
game and the game content. At the same time, the project started to develop a teacher
training programme for the use of Web2.0 technologies (and the ARG) within the classroom,
and started to develop an appropriate methodology for the use of ARGs in second language
teaching. The second year of the project focussed on running a number of pilots across
Europe, enhancing the methodology based on the pilots and developing a number of case
studies and use case scenarios around the use of Web2.0 technologies/ARGs in education.
Across both years there were also a number of dissemination activities.
Despite the complexity involved in achieving the objectives, the project was successful and a
large scale pilot of the Alternate Reality Game ran from 22 April 2009 to 30 April 2009, with
328 students and 95 teachers from 28 schools across 17 European countries. During the
game, the students uploaded 826 files (images, audio, video, and presentations) and
submitted 9,135 quest answers. Out of 104 responses given by students on completion of
the game, the main things that they like about the game were: collaboration with other
students (63%), using the computer for language learning (59%), solving the quests (54%),
and the storyline (47%). Overall, the students felt that the game had motivated them to learn
a second language and 92% of students felt there should be more use of ICT within
language teaching. 89% of the students liked or absolutely loved the game.
In terms of short term targets, the project aimed to have 400 students play the game and to
disseminate the results of the project to 100 teachers and 200 students teachers. The first
target was achieved (38 students in the first mini-pilot in Bulgaria, 34 students in the second
mini-pilot in Bulgaria/Spain and 328 students in the main European pilot) and, in the latter
two cases, the targets were significantly exceeded.
The project website is: http://arg.paisley.ac.uk
.
Table of Contents
1. PROJECT OBJECTIVES .................................................................................... 5
2. PROJECT APPROACH ...................................................................................... 6
3. PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS................................................................. 7
3.1 Development of the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) (WP2) ................................... 7
3.2 Development of the Methodology (WP3).............................................................. 13
3.3 Development of the Teacher Training Course (WP4).......................................... 14
3.4 Run Pilot Game with Teachers and Students (WP5) ........................................... 16
3.5 Development of Case Studies and Use Case Scenarios (WP6) ......................... 17
3.6 Evaluation (WP7) .................................................................................................... 19
3.7 Dissemination and Valorization (WP8) ................................................................. 21
3.8 Project meetings .................................................................................................... 31
3.9 Project Communications ....................................................................................... 32
4. PARTNERSHIPS .............................................................................................. 33
5. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE .............................................................................. 34
6. CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES ................................................................. 35
1. Project Objectives
The aims of this project are:
• to bring about a more flexible and inclusive approach to teaching languages and
linguistic diversity by supporting teachers to use innovative, collaborative
approaches that will motivate and engage young people.
• to help promote language learning and linguistic diversity at secondary school
level across Europe
More specifically, the objectives of the project are:
• to develop an innovative, collaborative, technology-based approach to teaching
languages and linguistic diversity at secondary school level across Europe,
utilising Web 2.0;
• to train and support teachers to use this innovative approach to teach languages
and linguistic diversity with diverse groups of European students to motivate
them at a personal level;
• to develop a practical methodology that can be used by teachers to use and
further develop this approach to teaching languages and linguistic diversity;
• to evaluate the results of the project;
• to widely disseminate the results of the project across Europe to a variety of
stakeholders (including policy makers, funding bodies, senior management,
programme leaders, teachers, researchers, support staff, and learners);
• to help institutions and other key stakeholders understand how to strategically
deploy this methodology to bring about a more flexible and inclusive approach to
teaching languages and linguistic diversity.
2. Project Approach
The project was been decomposed using work packages, 8 in total. WP1 covered
Project Management, WP7 covered Monitoring and Evaluation, and WP8 addressed
Dissemination and Valorization, the remainder focussed on developing the game
(WP2), a methodology (WP3), teacher training course (WP4), piloting of the game
(WP5), and developing case studies and use case scenarios for the use of Alternate
Reality Games (ARGs) for teaching.
Each work package had a nominated work package leader and a set of partners to
help achieve the outcomes of the work package. The WP coordinator was
responsible for producing an Implementation Plan at the beginning of the WP that
addressed the approach to be taken in the WP, what activities each partner was
responsible for, and when these activities were due. The coordinator was responsible
for working closely with the WP partners to ensure the outcomes were achieved. The
work packages were updated and added to after the third project meeting in Paisley
in view of some new ideas and suggestions made by the partners. WP1 was an
overall work package that oversaw all the other WPs and ensured that each one ran
to schedule, discussing and agreeing variations across the partnership.
Regular discussions took place using a variety of channels:
• formal face-to-face partner meetings (one in November 2007, one in September
2008, one in January 2009 and a final one in October 2009)
• email, for non-urgent communications
• skype, for more important discussions
• a communication website with blogs and wikis to exchange files and ideas.
This multi-channel communication strategy was very successful and partners were
able to discuss issues in small groups (eg. on a per work package basis) or across a
number of work packages when representatives of all partner institutions were
involved.
3. Project Outcomes & Results
The main outcomes of the project are as follows:
1. Several literature reviews on the use of ARGs and serious games for language
education.
2. The development of the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) platform (WP2).
3. The development of the content and quests to be used within the game (WP2).
4. Development of a methodology to accompany the use of ARGs within
education.
5. Development of a teacher training course on ARGs and Web2.0 technologies
(WP4).
6. Mini-pilot of the game in Bulgaria (WP5).
7. Mini-pilot of the game in Bulgaria/Spain (WP5).
8. Large-scale pilot of the game across Europe with 328 students and 95 teachers
from 28 schools across 17 European countries (WP5).
9. Development of a set of Case Studies and Use Case scenarios of the use of
ARGs within education (WP6).
10. Development of an evaluation strategy (WP7).
11. Internal evaluation of the project (WP7).
12. External evaluation of the project (WP7).
13. Evaluation of the use of the ARG with the main pilot (WP7).
14. Project website and internal communications spaces (WP8).
15. General dissemination activities (WP8).
16. Series of Conference and Seminar presentations (WP8).
17. End-of-project Conference 12-13 October in Graz, Austria (WP8).
18. Translation of key documents from English into Bulgarian, Finnish, French,
German, Spanish and Turkish.
