The project will examine opportunities for using sound in e-learning settings as a way of enhancing the learning experience and supporting learners. Special attention will be paid to visually impaired learners. The consortium will build model implementations and publish them along with a handbook to support future improvements in the development of open learning content and other types of e-learning applications. Unlike visual impressions, acoustic impressions affect human psychology in a very direct way. Since the beginning of humanity our hearing warned us of approaching and hidden dangers, thus hearing is a sense we cannot shut off. For this reason it is not surprising that acoustic sensations are highly emotional. Whenever visual and acoustic perception contradict each other humans put more trust in the acoustic perception. Film as a medium takes advantage of this and sets a scene through sound which can serve different functions: Supporting the visual action (e.g. action music in an action-packed scene), creating emotions that are not conveyed by the pictures, and foreshadowing events that are not visible but about to happen. We know from developmental psychology that learning is most effective when linked with emotional impressions. Therefore it is surprising that sound is hardly ever used in learning situations. The project intends to research and develop ways of taking advantage of sound to enhance learning in e-learning settings. The consortium will create sample implementations such as instructional videos, audio lessons, interactive online lessons, exercises, and serious games, test them in different learning settings, and turn them into model implementations through the required redesign phases. Special attention will be paid to visually impaired learners for whom acoustic perception is even more important than for other learners. The results will be published in a handbook which will be made available along with the model implementations. The handbook will serve as a basis for future design of better learning content, especially EU opened learning content, by adding the dimension of sound.
The project SEEL examined the opportunities for using sound in e-learning settings as a way of enhancing the learning experience and supporting learners. Special attention was paid to visually impaired learners. The consortium build model implementations and published them along with a handbook to support future improvements in the development of open learning content and other types of e-learning applications. The project did research and developments concerning the ways of taking advantage of sound to enhance learning in e-learning settings. Questionnaires and surveys had been launched for getting more information about eLearning and the use of sound in eLearning. The consortium also created sample implementations such as interactive online lessons in an online course creator and designed an audio platform with self-created OER sound which can be used by teachers in learning situations, exercises, and serious games, etc. Moreover we created 36 scenarios and tested them in a quasi-experimental design with learners in schools in Rumania and Czech Republic. The results of SEEL were published in a SEEL book which ensures sustainability of the results and was made available along with the model implementations. In addition to that a handbook serves as a basis for future design of better learning content especially EU opened learning content by adding the dimension of sound. The SEEL book makes all data available and offers deeper insights. This ensures that all there will be sustainability also after the end of the SEEL project. Moreover the results are also a basis for future scientific research in this field because there was a massive lack of information about this so far. In times where IT mLearning and eLearning becomes more and more important SEEL offers guidelines and hints how to deal with this aspect in the future.