Research and Development
Illiteracy Project
Scottish Enterprise in Dunbartonshire have piloted a novel project which takes an international group of students and S5 pupils – this year form Warsaw, Glasgow and two Canadian universities, forms them into teams and effectively turns them into a team of ‘consultants’. Their task is to run a project to support a concept from a local company. Their job is to carry out research into the practicality and viability of a project which is usually commercially based.
In this case, the company involved wants to look at the issue of illiteracy at all levels from late secondary pupils to the more mature adult audience. Originally the concept was to dwell on a web based ‘game’ which involved passing increasingly harder tests based on English language understanding. The flaw here was that the whole thing could acquire legs as a web game which would utterly defeat the purpose of encouraging people to read books and use their minds.
The latest consideration is to have a book ‘simulation’ which would drive the entrants to solve clues – both literary and numeric – to discover “WHODUNNIT!!”. The software would be “Branch and Bound Algorithm” based – that is to say the road to identifying the villain would be variable to try and ensure that copying is minimised. The ‘books’ would ideally be directed at various levels based on age to try and generate the optimum attraction to the various levels. It is the hope that by using ‘books’ as an avenue that this will encourage the so called “illiterates” to acquire the motivation to read, firstly for their own satisfaction and, I guess, as importantly, for their life – domestic and business options.
Although it is very early in the process, the hope is that we could involve like minded people like you to contribute by producing storylines that could be developed into this type of simulation.
By default, there has to be a form of commercial gain for the company involved, at least in the early days. This would be achieved through site advertising but the focus of those ads would be sympathetic and complimentary to the concept. It is arguable that a portion of this revenue could be directed to a philanthropic use complimenting the concept. The consideration is also being given to producing a “Certificate of Success” – again in the hope that an employer would recognise this as a sign of the holder achieving a level of success, not just through academic compulsion but through personal motivation – a much higher value in real terms.
Consideration still has to be given to the methodology of publicising this and making it attractive, without stigma, to the participants but, as with so many ideas, every journey starts with one step. Our initial need is to discover how it will work, what kind of help do we need and who can/will help
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