19. Development of a Valorization Strategy (WP8).
20. Reporting and management (WP1).
21. Project meetings (WP1).
Outcomes are reported for the above in the sections below.
3.1 Development of the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) (WP2)
Within WP2 ‘Develop ARG’ the following outcomes have been achieved:
1. Literature reviews on the use of ARGs and serious games for language
education (see Dissemination below).
2. Development of the game platform (http://sandbox.ictthatworks.org/moodle).
3. Development of a complete game storyline that includes character descriptions
and roles, and a dramatic storyline that will engage the targeted students
(please see http://projectziggurat.blogspot.com)
4. Introduction video for students (see
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b5db4029db4e1975de93
and
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=c7954ad379ccbb5a4719)
5. Development of the story for use over the ARG game period.
6. Translation of parts of the storyline (in line with the multi-lingual approach of the
game).
7. Preparation of over 60 multilingual quests to be used within the game.
8. Finalisation of 20 quests for the pilot game.
9. Development of an introductory website for students.
10. Development of safe internal/closed registration system.
11. Development of forum spaces for the game play.
There were a number of design challenges that we faced in this project, such as:
• How to design an integrated set of multi-lingual, multi-media problems that require
collective effort to solve.
• How to create an interface to communicate individual, differentiated roles within
the collaborative structure.
• How to design for collective intelligence, rather than “hive mind” or “mob effect”.
• How to produce a replicable solution that can be used by modern foreign
language teachers across Europe.
• How to ensure the system is “secure” so that only authorised users can access
the system (critical for many European countries where children are involved).
• How to evaluate the usefulness of ARGs for learning a modern foreign language.
The last challenge was very important to the project to demonstrate the effectiveness
(or otherwise) of this approach. However, there has been a dearth of empirical
studies analyzing the usage of games-based learning and general models of
evaluation are currently lacking and this had to be addressed early on in the project.
3.1.1 Requirements for the game
The storyline that we developed for our ARG is based on a set of characters who,
through a collective effort, plan to build a contemporary Tower of Babel, a place
where people understand the interconnectedness of themselves to other people,
animals, the planet, and the rest of the universe. The characters, along with the
game participants, discover throughout the game how to build the foundations of the
tower. These foundations, based on the principles and values of Europe, include:
democracy, tolerance and respect, freedom and the rule of law, and access to
education.
By building the foundations and the tower, step by step, the intention was that the
students would gain an understanding of other languages and cultures. From an
implementation perspective, the tower was to be designed as an ever-growing wiki
(visually and in content) where students and teachers could add their own building
blocks. The “building blocks” for the tower would be puzzles, assignments and quests
in multiple languages and in different subjects. Quests can be puzzles, assignments
and questions. Sometimes this may require answering multiple choice questions,
translating languages, uploading files, searching on the Internet or simply trying to
solve puzzles that present the player with information, an interface or a situation that
lacks context. These were to be delivered through forums, blogs, websites, short
video clips, and emails. Participants would not be able to access the next clue until
they had completed the current assignment. Participants would be able to
communicate with one another through forums, guilds and IM.
a) Multi-lingual capability
The game had to be multi-lingual. For the initial pilot, English, French, Spanish,
German, Dutch and Bulgarian would be supported.
b) Profiles
Players have profiles and can browse other players’ profiles. The profiles hold some
basic information about each participant, such as specialist areas, interests, skills,
completed quests, languages spoken and how many points they have, both “building
blocks” and “empathy” points. The empathy system is the average rating given by
other players based on their experience collaborating with the player in question –
very similar to the eBay rating system and player rating scores on Microsoft’s Xbox
Live platform. The profiles are essential to aid the process of player collaboration –
players can browse the profiles looking for someone with an adequate skill set to
collaborate with.
c) Supported media
As we have already mentioned, ARGs are a cross media game and therefore the
platform should support the following media:
Blogs: Key characters from the ARG story have their own blogs. Some of the
character blogs would be translated into multiple languages while others would be
provided in a limited selection of languages – participants are expected to collaborate
with one another to interpret the blogs. The blogs tie in with plot development of the
storyline and occasionally play parts in quests, such as providing clues or hints. The
blogs also provide a mechanism for puppetmasters to intervene with the game if the
community is struggling with a specific quest.
Wiki: The wiki, named “Tower of Babel”, is the heart of the game space, where
quests are uploaded. Solutions to quests would also be uploaded to the wiki – this
provides an opportunity for participants to reflect on their and other players’
contributions, hopefully further enriching their understanding and appreciation of the
quest’s learning outcomes. The content being uploaded could contain several media
types – images, text, video clips, audio clips, mini games (such as flash or java
games) and links to other sites.
Forum: While the wiki may be the heart of the game space, providing the community
with quests to complete, the forums are the essence of the ARG. The forums are
employed as a means of facilitating communication and collaboration amongst
participants. It is on here that the concept of collective intelligence should be evident
– players seeking out guidance on quests from other players with specific knowledge
and skills. The forums should also promote the discussion of quest related topics
amongst community members, where participants can share views and opinions –
similarly to the wiki this should enrich the learning as students’ appreciation of
discussion topics increase.
Guilds: Players should be able to form themselves into guilds to work collaboratively
together to solve quests. The guild concept would be similar to the clan/guild
structures in MMOGs.
Video and Audio: Part of the storyline would be presented to players in the form of
short video clips (in English with subtitles)
Mini Games: Some quests could employ the use of mini games (eg. in Java or
Flash). A basic example would be a puzzle game that participants would need to
complete to unlock a hint to a quest.
Email: Email would mostly be used by puppetmasters to inform participants of
important game related events. Messages also include the addition of new quests
and, at the request of players, hints and tips to quests.
SMS: Similarly to email, SMS could be used for quest updates, hints and tips. It could
also be used as part of a quest – send a SMS text with a key phrase or string of
characters to a mobile number which would generate an automatic response with the
answer or hint. Due to time and funding constraints, this was not implemented for the
pilot.
