Designing For Inclusion through Incidental Language Learning

The MASELTOV project is developing a framework for facilitating the creation of technology rich and socially inclusive learning opportunities for immigrants within cities. The framework has been developed in the FP7-supported MASELTOV project (“Mobile Assistance for Social Inclusion and Empowerment of Immigrants with Persuasive Learning Technologies and Social Network Services”) in response to the project’s recognition of lack of language skills as a major contributory factor to the social exclusion of many immigrants. The project intends to exploit the potential of mobile services for promoting integration and cultural diversity in Europe. The framework is intended to facilitate the coordination of existing and innovative technologies, content, pedagogies, game designs, learning processes and practices, into learning services that can be used effectively by immigrants, their networks and mentors, so as to increase immigrants’ ability to function in an unfamiliar society. The pedagogical key to this framework is incidental learning, an emerging paradigm in mobile language learning. We present the first iteration of the incidental learning framework, and show an example of its use as a design tool. We discuss issues that have arisen and describe our plans for future development of the framework.