ITD Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche - CNR
Research theme:
«New skills for the knowledge society»
Project duration: 2010-2014
GaLA - Games and Learning Alliance is the Network of Excellence (NoE) on Serious Games funded by the European Union in FP7 – IST ICT, Technology Enhanced Learning.GaLA gathers the cutting-the-edge European Research & Development organizations on Serious Games, involving 31 partners from 14 countries. Partnership involves universities, research centers, and developer and education industries.
The GaLA motivation stems from the acknowledgment of the potentiality of Serious Games (SGs) for education and training and the need to address the challenges of the main stakeholders of the SGs European landscape (users, researchers, developers/industry, educators).
GaLA aims to shape the scientific community and build a European Virtual Research Centre aimed at gathering, integrating, harmonizing and coordinating research on SGs and disseminating knowledge, best practices and tools as a reference point at an international level. The other key focuses of the project are: the support to deployment in the actual educational and training settings; the fostering of innovation and knowledge transfer through research-business dialogue; the development high-quality didactics on SG by promoting and supporting courses at Master and PhD level.
The NoE organizations aim to integrate their activities and resources in a long-term view structuring the activities along 3 major axes:
Research integration and harmonization
Strong integration among leading researchers, users and business
Strong concern on the current standards of education, in order to favour a real uptake and scaling of the educational games initiatives
Joint research activities
Identify key issues and address them through multidisciplinary teams
Promote Research and Development team forces – organized in thematic areas - that will do focused research (e.g. joint PhD and MSc projects on hot SG research projects, joint project proposals) and continuously inform the project about the latest developments in technology and education
Spreading of excellence
Dissemination of the NoE achievements as a flagship EU initiative in the TEL area
Strong coordination with EU TEL activities, offering a specialized focus and expertise on SGs
Development high-quality didactics on SG by promoting and supporting courses at Master and PhD level
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