"The project has progressed the state of the art of how a lesson plan can be gamified. When paired with pervasive technologies, ubiquitous play-learn can be facilitated, advancing the pedagogy of active learning supporting outdoor/indoor teaching and learning. Beaconing lowers the barrier of entry for end-users to customise gamified learning content via the authoring pipeline adapted to multiple authoring roles: game designers, learning designers and teachers. This affords learning designers and teachers to think of learning in a new and innovative way and create pervasive educational games using three tracking technologies: Beacons; GPS and QR codes with no need for programming skills.
The project has contributed to the objectives of the ""Opening up Education"" initiative, the development of digital learning and teaching resources, the rate of adoption on technologies for the modernisation of education and the testing of fundamental business hypothesis (including continuous development and testing with users). Our impact is threefold: (1) the introduction of gamified learning as teaching and learning resources, (2) the creation and co-creation of gamified learning resources and (3) the extension of teachers’ imagination by including geolocation play-learn. From the engagement, teachers are progressing from no (1) to no. (2) and (3), which aligns with the need for the sense of ownership of the experience, empowering teachers to think (imagine) beyond their normal practices. Beaconing has been used to enhance learning delivered within the classroom setting, extended into informal contexts and spaces- which includes the use of Beaconing gamified lesson paths (GLPs) as escape games, flipped classroom and part of homework or extracurricular activities.
The modular approach of Beaconing, where GLPs can be constructed using these elements: narratives as metagame wrapper, minigames as activities/challenges/tasks associated to the learning objectives and the location-based game and so forth, also opens up opportunities for an ecosystem that allows sharing and monetizing of digital educational games, assets and contents, e.g. teacher-preneur, where they can take ownership on their GLPs and offer them to others for free or offer in the marketplace for potential exploitation. Developers of minigames and narratives can also offer new contents into the marketplace – this is explored in the exploitation plan for realising impact in new business models for edtech- also allowing the testing of fundamental business hypothesis. The hypothesis also includes the potential for Beaconing’s approach to impact others sectors beyond education such as culture and tourism."
