For whom?
For Master's and pre-Master's students interested in applying scientific findings to societal benefits and improving children’s lives, entrepreneurship, and innovation, who want to use their knowledge creatively.
What are you going to do?
The Language Playhouse was developed to create an inclusive and playful context for children to learn. It is an educational tool that helps mastering a second language, stimulates play and physical movement, and social interaction. A prototype is installed on a school yard in Nijmegen, where the first meeting of this Honours Lab takes place.
Depending on the knowledge, skills and talents of the participating students the focus can be on various area, such as:
- Game development: are there aspects from games that could be implemented to improve engagement or learning?
- Target group: The Language Playhouse was initially developed to help children acquire a second language, and for what other groups could this also be beneficial?
- Market analyses: The current Language Playhouse is located at a school yard, but children learn a lot outside of school, and therefore it is worth exploring what could be possible stakeholders. How can it be attractive for investors to design it as part of children’s playgrounds, or implement it in shops and shopping centers, libraries, day care, special education, etc.?
- Inclusiveness: The Language Playhouse was designed to be inclusive and enhance social interaction, but how can inclusiveness be optimized?
- Child (language) learning: does our knowledge about children’s (language) development provide further insights into improving the (content) of the games?
- Science: How can we measure child progress, movement, and social interaction?
- Society: What innovations are needed for an inclusive and healthy learning environment?
- Market value: Does the playhouse provide market value? Does it fit the strategic agenda of the EU, including the agenda for digitalization (human-machine interaction)? Would it be possible to write a business plan?
- How can we make this prototype sustainable?
- How to create an entrepreneurial start with the Language Playhouse.
The goal is to learn to apply your knowledge and talents to improve and develop tools that help children develop. At the end, you have learnt how to contribute your expertise to one or more of the topics mentioned above.