The project, which began on 1 October 2005, is a STREP (Specific Targeted Research Project), funded for three years by European Community through the 6th Framework Programme, addressing the Strategic Objective of “Strengthening the Integration of the ICT Research Effort in an Enlarged Europe”, a frontier research area of the Priority Thematic Area of IST.

The project idea is based on the fact that mobile devices are currently increasingly widespread, and mobile phones in particular represent what young adults, with different levels of education and culture, have in common. Moreover, several research projects have shown the potential of game-based learning, and the project seeks to further exploit that potential by means of the pervasiveness of mobile technologies, by developing a new paradigm of m-learning usage and interaction with regard to the classic e-learning models.

The project aims to develop a platform that can be used to efficiently design and develop games for m-learning and m-guidance, seeking to support decision-making in critical situations and user choice in transition moments. Moreover, based on that platform, two game prototypes will also be developed during the project, and their contents will be based on e-health, e-commerce and e-guidance.

In particular, mGBL addresses a two-fold need in the EU: the need to support decision-making in critical situations, not only in a cognitive but also in an emotional manner and, as a consequence, the need to build on cutting-edge work in the new field of m-learning.

The project is based on a bottom-up approach, which means that end users of the mobile games and experts have been directly involved from the very beginning through specific interviews and focus groups carried out in the three fields of analysis: e-guidance, e-health and e-commerce.

In terms of future work, beyond technological implementation, particular efforts will be directed towards user trials and evaluation and validation processes in order to keep the focus on user needs. Furthermore, dissemination activities will aim to establish a community of practice to facilitate knowledge transfer within the m-learning community and to enable the use of project results for further research in the field of game-based m-learning.