Hunt for Europe 2.0: expanding Language & Culture Learning with Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Player capabilities

"EUROSIM 2.0 builds on the succesful implementation of KA204-2017-015, ""Hunt for Europe: using Language Simulator in Culture & Language Integrated Learning"" for which the evaluation stated, ""” This is an extremely ambitious project with the development of a Serious Game/learning game. The project is very relevant in so far as language differences remain a strong barrier to employment and other activities within Europe even though multi-lingualism seems to have fallen as a priority for the EU....the product produced in this project has the potential to be very impressive....had a great impact (reaching over 250,000 people"").EUROSIM 2.0 uses as its point of departure the EUROSIM 1.0 platform, an online serious game for language and culture learning where 150 e-learning lessons are combined with 30 realistic 3D computer game environements depicting actual places in the partner countries. Here learners have to learn the language and culture of a partner language by practicing their oral proficiency via speech recognition in the e-learning section and then applying that knowledge in a realistic 3D environment in interaction with in-game characters. Whereas the target group for EUROSIM 1.0 was adults, EUROSIM 2.0 targets learners aged 13 - 19 and their teachers. The aim of EUROSIM 2.0 is to create a cooperative and collaborative learning environment building on top of EUROSIM 1.0 by developing an Artificial Intelligence mechanism that will guide the learners and teachers toward relevant materials, while simultaneously adjusting the degree of difficulty of the material to match the learner's needs, and, to implement at multi-player functionality that will require learners to work together in order to complete the games. In summary:1) Integrating Artificial Intelligence into the 150 VIFIN Course Creator (Own content management system) e-learning materials, so that the learner curriculum constantly adapts to the learner, in- or decreasing the level of difficulty, or changing/guiding the learner to the subject matter that is most relevant to the learner, as well as providing a monitoring tool displaying the learner results and path. 2) Developing 30 3D multi-player scenarios (cooperation and collaboration as in Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft and similar), so that learners, in pairs, both have to interact verbally and culturally with the in-game characters via the built-in speech recognition system, but also have to work together with friends, classmates, or other foreign learners in order to complete the in-game missions and move on in the game. In this way, learners have to interact in, in a specifically designed way, with the chosen foreign language with in-game characters, while also interacting with friends in their mother tongue, or ad-libbing with complete foreigners in a potential third language (lingua franca). Existing scenarios will be adapted and redesigned where possible and according to needs, but at least one entirely new 3D environment will be created - a HUB where learners meet and partner up with other players before starting the game, in this case, the EU Parliament.The platform will be tested on 300 learners and teachers over a 4 month period and it is expected that the results will show an increase in learner motivation and an increase in learning uptake as well as a positive indication by teachers concerning the usability of the tool and that it augments them in their role. EUROSIM 2.0 will be freely available to individual users as well as teachers and learning institutions so learning can take place anywhere, anytime, a learner has time, energy and a desire to learn. It is expected that in the long term a tool of this type will be an extremely valuable asset in aim of increasing multilingualism within the EU."