IM: While the forum provides a means of communication, an IM interface allows
participants to communicate in real time. Perhaps playing a less important role than
the forum and more geared towards socialising, it still presents participants with
another opportunity to network with other players.
d) Assessment
An aim of this project was to provide a learning environment that the students feel
they truly own. To achieve this sense of ownership, the level of assessment should
remain informal. The assessment of players’ solutions, and the allocation of points,
should remain as simple and informal as possible so as to not make players feel they
are ultimately being controlled by their teachers. Players would have the opportunity
to reflect on their work while comparing their solution to other players’ work on
completion of a quest.
The game uses two scoring systems – building blocks awarded for the completion of
a quest and an empathy score which rates the player’s collaboration as voted by
other players. While the allocations of the building block points are to be informal,
these could be used as a means of assessing how well a player is doing within the
ARG and also the games effectiveness with regards to the project objectives.
Some assignments that were open-ended and more creative in their nature would be
assessed by the puppetmasters (language teachers and project members, but that
was not known by the students).
e) Security
The platform had to be secure and only allow registered students and teachers to
access it.
f) Puppetmasters and teachers
Puppetmasters (ARG project members for the pilot) would have complete control
over the game, although eventually the hope is that teachers would assume this role.
Puppetmasters would be able to monitor how the community is coping with quests
and provide hints and tips through the various communication channels supported.
Teachers would also have a degree of control, lower than that of the puppetmasters,
as they would be mostly monitoring their own pupils. The teachers from the
participating schools were asked to help moderate content, both player designed
quests and individual answers to quests, from their students. The ARG, from the
teachers’ perspective, mainly relies around monitoring their own students who are
participating. For the pilot, puppetmasters created the quests, while teachers helped
assess student work and decided if “building block” points were to be awarded.
Puppetmasters and teachers were also be at hand to provide guidance to their
pupils.
3.1.2 The ARG Platform
After establishing the requirements, the project was faced with two choices: build the
ARG platform from scratch or adapt one or more existing platforms. Given the
timescales, the former option was excluded and we investigated existing open-
source solutions. Again, there were two main choices:
• select an open-source solution for each of the key functions (eg. wikis, blogs,
forums) and integrate them together so that there was a single, consistent user
interface, common database and single sign on capability;
• find a platform that contained much of the functionality required and extend it to
provide missing components.
The former option again was difficult given the time constraints and we instead
evaluated a number of platforms that had the required functionality. Many of these
turned out to be Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) or social networking systems.
Given that scoring (assessment) was something that we wanted to have within the
game, we eventually decided to base the games platform on an open-source VLE.
Many of the open-source VLEs (moodle, Sakai, Claroline) provide a number of
common features for facilitating and supporting online learning:
• document sharing (eg. for online distribution of lecture notes);
• assignment uploading;
• online assessment (for formative and summative assessment, multiple choice
quizzes, true/false, and free text);
• online gradebooks;
• forums for asynchronous discussion;
• chatroom/online classroom for synchronous web-based text-based discussions.
Many VLEs also support the development of plug-ins and extensions – allowing
additional features to be added by the developers or by third parties (for example,
video conferencing or wikis). After an evaluation of these platforms, we choose
moodle (http://moodle.org) as the basis for the ARG, as it had many of the features
that we were looking for. moodle is based on PHP and MySQL and can be extended,
although we did find that the learning curve was sometimes quite large to fully
understand how the various components integrated together. The missing features
that we identified were as follows:
• A game “look-and-feel” (called a “theme” in moodle)
While moodle has a number of free themes available through the large moodle
community, and a number of commercial themes also existed, we found none that
had the particular “Tower of Babel” look-and-feel that we wanted. This
shortcoming was easily overcome by developing a special moodle theme based
on XHTML and CSS, as shown in Figure 1.
• An empathy system and a top scores table for students to compete with others
Both these features were addressed by adapting moodle to allow forum and blog
entries to be rated by students, based on how helpful they found the postings,
and to show the average empathy rating as a star scheme on the Participants
page (see Figure 2). We also modified the Participants page to display the
student’s current score using as star scheme.
• Construction of the Tower of Babel
We wanted each student to see their progress through the game represented
through the continual construction of the Tower (in effect, correctly answering a
quest, added another building block to the Tower). To do this, we created s Flash
animation that showed, as a percentage of the maximum game score, how much
of the Tower they had constructed (see Figure 3).
• Automating the posting of forum/blog entries by the game characters
One of the requirements was to produce a platform that could be used by
language teachers after the completion of the pilot. At various points in the game,
some of the storyline is released through forum and blog postings. Rather than
having to manually make these postings at an appropriate date and time, we
wanted to be able to create these postings and advance, specify when the posting
was to be made available, and for the system to make the posting at the specified
time. To do this, we produced some PHP code to allow the puppetmaster
(language teacher) to specify the name of the character making the posting, the
text of the posting, the date and time of the posting (relative to a game start time
that could be specified in advance), and the forum/blog where the posting is to be
made. This was stored in the MySQL database in a new table and a background
cron job was written, which ran every hour, to transfer the posting to the
appropriate MySQL table at the specified time.
Figure 1 Tower of Babel theme
Figure 2 Empathy and Scoring
3.2 Development of the Methodology (WP3)
To accompany the use of the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) for second languages, a
methodology has being developed within WP3 ‘Develop Methodology’. Some early
work was carried out on this to form a foundation for the development of the game
and the quests and the methodology was developed more fully after the main pilot in
April 2009. A Conference paper has been produced based on the methodology to
gauge views and presented at the European Conference on Games-based Learning
(ECGBL) in Graz, Austria in October 2009 and was well received by all attendees.
Methodology manuals typically respect curricular conventions, assume or propose
theoretical tenets within specific fields. Within formal, state-sponsored education
systems, methods respond to empirical systems of evaluation. Teaching approaches
are conceived to be carried out in class, situated in a room, with a teacher applying a
series of techniques or specific material on a group of students, observing their
effectiveness on student progress. In formal education systems at secondary level
teachers are qualified and authorised to work in one or two specialist subject fields.
