GaLA

Game and Learning Alliance (new)

Researcher:

C. SchneiderG. Finke, A. Sproedt

Partners:

31 partners from Europe (see website for a detailed list of the partners)

Financed by:

EU IST ICT, Technology Enhanced Learning (Seventh Framework Program).

Contract No.:

Grant Agreement Number 258169.

Website: 

external page www.galanoe.eu

Motivation:

Drawing the inspiration from military training and business simulations, serious games technologies and applications have spread in school education and in corporate training. Currently, they are deemed as very promising due to their appeal towards new generations and their ability to provide multimedia knowledge acquisition tools that are compelling and personalizable.

However, there is still a lot of research work to do to single out both the best mechanisms through which games can support instruction, and the most appropriate modalities through which students and educators can use games to support balanced personal growth. It is thus now time to study in-depth how technologies can respond to such requirements and to direct serious game development towards ever better tools and results.

The technological, scientific and humanist fields interested by the research on serious games are wide and range from pedagogy to psychology, from health to engineering, from virtual reality to artificial intelligence, from networking to computer graphics. To this end, the EU has launched an international, multidisciplinary network of excellence on serious games. The network, coordinated by DIBE (Dept. of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering - DIBE) of the University of Genoa, covers all the scientific and application fields of serious games, and involves 31 partners including universities, research centers and leading industries at EU level. There are 13 countries represented, mostly from Western Europe.

Objectives:

The GaLA work plan is organized over 4 years, during which the main objective will be the constitution of a European virtual research center in order to integrate and coordinate research on serious games and promote dissemination of the related knowledge, best practices and tools. The project will promote also industrial innovation through business-academy dialogue, and the development of high-quality didactics on serious games, through the set-up of specialized MSc and PhD courses.

Activities completed:

In October 2011, the first year of GaLA was completed. The first quarter of the project was marked by collecting, structuring, and redistributing know-how about serious games inside and outside of the network. Highlights included the network meetings in Barcelona (January 19-21) and Bremen (September 19-21) as well as the very insightful 1st GaLA Alignment School in Edinburgh (June 20-24). ETH Zurich (represented by BWI) is active within the work packages 3 (serious games application fields), 4 (industry and stakeholder engagement), and 7 (integration in corporate training).

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