Wonderful Education

Wonderful Education’s activities are aimed at enhancing the potential of education in society through technology across a variety of projects, both of charitable and commercial scopes. The interplay of charitable and commercial scopes allows Wonderful Education to constantly works towards full scalability and impact of projects, also when charitable, with the aim of creating common infrastructures that can unleash the power of educational design.

The mission of Wonderful Education is to enhance the potential of education in society by creating innovative relationships between humans and digital technologies in a range of educational contexts. Wonderful Education conducts cutting-edge research, learning design, delivers highly innovative training experiences and accelerates educational innovation. WE has created the first R&D hub for innovation in education in Southern Europe (Future Education Modena), a unique place supporting Wonderful Education’s mission through a testbed network of international partners, schools and educators.

Wonderful Education will provide a unique mix of skills in pedagogy, psychology, learning design, game science, programming, computational/cognitive linguistics, and a live national testbed network through its centre Future Education Institute in Modena; Wonderful Education, thanks to the expertise of its founders, has a network of over 50 partners across industry, research, civil society and the education system and an international network of innovation hubs in education.

Wonderful Education has relevant experience in the area of neuroscience- and evidence-based learning. Since its foundation in early 2019, WE pursued the goal of applying neuroscientific evidence to educational practice. This led to the creation of an advanced training course called “School of Learning” (SoL), for whom an original taxonomy was developed focusing on eight main aspects of the human mind that affect learning: Plasticity, Engagement, Self-regulation, Emotion, Creativity, Sociality, Beliefs and Movement. In addition, a set of research-based suggestions for the improvement of learning practices of proven effectiveness has been developed. The first iteration of the SoL was devised as a live advanced training course spanning four days for a total of 30 hours of formation. Each of the aforementioned aspects was investigated in a separate model, which could be benefited separately to adjust for the teacher or educator’s specific interests, whereas participating in the entire training allowed her to acquire a more holistic understanding of the different aspects that influence learning. In addition to (i) an introductory master lecture by an internationally renowned expert in the field, each module included: (ii) a round-table in which select common teaching practices were discussed in light of scientific evidence (iii) a laboratory phase, in which trainees underwent appositely prepared learning experiences in which common learning strategies (including jigsaws, live-action roleplay, game-based learning etc.) were used to further enhance discussion and reflection upon the content of the module. Finally (iv) select real-life experiences (cases) were presented and their principles and implementation discussed. A final module was devised specifically to help teachers develop a lesson plan based on the strategies discussed during the training. The original SoL training course provided a series of advantages compared to most state-of-the-art teacher training programs, since it addressed the need for grounding, identifying the set of variables to comprehend and enhance the learning process, based on an extensive recollection of experimental studies and literature in educational neuroscience. This led to the introduction of strategies and methods presented are transversal to all disciplines and levels of instruction. Taken together, WE experience with the SoL project provides the relevant neuroscience-informed framework that forms the theoretical backbone of the UNITE project in conjunction with the specific expertise and skills of partners.

Key persons involved in the project

Donatella Solda

Co-founder of Wonderful Education, a company operating on learning, education and innovation. In 2019 she co-designed and currently manages Future Education Modena, the first EdTech hub in Italy, of which she is the director. In the last 2 years she has consulted on education policy design for the Government of Saudi Arabia (National Assessment, Teachers Certification and Career development; Human Capability Development Program) and in South Africa (Digitization of K12 Education system, M&S DELL Foundation). In the period February 2012 – June 2018, she has been a member of the Technical Secretariat and then Executive Director in the Cabinet of 3 Ministers of Education, University and Research, where she has drafted and implemented various policies on the innovation of the National Education system, including K12 evaluation system; in 2014 she worked at the design and implementation of the school reform “La Buona Scuola” and, since 2015, she co-authored a National Digital School Plan, a five-year policy investing 1.2 Billion Eur in the K12 system. In that capacity, she represented the MoE in various international fora (Commission of the EU – working groups and infringement procedures; OECD macroeconomic evaluation and skill strategy; sherpa in the G7, Japan; working groups at the United Nations). She has previously also consulted for the Italian Department for Development and Economic Cohesion, the Department for Institutional Reform Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Andrea Tinterri

Andrea Tinterri is Neuroscience expert at Future Education Modena. He has a PhD in Developmental Neurobiology obtained at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. He has a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience obtained at the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Siena. He is PM of the «School of Learning» project. Among his research interest is Neurobiology of memory and learning, neuroscience of attention and distraction, the neurobiology of motivation.