When it comes to ARGs, however, most of these givens about method are taken
away. Firstly, the context is a game, not a class. Secondly, the physical space of an
ARG is the world, cyber and real, not a room. Thirdly, the target knowledge and
skills, generally stipulated by educational authorities and experts in a curriculum, can
now only be partially written into the design of the game. Fourthly, we can presume
that in a cyberspace which is multilingual, players will need to be plurilingual to
participate. Fifthly, it will be players themselves who will define some learning targets
because ARGs are open ended. Finally, evaluation and feedback will be continual
and performance based, but not overtly from a 'teacher', feedback can come
automatically and possibly from other players. This leads us to the best bit, ex
cathedra disappears: not only is there no symbolic and authoritative chair, there is no
teacher at all.
Didactically speaking, in an ARG there is the figure of ‘the puppet master', a digital
leader, who can be consulted and someone to whom questions may be formulated.
This figure (behind which there may be a team of people) can help players make
their own discoveries; and players may help other players. Game targets are
achieved by the formulation of appropriate questions. Knowledge is acquired in the
first instance by the formulation of appropriate questions. This is not modern; it is as
ancient as Socrates. Depending on the ARG, and depending on the players, the
questions posed by players to one another may be as profound as interpreting a
mystery programming language, the calculation of co-ordinates or as gossipy as “will
Johnny get back together with Jenny?”. It all depends on the particular ARG. The
effectiveness of any resource will depend on its quality and relevance. In the
methodology we demonstrate how ARGs are a resource to be tapped for educational
purposes. The first and most important aspect of why ARGs are effective for
education is because they are highly motivating.
The methodology was finalised after the conference and translated from English into
Bulgarian, Finnish, French, German, Spanish and Turkish. We believe that the
translation into Turkish will make the project results known to a 70-million educational
community of a country which may soon join the EU thus helping the educators in
Turkey keep informed of the newest developments in the field of foreign language
learning. The translations were done by university lecturers teaching languages to
students thus guaranteeing the high quality of the translated materials.
3.3 Development of the Teacher Training Course (WP4)
The first stage of WP4 ‘Run and Develop Teacher Training Course’ was to develop a
document containing the learning outcomes of the course and a course outline. It
was recognised that such a course had to aim to:
• convince teachers that using ARGs is effective, worth-while and manageable;
• equip them with the necessary ICT skills to function in Web 2.0;
• allow them to experience different game roles in order to help them be efficient
PuppetMasters;
• raise teachers’ awareness of plurilingualism and intercomprehension and help
them develop their own intercomprehension skills;
• equip them with teaching techniques for helping students develop
intercomprehension skills;
• prepare them to incorporate this particular ARG in their language teaching
practice.
Thereafter, the course was developed and converted to an online format. The
teacher training course was incorporated within the same platform where the actual
Game takes place so that teachers could become accustomed to the interface and
the different links they can follow before the Game itself starts. Training was
delivered over two days. However, access to the platform was not restricted after
these two days and teachers were able to go back to any element of the training they
felt they needed more practice in. They teachers were encouraged to use forums,
messages, emails, etc. while communicating with each other as well as with their
tutors. The aim was for all teachers who would subsequently participate in the ARG
to have become acquainted with and to have practised using the channels of
communication both they and their students would have at their disposal during the
actual run of the Game.
The course was divided in two major parts – a Getting to Know You section and a
Teachers Info section. The activities focussed on the before, during and after phases
of the Game, similar to the organisation of a language learning activity. The figure
below provides a screenshot of the “before” stage of the teacher training course.
Figure 3 Getting to Know You course
The Getting to Know You section encouraged teachers to introduce themselves to
the other participants and, at the same time, to learn more about each other by
uploading a picture of themselves, adding a new topic to a forum and contributing to
a forum discussion. In addition, the Pre-Game questionnaire for Teachers had two
main aims – to serve as a data-collection tool in the team’s research into the use of
ICT and Web 2.0 educational applications in language classrooms across Europe
and to have the teachers reflect on their competences, experiences, expectations
and needs related to ICT and Web 2.0 educational applications.
As shown in the table below, there were two types of tasks on the teacher training
course – ARG-specific and FLT-specific tasks (where FLT is foreign language
teaching). Most of them have objectives related to the development of language skills
such as reading and summarising, reading and understanding main ideas and
specific information, formulating one’s opinion in writing, etc. These skills are the
object of development in language classrooms. On the other hand, these training
tasks pursued objectives related to the development of Web 2.0 skills – watching a
YouTube video, contributing to a forum discussion, looking up information in an
online resource, etc.
Task-related aspects
ICT task FLT-task
Online glossary of terms Game space – a reading
ARG–specific
comprehension exercise
Introduction to the plot and Introduction to the Game quests – an
characters – a drag and drop integrated reading and writing task
Content-related aspects
exercise
Multilingualism versus plurilingualism
specific content
– a reading task
Modern FLT-
Introduction to intercomprehension –
plurilingual reading task
Les Visiteurs or Just visiting? – watching a You Tube video
Les Visiteurs or Just visiting? – a plurilingual interpretation exercise
The course was evaluated as part of the first mini-pilot in Bulgaria from 22-23
November 2008 with six foreign language teachers: two teachers of English, one
teacher of French, one teacher of Spanish and one IT teacher. The course was
evaluated again in the mini-pilot in Spain and Bulgaria on 3 February 2009 with 14
teachers (one online and 13 via a seminar) before being rolled out in the main
training programme prior to the large-scale pilot in April 2009. To ensure teachers
would have plenty of opportunity to attend the course, the course was run online
three times: 1-2 April 2009; 7-8 April 2009; and 20-21 April 2009. The online course
remained open thereafter for teachers to return to or for other teachers or observers
to go through.
3.4 Run Pilot Game with Teachers and Students (WP5)
The Alternate Reality Game (ARG) was piloted with teachers and students in WP5
‘Run Pilot Game with Teachers and Students’. Two mini-pilots were run to evaluate
the early versions of the game and then a large-scale pilot across Europe. The first
mini-pilot was originally scheduled to run for 15 days in Bulgaria from 24 November
to 6 December 2008, however, we allowed the game to continue until 15 December
2008 to gain more feedback. The mini-pilot was evaluated by two schools in the first
mini-pilot in Bulgaria:
• The 2nd English-medium Language School “Thomas Jefferson” (Sofia) – with 17
students;
• Lycee Bilingue N 9 Lamartine (French-medium Language School, Sofia) – with 21
students.
