Managing Affective-learning THrough Intelligent atoms and Smart InteractionS

The MaTHiSiS learning vision is to provide a product-system for vocational training and mainstream education for both individuals with an intellectual disability and non-diagnosed ones.

This product-system consists of an integrated anthropocentric platform, along with a set of re-usable learning components (educational material, digital educational artefacts etc.), which will respond to the needs of a future educational framework and provide capabilities for:

• adaptive learning,
• automatic feedback,
• automatic assessment of learner’s progress and behavioural state,
• affective learning and
• game-based learning.

The MaTHiSiS project will introduce a novel methodology in the education process to achieve these educational objectives, which will associate specific learning goals with appropriate learning materials. Goals will be derived from formal and non-formal education (general education, vocational training, lifelong training or specific skills learning) as well as learner’s own goals (informal education). It will also make use of cutting-edge technologies in learning settings that range from specialized robots and mobile devices to interactive whiteboards, and advance these to a greater degree of integration into the market. Doing so, MaTHiSiS will create a whole new educational ecosystem-as-a-product, seamlessly adaptable to specific needs (both financial (e.g, low school budget) or educational) and contexts. Central to the MaTHiSiS innovation strategy is also the ability to transfer knowledge across different means and, consequently, different learning settings.

Over 36 months, MaTHiSiS will create a novel and continuously adaptable "robot/machine/computer"-human interaction educational scheme which adapts to different learning requirements and makes use of the shared knowledge among its different components to advance learning beyond linear social skill acquisition towards more workplace-oriented activities.

The methodological and technological innovation of MaTHiSiS stems from the interplay of advancements in technologies in six major areas:

1. mobile learning,
2. e- Learning,
3. adaptive learning,
4. robotics,
5. affective computing that come together to form a ubiquitous and
6. holistic ecosystem that benefits education.