80Days at a Glance          
Objectives                         
Methods                            
Architecture                      
Work Plan                         

At a Glance

Learning by playing and having fun. If we manage to synchronise playing with learning, we can exploit the highly intrinsic motivation of humans to play (rather than learning in terms of working) for a significantly improved learning efficiency.

 

What is the gaming perspective the 80Days Project?

The project is inspired by and builds on Jules Verne’s famous novel “Around the world in eighty days”. It is as an evergreen storyline that has fascinated readers and film makers for 135 years since the book was first published under its French tile (Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours). This project’s ambition is to integrate intelligent and pedagogically proven personalisation, together with interactive and individual storytelling, into a computer or console based game.

Why is this combination of such importance?

This combination ensures two decisive key elements: First, the player does not know he is a learner (so he doesn’t feel unpleasant when working) and second, he can be accompanied by pedagogical intelligence throughout the gameplay.

What’s the result of the project?

80Days provides Europe with a prototype of an innovative and advanced methodological and technological framework for developing successful educational games. This is demonstrated by a geography game prototype that realises gaming and learning scenarios inspired by Jules Verne’s “Around the world in eighty days”, and a storyline that carries the learning scenarios. The goal is a proof of concept in knowledge transfer and understanding of geographic learning content; and a proof of how much more fun this is to the user. The European Commission regards this project as one of her flagships in a research policy competing against Asia and the U.S. to find the optimum way to organise education and learning. The project is thus a consequent continuation of the European long term strategy in research into technology enhanced learning (TEL).

The project lifeclye

The project is divied into three research - development - evaluation phases, the first 2 are considered primary and are scheduled for a duration of one year each. The final phase is considereed a consolidation and refinedment phase. The project is concluded by a final and comprehensive system evaluation and - more importantly - evaluation of the research outcomes.