At this year’s edition of National and International Conference on Virtual Learning, held in the historical city of Alba Iulia, SIVECO Romania proudly presents Beaconing, the eLearning platform that creates new models and practices of teaching and learning

The Romanian IT company coordinates the 15 partners consortium that created Beaconing, a teaching and digital learning platform that integrates technologies, pedagogical and social perspectives, using pervasive, context-aware and gamified approaches. The innovative project will be presented in front of an audience made of the most important actors in education, in the historical halls of the “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia.

The biggest national annual event in eLearning, the 16th edition of the National Conference on Virtual Learning (CNIV) is taking place in Alba Iulia, Romania, in the same time with the International Conference on Virtual Learning (ICVL), on the 26th-27th of October.

During the event, the SIVECO team will show how is a lesson created by using an Authoring Tool and will also go through the lesson using the student’s interface, in order to demonstrate how easily the learning process turns into a pleasant, interesting and useful activity. The secret lies in using “context-aware” systems (that adjust to the context in which they are used) and gamification (translating a common learning context into a situation similar to a game). These methods make Problem-Based Learning possible.

SIVECO also developed 3 mini-games – Drag it, Match it and Millionaire Quiz – where the users create their own game content, using their digital devices. For example, Millionaire Quiz is based on the classic TV show “Who wants to be a millionaire?”. The teacher provides students with 15 questions, each category of questions being harder than the previous one. The answers are time-restricted at 30 seconds. There are 3 help options:

  • Pause the timer
  • See a poll
  • Remove 2 options

The other two mini-games are very versatile and allow setting multiple choice-type questions in a visual way. With ”Drag it”, students have to put images in the right place on a background chosen by the teacher (like a puzzle). For ”Match it”, questions and answers are provided in the form of text, images or audio documents that students have to link together. The games are very easy to set by the teacher and fun to complete by the students.

Implemented within the Horizon 2020 program, the project seeks to pilot innovation in a real operational environment, while changing mind-sets and creating new models and practices of teaching and learning.

Beaconing also provides an experience not like any other with innovative tools for users with disabilities, such as a fully interactive toolbar interface called Accessabar, which makes content accessible to users with different disabilities.

The project’s consortium: Coventry University (UK), Heriot-Watt University (UK), BIBA – Bremer Institut Für Produktion Und Logistik Gmbh (Germany), Inesc Tec (Portugal), Universidad Complutense De Madrid (Spain), Ort France (France), Succubus Interactive Sarl (France), Advanced Technology Systems (Romania), Imaginary (Italy), Geomotion Games Sl (Spain), Ifinity Spolka Z Organiczona Odpowiedzialnoscia (Poland), Playsoft (France), Sebit Egitim Ve Bilgi Teknolojileri Anonim Sirketi (Turkey), Hands Free Computing Limited (UK) and SIVECO Romania.

About CNIV / ICVL 2018

The National Virtual Learning Conferences (CNIV) started in 2003, and, since 2006, they have been held together with their international replica, International Virtual Learning Conferences (ICVL). They are being organized by the University of Bucharest, in partnership with a different Romanian university each year.

The CNIV / ICVL phenomenon brings into focus the Romanian and international education projects and scientific researches inspired by the educational trends in the field of eLearning. It is the Romanian academic event that offers all actors involved in education the opportunity to exchange experience, opportunities for future joint projects, being a real and inspiring community of virtual learning practice.