Transition from kindergarten to primary school is a turning point in children's life; as one of the most complex challenges in a child's life, it needs to be faced with a set of skills that can be trained in early childhood. Diligo 2.0 is a serious game developed on STELT platform, built up adopting an Agent-Based Model approach. It is a monitoring tool to assess, in 5-years-olds, the emotional competence and the geometric and numerical thinking: two of the competences useful to children accessing primary school. The tool also assesses the children's attitude to engage in slow or fast thinking activities. The assessment can be both normative and ipsative: when normative, it is based on inter-individual comparisons; when ipsative, it becomes an intra-individual assessment.
Children's transition from kindergarten to primary school is not a single event, but it
can be defined as a complex and long process [
Diligo 2.0 is a normative and ipsative monitoring tool to assess in 5-years-olds two
of the skills part of School Readiness concept, such as the emotional competence and
the geometric and numerical thinking, and the psychological and behavioral attitude to
engage in slow/fast thinking activities. [
In particular, this tool lets teachers and parents assess the specific components of
each competence considered. On the side of the emotional competence, there are:
awareness of the emotions, use and comprehension of emotion-related vocabulary,
recognition of facial expressions and their link to the emotions, comprehension of the
situations that elicit emotions, knowledge of the cultural rules for displaying emotion
and regulation and management of one’s own and others emotions [
The third dimension considered by the tool is the behavioral attitude of fast/slow
thinking; it changes depending on motivation, emotions, environments, situations, etc.
Kahneman [
Diligo 2.0 is a serious game developed on STELT platform, Smart Technologies to
Enhance Learning and Teaching [
The assessment can be both normative and ipsative: when normative, it is based on inter-individual comparisons; when ipsative, it becomes an intra-individual assessment, useful to highlight personal strengths and weakness of the single child, while tracing his/her dynamic developmental profile.
Diligo 2.0 is expressed through a narrative metaphor, and that’s one of its strengths:
narratives are a pervasive feature of human cultural products [
As the child access into the test section from the app homepage, s/he is introduced to the narrative framework of the game and its main character, Leo the Explorer: the child is actively involved to help Leo, facing several tests. The game is structured in eight different sections: when the child chooses the one s/he wants to play in, s/he has the opportunity to select a fast or slow mode. The only difference between the slow mode game and the fast one is a major presence of narrative introductions to each test in the first one. Every test is a question Leo the Explorer asks to the child and s/he can answer simply touching specific graphic elements on the device display.
The game path is predetermined, to ensure the test validity and not affect the assessment. At the end, when the game session is concluded, a brief report is available with the assessment of all the skills and competences evaluated during the test. The scoring is the same for the slow and fast mode: 1 point for every correct answer and 0 point for every wrong one.
To create an ipsative profile of a child, when s/he starts again a new game session, Leo the Explorer recognizes the player and lets the supervisor choose to repeat the same old items or get new alternative ones.
Diligo 2.0 has been built up adopting an Agent-Based Model approach. There are two main interactive agents: the first one is the user, who plays all the tests trying to help the main character of the game; the second Agent is “Leo the Explorer”, an artificial agent who guides the user in the several sections of the app and during the game through tips, instructions, feedbacks and narrative introductions.
Diligo 2.0 is an assessment and monitoring tool which focuses attention on several development components, quite overlooked by current national school curriculums. Providing both normative and ipsative assessment, it represents a tool with a great potential to promote a more sensitive awareness about each child specific educational needs and to support the teacher monitoring the class group to adjust its educational path along the way.
In the future, the app could be used also as a training tool to help the children improve their skills, providing them an entertaining learning experience. In the actual version of the game, all the tests are based on structured materials; this feature, combined with the use of STELT platform, makes all the tests replicables in other two ways: a not-digital mode and a hybrid mode. The opportunity to play the game in different ways and conditions, with or without the peer group or the caregiver, makes it more adaptable to the specific children or group. 4
Diligo 2.0 project is currently being developed by a collaboration between Natural and Artificial Cognition Lab (NAC) of University of Naples Federico II and INDIRE, the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research.