Educational content created in Romania using Augmented Reality, successful in Ireland

According to public statistics, the average early school dropout rate is 12% across the European Union.

Of course, there are big differences between member countries. For example, in Romania, this percentage is 18%. And the percentages also vary depending on gender, being lower for girls (12.5%) than for boys (16.3%).

However, the early school dropout rate exceeds 30% (with over 70% in some countries) for people with disabilities, amplifying their already high risk of social exclusion.

Launched four years ago, under the Horizon 2020 program, the NEWTON project (Networked Labs for Training in Sciences and Technologies for Information and Communication) turns the learning process into a pleasant, interesting and useful activity, with the help of the latest technological innovations: gamification (learning based on game-specific elements) and self-directed learning (autonomous learning).

For the NEWTON project, SIVECO Romania has developed personalized, multi-sensory and multimodal content, including educational content for students with special needs.

It is a great joy to know that the lessons developed by SIVECO are still used and that they bring the expected results.

„The NEWTON platform and third-level educational content are still being used at Dublin City University – Ireland, the National College of Ireland and the Slovak Technical University of Bratislava in Slovakia. The primary level content has been made available to the next generation of students in Irish and Romanian primary schools which took part in the NEWTON project pilots. They use the innovative NEWTON TEL methodology and content to complement their current education process”, said Gabriel-Miro Muntean, Associate Professor with the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University and NEWTON coordinator, in an interview for the European portal cordis.europa.eu.

Demo lesson at the Special Gymnasium School for the Hearing Impaired “Sfânta Maria”, Bucharest

The results of the NEWTON project have impacted the life of the more than 1 500 students and teachers who directly participated in the pilots, along with many others since the end of the project.

SIVECO's participation in the NEWTON project included:

• implementation of the AeL Learning Management System platform
• implementation of functionalities such as Augmented Reality, gamification
• development of personalized, multi-sensory and multimodal content, including for people with special needs
• collaboration with the University of Bucharest for the implementation of a pilot project according to the NEWTON concept at the Special Gymnasium School for the Hearing Impaired “Sfânta Maria” (for 100 children with hearing impairments).

SIVECO was selected to participate in this project due to its experience in developing complex educational projects, its ability to implement state-of-the-art technologies (augmented reality, multi-sensory interactive content) and multicultural content (in English, French, Greek, Russian, etc.), as well as very good references obtained in major international projects, in Cyprus, Malta, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan.

“Our excellent results in terms of learning satisfaction and outcome may contribute to changing students’ false impression that STEM subjects are difficult and/or boring, and hopefully they will help attract more of them to STEM careers”, continued Gabriel-Miro Muntean, from the Dublin City University.