MASELTOV

Overview

Mobile – anywhere/anytime – persuasive assistance is crucial for more efficient and sustainable support of immigrants. MASELTOV researches and develops novel ICT instruments in an interdisciplinary consortium with the key aim of facilitating and fostering local community building, raising consciousness and knowledge required for bridging cultural differences.

This will be achieved through the development of innovative social computing services that motivate and support informal learning for the appropriation of highly relevant daily skills. A mobile assistant embeds these novel services that address activities towards the social inclusion of immigrants in a persuasive and most intuitive way. This is highlighted in MASELTOV with a representative application of most essential/beneficial information and learning services – such as ubiquitous language translation, navigation, administrative and emergency health services.

The role of IET

Ten Work Packages involving selected partners will address the research questions.

• Project Management (WP1)
• User Requirements an Interaction Design (WP2)
• System Specification an Integration (WP3)
• Multisensory Context Awareness (WP4)
• Personalisation and Recommendations (WP5)
• Mobile Assistance and Information Services (WP6)
• Persuasive Learning Services (WP7)
• Community Building Services (WP8)
• Field Trials and Evaluation (WP9)
• Dissemination and Exploitation (WP10)

The Institute of Educational Technology (OU) is leading on WP7 and also contributing to WP1, WP3, WP8 and WP10. The objectives of WP7 are:

1. To increase immigrants’ ability to function in an unfamiliar society by facilitating communication and learning, and by structuring technological supports according to user needs.
2. To change in a positive way immigrants’ attitudes and behaviours through technology-mediated persuasion and social networking influence.
3. To take advantage of situation and context to capture user motivation and extend immediate assistance into more structured learning, game-playing, and interaction with other immigrants and the wider community.