Immersive data science education

The main objective of Abacus was to democratize Data Science through an engaging, collaborative, secure, immersive and interactive environment that will materialize abstract datasets and visualize...

The main objective of Abacus was to democratize Data Science through an engaging, collaborative, secure, immersive and interactive environment that will materialize abstract datasets and visualize complex algorithms using augmented reality and serious games. This project will enable the interactive participation of many users with different data science skills to participate and benefit from its features, practically achieving social inclusion. This project responds to the necessity of re-skilling and up-skilling people at any stage of their lives in order to fill the gap of data scientists and provide each individual with the opportunity to advance their expertise and aim for more rewarding jobs. However, nowadays their competencies have not been formally gained in official training and in many cases these competencies are not included in their professional experience. Hence, Abacus can provide a stepping stone for promoting interest of adults in data science, as well as for their professional development.

The main concrete output of this project is the development of a personalised, self-paced data literacy intervention with a choice of interactive activities for data science: an AR/VR implementation for searching and sorting algorithms and role-playing serious games (e.g. narrative games, quizzes, text based adventure games) that discuss important topics of Data Science. These activities were proved to be more engaging and stimulating for young adults education, compared to traditional methods used in lectures so far. An initial result of the project was user requirements collected from the target group regarding their experience with digital games in general, serious games specifically, and technical requirements (e.g. which platforms they use more often, their preference in game genres). Apart from the material available in the submitted reports, the interactive outputs of the project and the e-platform can be found on the project website for Abacus: https://abacus-games.eu/