The second mini-pilot in Spain ran from 10 to 20 February 2009 and involved schools
from both Bulgaria and Spain, which was a logical step further in the piloting of the
Game because it now involved students from two countries not just one as in the first
mini-pilot. The students who participated in the second mini-pilot came from:
• English-medium Language School of Rousse (Rousse, Bulgaria) – with 1 student;
• Secondary School of European Languages (Rousse) – with 3 students;
• Secondary Professional School of Construction, Architecture and Geodesy
(Rousse) – with 3 students;
• Centro Navarra de Autoaprendizaje de Idiomas, Pamplona, Spain (2 secondary
school groups) – 27 students plus 16 teachers.
The mini-pilots identified a number of issues that we addressed prior to the main
pilot:
• The game was too long. In the first mini-pilot, the game lasted 15 days. For the
second mini-pilot and the main pilot this was reduced to 8 days.
• There were too many quests. Again, with a reduction in the duration of the game,
we reduced the number of quests available.
• Some of the quests were not fully integrated with the storyline. Again, this was
addressed before the main pilot.
The main pilot ran from 22-30 April 2009, with 328 students and 95 teachers from 28
schools across 17 European countries. During the game, the students uploaded 826
files (images, audio, video, and presentations) and submitted 9,135 quest answers.
Out of 104 responses given by students on completion of the game, the main things
that they like about the game were: collaboration with other students (63%), using the
computer for language learning (59%), solving the quests (54%), and the storyline
(47%). Overall, the students felt that the game had motivated them to learn a second
language and 92% of students felt there should be more use of ICT within language
teaching. 89% of the students liked or absolutely loved the game.
Overall, the project team were very pleased with the results of the pilot and consider
that the use of Alternate Reality Games for motivating students to learn a second
language has been highly successful.
3.5 Development of Case Studies and Use Case Scenarios (WP6)
Within WP6 ‘Develop Case Studies and Use Case Scenarios’ was divided into two
phases. The first phase was to identify existing uses of ARGs or ARG-like games
within education. A large amount of research was undertaken to identify ARGs that
had some empirical evidence and the following were shortlisted:
• Climate Challenge
• eMapps
• Frequency1550
• Quest Atlantis.
The Climate Challenge game was sponsored by the BBC and Oxford University
Environmental Change Institute and ClimatePrediction.net. Players played
independently as the ‘President’ of a European nation. They had to set national and
local policies that would affect the environment. The game consisted of a series of
interfaces were players have to choose between different government policies. Each
policy includes an explanation of how the policy will affect the environment, how
popular with voters and the financial cost. Players also had to attend ‘Global leader
conferences’ to negotiate and decide on carbon emission limits. The results of
players usage was researched as part of a student dissertation.
eMapps.com was a project co-financed by the EU’s Sixth Research Framework
Programme targeting children aged 9-12 that took place with 16 schools in 8
countries. eMapps consists of games played on a mobile platform, running on
multiple devices and networks. Teachers take on the role of game controller or
‘Puppet Master’ and teams of children play the game, accessing the game platform
to upload the multimedia work that they produce as part of playing the game on to
the Game Desk. The children have to solve a puzzle based on a pre-determined
territory the game is being played within and they are given a series of clues to help
them. An evaluation study was completed based on questionnaires and observation.
Frequency1550 was funding by Kennisnet ICT on Schools and the Mondriaan
Foundation, Netherlands. Frequency 1550 was a mobile city game that used GPS
and UMTS technology to allow secondary school pupils to actively learn about history
instead of passively absorbing knowledge. To gain citizenship in the city of
Amsterdam groups of 4-5 students had to acquire 366 points. Each group was
divided into a city team (CT) consisting of two or three pupils who walk through the
city and a headquarters (HQ) team. The teams switch places halfway. Students walk
through assigned areas of Amsterdam. When they reach certain locations a GPS
tracker instructs the HQ server to send them an assignment about the area they are
in. The game was played twice in February 2005 and July 2007. The results
suggested that pupils that played the mobile game scored significantly higher on a
knowledge test than pupils who had the same material in a traditional lesson.
Quest Atlantis was funded by the USA National Science Foundation, the MacArthur
Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Association, and various corporate
sponsors. It is an international learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-
user environment to immerse children, aged 9-16, in educational tasks. Students
(Questers) are required to complete Quests, Missions, and Units within a storyline
called Archfall. They become citizens in a community and try to rebuild the lost
knowledge of Atlantis. Children work alone or together to accomplish tasks. The
activities take place in registered Centers, typically schools, under the direction of
teachers who have undergone professional development and training through an
online Teacher Toolkit. The Professional Development course is a four-part course
that takes place weekly online within the virtual world of Quest Atlantis (and over
telephone). A number of outcomes have been studied, including Language Arts/
Reading Study; Social Studies Classroom Study; Language Arts/Writing Comparison
Study; Mathematics/Statistics Study; Science Classroom Study; Science Classroom
Comparison Study.
The second phase of the WP was to come up with a number of Use Case Scenarios
of how ARGs could be used within education and specially cross-discipline usage
(and not just within languages as focussed on within this project). The most important
and possibly most difficult part of building an ARG is creating a storyline that is
compelling enough for the target group of students to be engaged, and then
integrating the quests into the storyline. A core aspect of raising engagement is the
integration of as much rich multimedia as the budget will permit, in the form of
graphics, audio and especially video to enhance the storyline. The use case
scenarios developed over:
• ARG for Applied Mathematics and International Trade.
• ARG for Geography.
• ARG for intercultural understanding.
• Multidisciplinary ARG – for Literature/History/Cultural heritage.
• ARG for Physics and Mathematics (Art & Design).
• ARG for Teacher Training (CLIL teachers across languages/subjects/countries).
• ARG for Geography and Environment Protection.
The Case Studies and Use Case Scenarios were translated from English into
Bulgarian, Finnish, French, German, Spanish and Turkish.
