Pedagogy-Driven Smart Games for Primary School Children% - 2nd International Workshop on Evidence-Based Technology Enhanced Learning - page 34

comprehension skills develop from the age of 7-8 until the age of 11, when
children develop as in- dependent readers. Nowadays, there are several pencil-
and-paper reading strategies for improving text reading comprehension, and
specifically addressed to poor comprehenders, which could be delivered by an
adaptive learning system (ALS), that is, a suite of functionalities designed to de-
liver, track, report on and manage learning content for specific learners [8][9].
TERENCE is a EU project -http://www.terenceproject.eu-- that aims at deliver-
ing the first ALS for enhancing the reading comprehension of poor comprehend-
ers, building upon effective pencil-and- paper reading strategies, and framing them
into a playful and stimulating environment. Learners are primary school poor
comprehenders, hearing and deaf, older than 7.
The goal of this paper is to explain how the playing material and tasks of
TERENCE are designed and developed on top of an extensive analysis of the re-
quirements of the TERENCE learners. First, the paper sets the groundwork by
presenting the pedagogical theory and approach followed in TERENCE in Sec. 2.
Then it outlines the types of data gathered for characterising the TERENCE learn-
ers and the analysed effective reading strategies and interventions for the
TERENCE learners; in Sec. 3 and 4 is explained how the design and development
of the TERENCE games, in particular, stems from such knowledge. For space li-
mitations, we focus on the playing material, that is, games and playing tasks.
For information concerning the reading material and tasks, see [6]. Moreover,
the models for the learning material and learners of the system are described in
[4], how the user centered design (UCD) was used for them is in [2], whereas
some of the adaptation rules are outlined in [5]. The game design for all the
TERENCE games is in [3] and, finally, the architecture for games and their auto-
matic generation is outlined in [10].
2 The Pedagogical Underpinnings
The theoretical framework underpinning of TERENCE is grounded on the con-
structivist pedagogical approach [15], which is a theory of learning that focuses on
students being engaged in “doing”, rather than passively engaged in “receiving”
knowledge. In other words, constructivism states that learning takes place in con-
texts. This approach is committed to the general view that (1) learning is an active
process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge, and (2) instruction is a
process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge
[11]. Nevertheless, knowledge does not simply arise from experience, but is build
through experience over the current knowledge structures. The educator is re-
quired to orchestrate all the resources needed and must guide students in training
them how to teach themselves [17].
Scaffolding is offered to the learner as an adequate environment where to find
adequate learning material, compelling learning tasks, templates, and guide for the
development of cognitive skills [21]. The focus is shifting from the educator di-
rected instruction to a learner centered approach: the learner is at the center of
the learning process. This yields that the learning material and tasks should be