ARETE

The ARETE ecosystem concept enables disruptive innovation of AR for interactions, access and distribution of AR content to be fully realised through three different pilots and enhance European innovation capacity in the field.

Pilot 3 - Augmented Reality for promoting Positive Behaviour Intervention and Support (PBIS)

Pilot 3 (the PBIS-pilot) will focus on the development of AR solutions, to be embedded within the context of the framework of Positive Behaviour Interventions & Support (PBIS).

PBIS is an intervention model that actively supports the implementation of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) for classroom and school discipline. PBIS is not a ready-to-use curriculum, but a three-tiered model or an approach, that defines core elements that can be implemented through a variety of evidence-based strategies. EBPs are interventions for which there is ample scientific evidence that consistently show that they improve student’s learning, behaviour and well-being. PBIS gives emphasis on prevention by targeting all students and staff. This is the first tier (aka Tier 1) of prevention.

Some students, however, due to environmental and genetic risk factors are more inclined to school failure. Thus, this subset of students would benefit from additional support, namely secondary prevention. Non-respondents to Tier 2 support would move on to the tertiary level (aka Tier 3). This means that these students would require individualized wrap-around services to reduce the impact of their chronic needs. Visuals are one the most accessible behavioural management strategies to apply within the PBIS-framework and can be seen as environment cues for the positive reinforcement of the goal behaviour.

The pilot will investigate the use of AR as a tool for PBIS evaluating the incremental value of integrating AR contents within PBIS-intervention and supports in promoting school-wide and class-wide positive behaviours. Specifically, a pre-test/post-test control group design will be used to test the effectiveness of the implementation of PBIS enhanced by AR (AR-PBIS) when compared to PBIS interventions without AR support (PBIS).

Behavioural outcome measures such as students’ self-management and self-regulatory skills, behaviour problems in classroom setting will be obtained prior and after the intervention and then compared across conditions (AR-PBIS vs PBIS alone) to test the hypothesis of the incremental value of AR technology for the PBIS system. In particular, the interest for this pilot is to explore how AR contents, namely location-based and image-based AR can be effectively used for the implementation of new mobile interactive learning environments that may further facilitate students’ self-management and self-regulation skills and attitudes following the logic as used within the PBIS framework. Specifically, the pilot will be implemented according to the following steps:

- Identification of AR interactivity requirements & specification for the SWPBIS-system.
- Investigation of how the AR technology can be embedded within the PBIS teaching and learning processes described in detail in the WP5.