3.6 Evaluation (WP7)
There were various aspects of evaluation in this project:
• on-going internal evaluation throughout the project to ensure it was adhering to
the project schedule and achieving the stated deliverables and targets;
• evaluation of key aspects of the project, specifically the ARG itself, the teacher
training course and the methodology;
• on-going external evaluation throughout the project to identify issues that the
project team may have missed.
3.6.1 Internal evaluation
Several methods were used for internal evaluation:
• feedback forms were used after each of the partner meetings to identify issues;
• an anonymous mid-point questionnaire was run through SurveyMonkey to identify
any issues, particularly those around the game and partner communication;
• open discussions through email, skype and the AOTG communication platform;
• feedback from the external evaluator.
3.6.2 Evaluation of project outputs
To evaluate the ARG and the training course, it was decided to run two mini-pilots to
identify and address issues prior to the main pilot in April 2009. These mini-pilots
were run in November 2008 in Bulgaria and February 2009 in Spain and were
extremely useful to the project and, as noted in Section 3.4, identified three issues
that we addressed prior to the main pilot:
• The game was too long. In the first min-pilot, the game lasted 15 days. For the
second mini-pilot and the main pilot this was reduced to 8 days.
• There were too many quests. Again, with a reduction in the duration of the game,
we reduced the number of quests available.
• Some of the quests were not fully integrated with the storyline. Again, this was
addressed before the main pilot.
Addressing these issues turned out to be important and led to a much more
successful run of the game in April 2009. The feedback from the running of the
teacher training courses in the mini-pilots identified less significant issues, the main
ones being around more information on the game and the game platform. These
were again addressed prior to the main pilot. A draft methodology was produced prior
to the game being developed and, as a result, was evaluated as part of the mini-
pilots and the main pilot itself. However, as an extra level of evaluation a paper
based on the methodology was presented at the European Conference on Games-
based Learning (ECGBL) in October 2009 in Graz, Austria along with papers on the
Teacher Training perspective, the game platform, an evaluation of the student
learning, and one on plurilingualism (see Section 3.7.3).
3.6.3 External evaluation
An experienced external evaluator, Maria Stoicheva, was appointed near the start of
the project. The approach taken by the external evaluator was:
• attendance at one of the partners’ meetings to present the evaluation strategy
and to set the framework for external evaluation;
• monitoring of the project process;
• analysis of internal evaluation documents, questionnaires, etc;
• a series of face-to-face interviews;
• documents study;
• deliverables analysis;
• consultations and interviews with the project partners;
• attendance at the final conference to build an information base, to collect
evidence from project partner interaction, and to undertake face-to-face interviews
with project partners.
The external evaluator concluded: “…it should be noted that the results of the project
comply entirely with the application and with the objectives set. The project team has
invested a lot of effort and creativity in the implementation process and has
demonstrated a high level of commitment to the project activities and goals. The
results achieved are innovative, breaking into new territories and the potential for
further dissemination, application and valorization is very promising and high. The
project team as a whole and individually should be commended and encouraged for
further work in the area. New opportunities within the LLP should be also sought for
enhancing the impact and the collaboration activities.”
3.7 Dissemination and Valorization (WP8)
There have been two directions to the dissemination strategy. This strategy is part of
the phased approach to the Work Package.
This strategy is based on:
1. An initial awareness raising exercise among academics and games producers
within the Serious Gaming and ARG communities. This is based on the idea that
this community is the most likely to act as further disseminators of the project in to
the future.
2. Preparation of a suitable Internet database of secondary schools and Teacher
training institutions in Europe that will be invited to participate in the game and
teacher training materials and courses produced during the project.
3. Contacting the schools and Teacher training institutions by email to determine
their interest in participating in the pilot and following up interest with additional
information as and when recruited.
4. Dissemination of the results from the pilot to stakeholders across Europe.
3.7.1 Awareness Raising
The awareness campaign commenced with a campaign to the global ARGs and
serious games in education community through Listservs and direct contacts. This
produced many responses to the project by individuals involved in the community.
Further dissemination to this targeted group was achieved by the delivery of three
addresses by Professor Connolly at the following conferences:
1. Conference paper presented at the Web-based Education (WBE) Conference in
March 2008; 120 (approx) conference attendees.
2. Conference paper presented at the Web Information Systems and Technologies
(WEBIST) Conference in May 2008; 180 (approx) conference attendees.
3. Conference paper presented at the 5th
International Conference “The Language: A
Phenomenon without Borders”, 12 – 14 June
2008, Varna (approx 200 conference
attendees),
4. Conference paper presented at the European Conference on Games-based
Learning (ECGBL) in October 2008; 90 conference attendees.
5. Presentation made at a seminar to teachers of English from Sofia and other
towns in Bulgaria (December 2008)
6. Teacher Training Seminar (2009) ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in WEB 2.0,
held on 27th March 2009 for teacher trainers and language teachers from the
University of Rousse (13 people attended).
To further raise interest, appropriate websites were located and a specially created
video uploaded or linked (embedded). Where possible the video was placed in to
specialized groups. The presentation was also placed on Slideshare and added to
specialized groups.
An edit was included in the Wikipedia page on Alternate Reality Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game#The_Serious_ARG and has
produced 692 visits to the project websites.
A folder was prepared on LiveBinders that included a link to ARGuing
http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=3970
In addition a Facebook 'fan page' was launched and is still adding visitors and fans.
See: http://www.facebook.com/pages/ARGuing-Alternate-Reality-Games-in-
Education/171299974572
3.7.2 Awareness Raising and Recruitment Campaign
Preparation of the Internet database for later use, which included approximately
400,000 secondary schools, 980 teacher training institutions, 2,500 national and local
authority contacts and European officers from every European country.
