EuroPLOT Meeting

The EuroPLOT project is about "persuasive learning objects and technologies" (PLOTs), which are to be developed and to be tested in four case studies. The team (6 institutions from 4 European countries) meet every 6 months face-to-face, in addition to several online meetings. This was the third meeting, after one year into the project. Since Janet's retirement earlier this year, I have been asked to lead this project further.

It is indeed a very interesting project, linking several of my interests in teaching and learning technologies, and the partners are highly qualified and specialists in their respective fields. The user case studies range from academic university courses, language learning, industrial learning, to heritage and tourism. At this meeting, one of the goals was to link these user studies tighter to the persuasive design elements, as envisioned in the original project plan. I believe that this was achieved in the past two days. We also got the opportunity to use the two software tools GloMaker and PLOTLearner in the latest versions. Nicolai chose me as a subject to test the German language case, using the Tiger database of German newspaper articles. I am ashamed to admit that I failed the tests miserably! It appears that my knowledge of the German language is only very rudimentary. So it is very good that we now have this new tool, with which I can brush up and improve my command of the German language!

The meeting was very well organised by Jarka from U.Hradec Kralove, and we had good opportunities to sample the delicious Czech cuisine and a couple of Pilsener Urquells.

After the meeting I will stay in the Czech Republic until Sunday, to do some travel in Czechia.

Georgi had a hotel reservation in Prague, and so did Nicolai and Margarethe. So I decided to take them into the (small) rental car into the city, before I would head off to my other destinations.