Rapid development of AI technologies with breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision making have generated unprecedented opportunities for technological innovation. There is consensus from policy report that in the next years AI could revolutionise the way teaching and learning is designed and delivered to students leading to seamless intelligent services that are more tailored to student’s needs and interests. Current impetus on AI-based research in education has mainly focused on a knowledge-based approach inherently prevalent in Intelligent Tutoring Systems employed in specific domains. The aim of this paper is to proliferate a compendious framework that classifies teaching practice with a spectrum of AIED applications and tools. The framework acts as a point of departure for teachers that envisage to use AI for enhancing the way learning and teaching is manifested. It may also serve as a blueprint for AIED developers to design AIED systems that focus on specific teaching and learning instances.

Cognizant use of technology is essential in offering a pedagogically rich, inclusive, creative and equitable digital learning experience to students. Teachers may need to develop digital skills and competencies that would propagate a constructive and cultural inclusive digital learning environment for orchestrating flexible and activity-oriented learning through synchronous and asynchronous learning tools. This study presents a digital competency framework discerned from a qualitative study on teachers' understandings of digital competencies for digital teaching and learning. Thirty-eight (n=38) teachers completed an online questionnaire as means to elicit beliefs on what constitutes digital competency development for digital teaching and learning. The results revealed six (6) digital competencies and associated sub-competencies that may be perceived as a point of departure for teachers to build on new or extend existing competencies. A reflection on implications around digital content, data and information, pedagogy, creativity and inclusion is perpetuated for optimising and leveraging teaching and learning in a connected and networked digital learning ecosystem.

The importance of Game-Based Learning (GBL) for student learning is increasingly recognized as beneficial for engagement, creativity and motivation. While further research is needed to explore the multi-faceted tenets of GBL, vocational education teachers may experience difficulties in finding appropriate and relevant materials as well as applying GBL methods in their classroom. This paper presents the development of a platform that VET teachers can use to find, create and share GBL teaching resources. The Erasmus+ project GATE:VET is creating a platform, consisting of an online wiki and a mobile application, that supports educational professionals to understand theoretical and practical aspects of GBL, with the goal of enabling these teachers to design and implement GBL activities in their practice. This paper highlights some of the challenges and strategies for solving these issues when consolidating varied requirements into one platform to create an accessible, user-friendly and relevant point of departure for using GBL, with emphasis on the appropriate level of complexity when describing the theory of GBL and linking it to practical examples.

It is becoming increasingly prevalent in digital learning research to encompass an array of different meanings, spaces, processes, and teaching strategies for discerning a global perspective on constructing the student learning experience. Multimodality is an emergent phenomenon that may influence how digital learning is designed, especially when employed in highly interactive and immersive learning environments such as Virtual Reality (VR). VR environments may aid students' efforts to be active learners through consciously attending to, and reflecting on, critique leveraging reflexivity and novel meaning-making most likely to lead to a conceptual change. This paper employs eleven industrial case-studies to highlight the application of multimodal VR-based teaching and training as a pedagogically rich strategy that may be designed, mapped and visualized through distinct VR-design elements and features. The outcomes of the use cases contribute to discern in-VR multimodal teaching as an emerging discourse that couples system design-based paradigms with embodied, situated and reflective praxis in spatial, emotional and temporal VR learning environments.

Game and gamification elements are increasingly seeing use as part of interface designs for applications seeking to engage and retain users whilst transferring information. This paper presents an evaluation of a game-based approach seeking to improve the road safety behaviour amongst children aged 9-15 within the UK, made available outside of a classroom context as an online, browser-based, free-to-play game. The paper reports on data for 99,683 players over 315,882 discrete logins, supplemented by results from a nationally-representative survey of children at UK schools (n=1,108), an incentivized survey of the player-base (n=1,028), and qualitative data obtained through a series of one-to-one interviews aged 9-14 (n=28). Analysis demonstrates the reach of the game to its target demographic, with 88.13% of players within the UK. A 3.94 male/female ratio was observed amongst players surveyed, with an age distribution across the target range of 9-15. Noting mean and median playtimes of 93 and 31 minutes (n=99,683), it is suggested such an approach to user engagement and retention can surpass typical contact times obtained through other forms of web-based content. The size of the player-base attracted to the game and players' qualitative feedback demonstrates the potential for serious games deployed on a national scale.

Increased global uptake of entertainment gaming has the potential to lead to high expectations of engagement and interactivity from users of technology-enhanced learning environments. Blended approaches to implementing game-based learning as part of distance or technology-enhanced education have led to demonstrations of the benefits they might bring, allowing learners to interact with immersive technologies as part of a broader, structured learning experience. In this article, we explore how the integration of a serious game can be extended to a learning content management system (LCMS) to support a blended and holistic approach, described as an "intuitive-guided" method. Through a case study within the EU-Funded Adaptive Learning via Intuitive/Interactive, Collaborative and Emotional Systems (ALICE) project, a technical integration of a gaming engine with a proprietary LCMS is demonstrated, building upon earlier work and demonstrating how this approach might be realized. In particular, how this method can support an intuitive-guided approach to learning is considered, whereby the learner is given the potential to explore a non-linear environment whilst scaffolding and blending provide guidance ensuring targeted learning objectives are met. Through an evaluation of the developed prototype with 32 students aged 14-16 across two Italian schools, a varied response from learners is observed, coupled with a positive reception from tutors. The study demonstrates that challenges remain in providing high-fidelity content in a classroom environment, particularly as an increasing gap in technology availability between leisure and school times emerges.

There is wide consensus internationally amongst scientific communities that Inquiry-Based Learning can be employed to foster acquisition of clearly defined, 'certain' knowledge such as the conceptual foundations of a scientific discipline. Alternatively, it can be used to engage students with uncertainty, multiple perspectives and contestation through exploration of scientific problems. In order to enact inquiry-based learning effectively, science teachers need to be aware of how to design inquiry-based learning activities and the most effective ways of facilitating inquiry-based learning in the classroom. This paper, presents Sim AULA, a serious game for helping science teachers to create engaging activities for involving students in inquiry-based quests. The paper proposes a cyclical model comprising seven inquiry steps or phases and translates these steps into practical inquiry-based activities performed in the serious game. Sim AULA's overarching architecture is presented in the context of the in-game inquiry-based learning activities, which will be implemented and evaluated in a number of schools across Europe.