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AUGMENTED REALITY INTERACTIVE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ARETE (AUGMENTED REALITY INTERACTIVE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM)

Période du rapport: 2021-05-01 au 2023-04-30

ARETE contributes to changing the traditional “low-tech” vision of education, attracting the interest of new generations. We believe that each pilot can have a large impact on society by stimulating the vision that advanced interactive technology is key to increasing productivity. ARETE also has a social impact in modernizing and improving education via AR technologies. The ARETE ecosystem will support the development of creative problem-solving skills in students and will educate creative, analytical and innovative problem-solvers. Partners have extensive experience in educational systems and play a critical role in designing the showcase scenarios so as to validate the potential of the three pilots developed in ARETE. The accessibility, functionality, and acceptability of current AR technologies is improved by the ARETE authoring toolkit. ARETE will help to generate new job opportunities for the market and acts as an enabler to leverage next-generation technologies.

The overall ARETE project objectives are the following:
1. To develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an interactive AR content toolkit
2. To apply human-centred interaction design for ARETE ecosystem
3. To pilot and evaluate the effectiveness of AR interactive technologies
4. To communicate, disseminate and exploit the project results
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.
ARETE has the capacity to become the paradigm for disruptive innovative education and increase the European innovation capacity. Advancements beyond the state of the art, will be primarily realised within ARETE in the following areas:
● AR Human Computer Interface challenges;
● Interactivity of 3D content for AR disruptive education;
● AR for Positive Behaviour Interventions & Support (PBIS)

ARETE has the potential to lead globally into a new economic future to strengthen the EU research and industrial capacities to develop future interactive devices, based on the evaluation results from the pilot studies and collective feedback from the targeted community through direct engagement. ARETE project expected results include mainly the delivery of a sustainable competitive ecosystem which is borne out by several factors including:
1. the provision of an open-source AR Authoring toolkit
2. the intelligent and compelling pilots with analysis of objective data to assess the impact of AR technology
3. our carefully devised market outreach approach and the applied innovative approach for demonstrations with the target community which is the foreground of this project
4. the direct engagement of leading organisations in the project through the Industry Capacity Board
ARETE Pilot 1
ARETE Pilot 2
ARETE Pilot 3
ARETE Architecture
ARETE Authoring Toolkit