One of the objectives pursued by the Erasmus+ project ‘Bit The Spectrum‘, which started in 2021 thanks to the collaboration between European partners (project number: 2021-1-DE02-KA220-VET-000033091), is to focus on the development of alternative methodologies to increase the socio-emotional education and basic literacy of students and adults with special educational needs (BES).
Social-emotional learning for learners with BES is essential to ensure that they have an equal approach to everyday actions and emotions and to relate to them as best they can without feeling excluded. People with BES often have difficulty recognising and regulating emotions. This can make it difficult to have social awareness, relate to others and recognise and deal with what one is feeling. Studies have shown that the virtual reality environment is a promising tool in various contexts to develop emotional and social adaptation skills for people with BES. Social-emotional education is essential to enable increased self-awareness, to help learners recognise and manage emotions and to show empathy in order to better understand themselves and others. If this is done through non-formal tools such as augmented and virtual reality, the student will feel more involved and stimulated.
To achieve this goal, the project partnership focused on the development of non-formal education tools: open online training (soon to be accessible online on the official project page) on AR\VR functionalities for teachers and sets of AR exercises developed for the 3DBear app to increase social-emotional skills. VR exercises are also under development. The exercises are designed to be intuitive, inclusive and easy to replicate (as well as totally free on the 3Dbear app).
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