The goal of the project E-MaGIC is the development, implementation, and dissemination of an immersive game that trains mathematical competences and meets the high standards of commercial games so that learners will be motivated to play and train their basic math skills on their own. The project will target students in school, especially disadvantaged learners, and the consortium will also support teachers in integrating the game into their classes. PISA and other forms of evaluating education have shown that in many European countries students are severely lacking even basic skills in mathematics. Many learners seem to have difficulties with the way that math is taught, and in most countries girls seem to struggle even more than boys. This contrasts greatly with the goals the European Union has proclaimed in its 2020 strategy. In order to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and establish Europe as an Innovation Union, sciences, math and engineering graduates are needed. It is well known that mathematics are a stumbling block for young learners. On the one hand it threatens successful completion of studies, on the other hand it causes experience of failure and reduces motivation to follow careers in sciences, mathematics and engineering. In order to address this issue, new approaches to learning mathematics are needed. In educational sciences the potential of serious games has been brought up in recent years. Serious games have a special potential for creating a new way to do mathematics and increase motivation and self-efficacy beliefs of the students left behind. The serious game created will use the context of magic to create an immersive world, in which learners playfully duel using magic spells powered by mathematics. The focus will be on fun and exploring new magic spells to defeat opponents. Learners won’t be forced to learn, however, they will quickly find out that practicing their math improves their success and adds to their fun. They become more powerful in the game by improving their math skills outside the game. So levels aren't gained in-game, but the learners "gain levels" instead and can cast more powerful spells once their math skills reach higher levels. The game will encourage getting better and faster at math, providing a fun opportunity to train math skills and compete against friends in a multiplayer modus. Since the consortium plans to create a game that can compete with entertainment games, they will deliver a highly polished 3D environment with the special effects and sophisticated animation that can be expected in a game featuring the casting of magic spells. The game concept can be compared to highly successful dueling games, such as Nintendo's Pokemon, but it is quite innovative and has the potential to be highly immersive. The impact on learners will be that they experience a positive exposure to math and increase their basic skills drastically. Thus, in contrast to many other game-based approaches in mathematics, E-MaGIC will truly embed the mathematical learning tasks in the game. A special focus will be on attracting both girls and boys by combining cooperative and competitive elements and providing identification possibilities for all genders. The game will be studied during its introduction in order to better understand and take advantage of motivational aspects in learning math. The consortium will prepare teachers for embedding the game in their classes. Its strength is motivating students to practice their math skills outside of school. So it can add greatly to the learning results when used in conjunction with classes. The game will be tested in the schools that are part of the project. Towards the end of the project it will be offered for free to other schools and the consortium will make the final product available for everyone through app stores for free. This, together with promotional activities, will put it into the hands of thousands of learners towards the end of the project. Since the game as the project's product is highly scalable, the consortium believes that it can potentially support millions of learners in the years after the end of the project.
E-MaGIC was a project that gathered teachers, programmers and researchers from Portugal, Germany, Greece and Italy, sponsored by the Portuguese Erasmus+ Education and Training National Agency. This multidisciplinary consortium consisting of a software development company and teachers from different backgrounds and know-how, developed a cutting-edge educative game for mobile devices named Clash of Wizardry (available for free on Google Play https://bit.ly/2YkQNWW and on Apple App Store https://apple.co/34WXQHF) complemented by an innovative teaching approach which can help teachers support the training of mathematics skills of their students. The approach can be used both formally and informally to help improve school achievements and enable success, to promote inclusion (the game can adapt to the student’s skills) and to inspire students to become interested in science and maths. The consortium partners were: Gabinete de Modernização das Tecnologias Educativas from Direção Regional de Educação (GMTE-DRE) – Funchal, Portugal. The GMTE office develops, implements and coordinates ICT educational projects in Madeira schools. Belonging to the regional public body DRE, its major asset is to have access to schools (either formally or informally) where the project has been implemented and disseminated, having direct feedback from students and teachers. Ingenious Knowledge (Cologne, Germany) is a small company founded in 2010 that develops software tools and an innovator in game-based learning, being heavily involved in education research cooperating with universities worldwide. One of its main strengths is creating next generation serious games with the aim of making games that are good enough to compete with commercial entertainment games. The company was the project’s game concept designer and software developer. E.E.G. Acharnon (Athens, Greece) is a secondary school of special and vocational education for students aged 12 to 17 who have cognitive disorders and severe learning difficulties. This partner paid special attention to making the game usable and attractive to disadvantaged learners and made sure that the learning results were worthwhile. I.I.S. Leonardo da Vinci-Nitti (Potenza, Italy) technical and vocational secondary school has been active in developing new digital educational approaches. The school provided a testing ground and involved students with different profiles in evaluating this new approach in cooperation with the University of Salerno. The E-MaGIC project checked data from national and international reports which confirmed that mathematics is the common subject in which students have low achievements due to severe lack of basic skills and motivation. It was also found that the adverse maths social stigma has a general negative emotional impact on students though having enough skills (with greater or lesser difficulty) to effectively solve any given exercise / calculation / problem. Consequently, the question has arisen: how does this happen if scientifically validated maths curricula are being applied by qualified teachers? The answer seems to be that teaching focuses on explaining and many teachers feel like the curriculum doesn’t allow them enough time to simply train calculations with their students. In many cases the lack of calculation skills also leads to difficulties in understanding the mathematical thoughts that teachers try to convey. That is, students don’t feel a connection with the curricular contents which is reflected in their lack of motivation for maths and subsequent low achievements. These outcomes contrast greatly with the European Union proclaimed goals for its 2020 strategy. So, the consortium concluded that to meet the actual needs of our students, teachers need proper teaching tools, methodologies and strategies that can motivate students without neglecting the scientific value and content quality. Promoting their motivation to learn and study maths is essential for enabling them to follow scientific careers in STEM where graduates are needed. The major contribution from the E-MaGIC project was the creation of a game to train basic maths skills that can find its way into the personal space of students by running on their smartphones and tablets. Based on our initial research we developed the game and tested it with students. Their overall feedback was very good because the fun element (winning magic duels) is intrinsically connected to the learning element (solving equations). The game never forces students to progress to harder maths, but by offering more powerful spell effects with harder equations it tempts students to go beyond their limits. Thus, our students are not forced to learn new skills, however they quickly understand that by practicing their maths skills they will obtain better results, progressing in the ranking and earning bragging rights, making the game more challenging and fun.