Work Package 1 Ethics Requirements: This work package has been the solid basis for the execution of the activities in the 6 other work packages. Ethical considerations and ethics approval prior to pilots’ interventions and evaluation and the Principles for the protection of personal data were defined. Furthermore, within the standards work on ethics the coordinator has submitted to IEEE Standards and the new Standards with PAR P7016.1 have been approved with the title: Standard for Ethically Aligned Educational Metadata in eXtended Reality (XR) and Metaverse”. The IEEE WG chaired by Prof. Mangina will kick off in August 2023 with the deadline for standards submission in 2027.
Work Package 2 Project Management: ensuring that the planned project activities are effectively performed, in order to pursue the project objectives in line with the time schedule, to budget the establishment of standards for quality, risk mitigation, innovation management, conflict resolution, ethical and data protection. This work package has achieved successful project monitoring and reporting to EC, while all deliverables have been submitted on time.
Work Package 3: Interactive Augmented Reality Toolkit: WP3 has focused in particular on app development, both for the authoring tool side as well as for the various prototypes, resulting in several releases of the authoring toolkit and player for standard-compliant AR learning activities and 3D learning objects, MirageXR. The project repository has been delivered, with the first release of the Moodle repository plugin. This WP has focused largely the last period on service and support for the pilot trials and application development, to implement suggestions from the pilots. Moreover, standards development work, most notably the elaboration of the CEN/CENELEC workshop agreement for a standard for XR learning and performance augmentation took place. The MirageXR integrated authoring toolkit and viewer versions are available through cross-platform for iOS, Android, and Hololens-2.
Work Package 4: User-centred Interactive Design focused on understanding the needs and requirements of the target groups (teachers, primary and secondary school students) with regard to the use of AR educational applications for teaching and learning. WP4 has focused on supporting the development of digital artefacts for the four Pilots. Specifically, the HCI team evaluated the prototypes of WWL Read & Spell (Pilot 1), CLB Geography and Geometry apps and workbooks (Pilot 2), interaction design concepts of the PBIS apps (Pilot 3), and Mirage XR apps (Pilot 4). Heuristic Evaluation remained the key method used, and online focus groups with some teachers were held during the pre-and post-intervention time to gather feedback. WP4 aimed to explore innovative methods for designing and evaluating mixed reality (MR) applications. To this end, the WP4 team organised an international workshop to bring together MR researchers with diverse backgrounds to identify potentials, challenges and resolutions for utilising MR for educational purposes and beyond.
Work Package 5: The activities of WP5 have focused on the research and development activities for the innovative application of AR for the PBIS supporting the behavioural teaching and engaging children in the acquisition of self-management and self-regulation of behaviour. The research gaps within the state of the art have been identified and the scenarios have been identified for the use of the application leading to the requirements and specifications of the AR objects to be developed. The research and development process was completed with the design, validation, and testing of the behavioural lessons and with the release of the lesson package consisting of 9 behavioural lessons in English, Danish and Italian for Pilot 3. The lesson package was validated within Pilot 3 round 1.
Work Package 6: WP6 focused on teacher requirements for Pilot 1 and defining the research parameters, methodology and instruments for both pilots as well as launching a wide-scale dissemination campaign to attract teachers. WP6 has: 1) completed Pilot 1 (teaching and learning English language literacy) and Pilot 2 (learning Geometry and Geography via AR); 2) conducted Pilot 4 (evaluating the MirageXR authoring tool); 3) finalised Pilot 1 and 2 data collection; 4) conducted and finalised Pilot 4 data collection; 5) conducted the data analysis for Pilot 1, 2 and 4. Highlights of this WP were the successful conclusion of Pilot 1 and 2 as well as the extensive data analysis conducted.
Work Package 7: WP7 has been focused mainly on raising awareness of the ARETE project and has carried out successfully the actions foreseen for the Positioning Phase as per the GA including the successful CEN/CENELEC Workshop Agreement and the ARETE Hackathon.