Over 11,000 newsletters were sent during the campaign. In particular, newsletters
were sent to schools in the following European countries between 17-21 March 2009:
Country Quantity
Austria 402
Belgium 538
Bulgaria 34
Cyprus 137
Czech Republic 507
Denmark 205
Estonia 137
Finland 148
France 566
Germany 573
Greece 108
Hungary 201
Iceland 70
Ireland 291
Italy 692
Latvia 206
Lithuania 166
Liechtenstein 19
Luxembourg 49
Malta 61
Netherlands 599
Norway 150
Poland 618
Portugal
Romania 530
Slovakia 224
Slovenia 32
Spain 1034
Sweden 90
Turkey 34
United Kingdom 463
Total 8884
Postings were made in social networks and listservs with at least 189,000
subscribers (numbers are not accurate as some resources do not publish
membership numbers). The video and presentation were posted to YouTube,
TeacherTube, MySpace, dotsub and many other relevant social networks (Nings,
Facebook, LinkedIn). The video was also converted into a Powerpoint presentation
and was added to Slideshare. Additional Web 2.0 placements were made to new
Web 2.0 sites including Voxopop, posterous and Scribd. Examples of placements
include:
• Facebook group "Multilingualism"
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18977111129 (734 members)
• Classroom 2.0 - http://www.classroom20.com/video/arguing-european-union-
project (32,959 members)
• LinkedIn - Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group (22,253
members)
• YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd4rKnRSZY8
Examples of Listservs included:
• Mflresources - 3,533 members
• CILT-CYMRU - 117 members.
The invitation campaign was conducted online and was an unqualified success. It
commenced on the 14th of March 2009. By the 30th of March over 400 responses
from schools were received. These led to 122 registration forms for the game being
completed. Finally, 28 schools from 17 countries played the game and observers,
including a further 4 countries, watched. There were also 2 observers from local
education authorities and Vox, the Norwegian Institute for Adult Education – Norway:
• School Inspectorate Of Prahova County – Romania
• Cambridgeshire County Council - UK
A further 85 messages were received from additional educators also requesting
involvement in the game after the closing date.
3.7.3 Post Game Dissemination
The main dissemination event for the project was the organisation of a Conference
Stream at the European Conference in Games-based Learning (ECGBL) held on 12-
13 October 2009 in Graz Austria. The conference has approximately 100 attendees
and the following papers were presented:
1. Connolly, T. M. Stansfield, M., Hainey, T., Cousins, I., Josephson, J., O’Donovan,
A., Rodriguez Ortiz, C., Tsvetkova, N., Stoimenova, B., and Tsvetanova., S.
(2009). “ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0: a games-based learning
platform for language learning”, 3rd European Conference on Games-based
Learning (ECGBL), 12-13 October 2009, Graz, Austria.
2. Hainey, T., Connolly, T. M. Stansfield, M., Boyle, L., Josephson, J., O’Donovan,
A., Rodriguez Ortiz, C., Tsvetkova, N., Stoimenova, B., Tsvetanova., S. (2009).
“ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0: an evaluation of a large-scale
European pilot”, 3rd European Conference on Games-based Learning
(ECGBL), 12-13 October 2009, Graz, Austria.
3. Tsvetanova, S., Stoimenova, B., Tsvetkova, N., Connolly, T.M., Stansfield, M.H.,
Hainey, T., Cousins, I., Josephson, J., O’Donovan, A., Rodriguez Ortiz, C. (2009).
“ARGuing For Multilingual Motivation In Web 2.0: a tool for facilitating
plurilingualism”, 3rd European Conference on Games-based Learning
(ECGBL), 12-13 October 2009, Graz, Austria.
4. Tsvetkova, N., Stoimenova, B., Tsvetanova, S., Connolly, T.M., Stansfield, M.H.,
Hainey, T., Cousins, I., Josephson, J., O’Donovan, A., Rodriguez Ortiz, C. (2009).
“ARGuing For Multilingual Motivation In Web 2.0: the teacher training
perspective”, 3rd European Conference on Games-based Learning (ECGBL),
12-13 October 2009, Graz, Austria.
5. O’Donovan, A., Tsvetkova, N., Stoimenova, B., Tsvetanova, S., Connolly, T.M.,
Stansfield, M.H., Hainey, T., Cousins, I., Josephson, J., O’Donovan, A.,
Rodriguez Ortiz, C. (2009). “The Truth about Alternate Reality games: ARGs in
Educational Method, ARGs as Educational Method”, 3rd European Conference
on Games-based Learning (ECGBL), 12-13 October 2009, Graz, Austria.
In addition, other presentations included:
6. Poster presentation (2009). Conference CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FOR
PROMOTING MULTILINGUALISM
AND INTERCULTURAL
DIALOGUE, Iasi, Romania, June
25 – 26, 2009.
7. Presentation at the Annual Conference “Association des Professeurs de/en
Français de la Bulgraie (APFB)”, 16-18 October 2009, Lovetch, Bulgaria by Bistra
Stoimenova.
8. European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz, Austria on the 12th October
2009 to the director Waldemar Martyniuk and Michael Armstrong.
9. Stoiménova, B. (2009) Comment motiver les élèves à apprendre des langues
étrangères à l'aide du Jeu en réalité alternée (Alternate Reality Game) « La Tour
de Babel » : résultat d’un projet COMENIUS, Article in APFB’ magazine
« Fréquences francophones ».
10. Rodriguez-Ortiz, C. (2009) Levende Talen Landelijke Studiedag 2009 (Living
Languages National Study Day), Workshop: Serious Gaming: is dat wat ook voor
het Moderne Vreemde Talen Onderwijs? (Serious Gaming: is that something for
Modern Foreign Languages Education?), 6 November 2009, Zwolle, The
Netherlands.
11. 82nd BBC Active Tutors' Club Newsletter Page 7: Article on ARGuing.
http://www.bbcactivelanguages.com/Portals/0/Newsletters/NewsLetter82.pdf
12. Dissemination article in Scottish CILT Website (18 March 2009):
http://www.scilt.stir.ac.uk/news/?id=167&cat=1
12. Placement of ARGuing promotional video YouTube
13. Notice eTwinning Website
14. UNESCO International year of languages – projects
15. Twitter – Tweet
16. Mention in the Blogosphere
17. Entry in eLearning Europa
18. SERIOUS GAMES MARKET Blog
19. Alternate Reality Game website
The final phase of the dissemination campaign announced the launch of the project
website and the opening of the project for autonomous use by schools.
This phase used 2 channels:
• Newsletters to authorities and associations.
• Postings in listservs and social networks,
Many local and national authorities and EU and international authority officers,
Universities were contacted during this phase as indicated in the table below.
