The current work is a proposal for Moodle administrators who aim to provide content creators and teachers with capabilities to describe in a semi-automatic way their learning resources with LOM-based metadata and make these metadata available to search service providers so that other stakeholders can easily find and retrieve them. It was composed within ARETE project to support reusability and discov-erability of 3D/AR and other types of educational resources included in the project’s Moodle digital repository.
Aiming on utilising previous work on this domain, the code of two exist-ing plugins was modified and enriched to serve the project’s needs. This paper aims to demonstrate in detail two plugins that will be utilised in ARETE’s Moodle digital repository to support the discoverability of learning resources by creating and exposing their metadata to make them available for harvesting. The content in the ARETE repository is particularly relevant to 3D/AR learning activities created through an XR authoring toolkit. Nevertheless, educational content in other formats continues to be supported by the aforementioned plugins.
The integration of IEEE-LOM and OAI-PMH standards to a Moodle repository seems to be a feasible way to enhance the development of learning content by utilizing relevant already existing resources that can be easily found and retrieved. However, the difficulty of finding service providers that could support the collection of learning resource metadata and be willing to build search engines on top of them suggests the need to consider different approaches.

The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the teaching and learning process has profoundly altered the face of education over the course of the last few decades, from the use of web-supplemented courses, to web-dependent courses, mixed mode courses and fully online courses. Education has experienced a forced shift to online teaching and learning due to social distancing. Prof. Mangina will discuss, based on her own experiences as an academic and a mother of three, what has changed and what EdTech researchers can do to help right now and in the foreseeable future. Prof. Mangina is an advocate of Open Education and the utilisation of emerging technologies. Technology has presented educators everywhere with new opportunities to impart knowledge and help students to learn. In the last couple of decades alone, it has enabled teachers to make huge strides in the classroom. Augmented reality has become one of the biggest drivers in the tech economy, but until recently, it didn’t get much of a look-in within the education system. This is something that Professor Eleni Mangina is trying to change. She is a Professor in UCD School of Computer Science since 2002 and has secured more than €10 million for research and innovation projects in emerging technologies.

One of the projects is called ARETE (Augmented Reality Interactive Educational System) and is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework programme. It follows on from Professor Mangina’s previous project, AHA (ADHD Augmented) which focused on augmented reality educational tools for children aged 9-11 with a diagnosis of ADHD. ARETE builds on the work completed in that project and has been designed and pilots Augmented Reality (AR) educational tools for classrooms in countries across Europe. The new project focuses on improving literacy, STEM subjects, behaviour in the classroom and advancing the teachers’ digital skills. The key note will focus on the outcomes of a number of projects lead from Prof. Mangina within the educational setting and will discuss the resilience of education during the pandemic and the opportunities XR technologies bring in the new era of learning and living.