Country Quantity
Austria 141
Belgium 13
Bulgaria 13
Cyprus 7
Czech
Republic 42
Denmark 9
Estonia 13
Finland 15
France 136
Germany 61
Greece 9
Hungary 11
Iceland 6
Ireland 45
Italy 51
Latvia 6
Liechtenstein 4
Lithuania 12
Luxembourg 7
Malta 14
Netherlands 11
Norway 180
Poland 16
Portugal 27
Romania 56
Slovakia 11
Slovenia 7
Spain 61
Sweden 10
Turkey 1
United
Kingdom 235
Total 1230
Subscribers 134
Newsletters were also sent to the following Teacher Training organisations:
Country Quantity
Austria 82
Belgium 13
Cyprus 1
Czech Republic 3
Denmark 28
Estonia 9
Finland 19
France 92
Germany 97
Greece 8
Hungary 15
Ireland 13
Italy 16
Latvia 6
Malta 1
Netherlands 17
Norway 21
Poland 8
Portugal 27
Slovakia 8
Slovenia 5
Spain 142
Sweden 40
United Kingdom 100
Total 771
3.7.4 Project website statistics
The project website (http://arg.paisley.ac.uk) was created within the first month of the
project. At the end of the first week in November, there had been 71,777 hits on the
site (7,549 in the past month). Since then we ran a survey on the website asking
whether people thought the project is innovative:
• 514 voted Yes (97.2% of voters)
• 8 voted Not sure (1.5% of voters)
• 3 voted No (1.3% of voters).
Overall, there were 513,805 successful requests to the ARG website (8,632 in the
last month), with an average of 684 successful requests per day (1,233 in the last
month). The busiest month was April 2009 when the main pilot ran with 91881
successful requests made slowly declining during the remainder of the project with
an increase in November 2009 with 56005 successful requests.
The statistics below show the number of visits to the game website
(http://ictthatworks.net:8080/moodle/) between 20 April 2009 and 11 November 2009.
Clear peaks can be seen during the game playing period and also during the final
dissemination stage of the project.
Daily Visits
The total number of visitors was 5,974.
We are very reassured by the statistics and are extremely pleased at the hit rate for
the sites, suggesting dissemination has been very good.
3.8 Project meetings
Four project meetings have taken place:
1. Kick off meeting in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 26 - 27 November 2007
2. Second project meeting in Pamplona, Spain 18-19 September 2008
3. Third project meeting in Paisley, Scotland 22-23 January 2009
4. Fourth and final project meeting in Graz, Austria 12-13 October 2009
Partners completed project evaluation questionnaires at the conclusion of each
meeting.
3.9 Project Communications
Three main channels have been utilized for communications during the project:
• An Internet communication platform
• Email
• Skype (for chatting and talking)
The communication space used is the Basecamp platform. The web address is:
http://aheadofthegame.updatelog.com/login (passwords can be supplied).
The communication space has been used very extensively during the project with
many issues being resolved through this means. This platform also allows the
uploading and downloading of documents.
4. Partnerships
The project has established links with some complementary projects in this area,
principally the FP6 eMapps project (which developed an ARG), the sloodle project
that is investigating linking moodle and Second Life, and the Alternative Reality
Game in Student Inductions, Argosi, project being run at the Manchester
Metropolitan University in the UK. We have established links with the many schools
across Europe who participated in the two mini pilots and the main pilot. An
additional large number of schools have expressed an interest in playing the game
during the latter phases of the project, by registering on the project website, during
the dissemination activities and joining the Facebook group.
We have also spoken to various Education Department and National Agencies, and
have approached many other agencies to disseminate the results of the project.
Responses to these initiatives have come from Belgium; France; Lithuania; Malta;
Norway; Spain; Switzerland; UK; Australia; several institutions in Japan; Malaysia;
Taiwan; and several institutions in the USA. In particular, we are pursuing a number
of institutions who have opened dialogue with the project about utilizing the
experience amassed.
A research group at the University of Maryland iSchool studying the educational
applications for ARGs, have made contact and are studying our work.
5. Plans for the Future
There are a number of plans for the future:
1. We consider the game to have been a great success and we have been
contacted by many schools across Europe to run the game again. We believe this
would be a great opportunity to increase the empirical data we have of the
benefits of this game at teaching foreign languages. The partnership has
expressed a willingness to do this even in the absence of funding.
2. We would like to continue the dissemination of the results of the project to more
stakeholders across Europe and further afield and follow up on leads that result
from this.
3. We would like to carry out further analysis of the data within the game, particularly
some of the dialogue within the forums to identify the types of learning that may
have occurred as well as some of the benefits and drawbacks of the use of the
ARG. We believe this analysis would be of interest to the research community.
4. Package the game as a module that can be downloaded via the moodle website.
5. Within WP6, we identified a number of Use Case Scenarios for how the game
could be extended to other areas, such as maths and geography. We would like
to extend the game scenarios to include these areas and evaluate the
applicability of ARGs to these subject areas. However, this will require funds,
which the partnership is trying to obtain.
6. Contribution to EU policies
This project set out to address a number of strategic issues within the Lifelong
Learning Programme (LLP):
1. Lisbon Education & Training Progress Indicators
Target: Foreign Language Learning: Distribution of lower / upper secondary pupils
learning foreign languages
We believe the project has directly impacted on this indicator from the motivational
aspect of learning languages, by showing secondary students at a personal level the
value of learning languages to communicate with their European peers for social as
well as personal reasons.
2. Lisbon Key Competences: Digital competence
We believe the project has directly addressed the gap between Web2.0 and the use
of technology in education. For those involved in the playing of the game, it has
raised educators’ ability to use technology as a tool of education and communication
with their students.
3. LLP Horizontal Policies: Cultural and Linguistic Diversity
We believe the project has helped raise awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity
by showing student participants the personal advantage of having knowledge of other
languages. In addition, by working collaboratively across national boundaries
students have gained an appreciation and understanding of their peers in Europe.
4. Complementarity with Other EU Policies
This project is fundamentally about how ICT can be used to increase the motivation
of European secondary school students to learn a second language and we believe
this project has impacted two areas of lifelong learning, namely languages and ICT.