Shall we play a game?

In response to real and perceived short-comings in the quality and productivity of software engineering practices and projects, professionally-endorsed graduate and post-graduate curriculum guides have been developed to meet evolving technical developments and industry demands. Each of these curriculum guidelines identifies better software engineering management skills and soft, peopleware skills as critical for all graduating students, but they provide little guidance on how to achieve this. One possible way is to use a serious game — a game designed to educate players about some of the dynamic complexities of the field in a safe and inexpensive environment. This thesis presents the results of a qualitative research project that used a simple game of a software project to see if and how games could contribute to better software project management education; and if they could, then what features and attributes made them most efficacious. That is, shall we— should we— play games in software engineering management? The primary research tool for this project was a game called Simsoft. Physically, Simsoft comes in two pieces. There is an A0-sized printed game board around which the players gather to discuss the current state of their project and to consider their next move. The board shows the flow of the game while plastic counters are used to represent the staff of the project. Poker chips represent the team’s budget, with which they can purchase more staff, and from which certain game events may draw or reimburse amounts depending on decisions made during the course of the game. There is also a simple Java-based dashboard, through which the players can see the current and historical state of the project in a series of reports and messages; and they can adjust the project’s settings. The engine behind Simsoft is a system dynamics model which embodies the fundamental causal relationships of simple software development projects. In Simsoft game sessions, teams of students, and practicing project managers and software engineers managed a hypothetical software development project with the aim of completing the project on time and within budget (with poker chips left over). Based on the starting scenario of the game, information provided during the game, and their own real-world experience, the players made decisions about how to proceed— whether to hire more staff or reduce the number, what hours should be worked, and so on. After each decision set had been entered, the game was run for another next time period, (a week, a month, or a quarter). The game was now in a new state which the players had to interpret from the game board and decide how to proceed. The findings showed that games can contribute to better software engineering management education and help bridge the pedagogical gaps in current curriculum guidelines. However, they can’t do this by themselves and for best effect they should be used in conjunction with other pedagogical tools. The findings also showed that simple games and games in which the players are able to relate the game world to an external context are the most efficacious

Shall we play?:Listening to Children’s Voices using a Playful Approach

There is a paucity of research that has effectively listened to children's voices on matters important to them and has asked them how they would like to be listened to. This study used a playful approach to listen to children's voices about play spaces in their primary school. The research questions were:•How can a playful approach be used to listen to children's voices about what children would like their new play space to look like?•Why did children choose particular resources to communicate their thoughts about those spaces?Forty-two primary school children (ages 5-6 years) chose which method/s they would like to engage with to share their voices from blocks, clay, drawings, percussion instruments and loose parts storytelling. In line with our Playful Research Ethics Framework (PREF), interactive ethics sessions were delivered using puppets, music and Makaton and on-going assent was monitored.This article focuses on clay and blocks data; children's favourite and preferred methods to listen to their voices. Rich data were collected through artefacts, photographs and conversations. The findings suggest that incorporating a playful approach and providing multiple ateliers and resources to choose from, can ensure children's voices can be heard and amplified.The study makes several original contributions, namely, designing a Playful Research Ethics Framework, aligning the research design of multiple ateliers with free-flow play and including a large sample size. This study also highlighted children's agency within the research process as children chose how and when their voices should be heard, and invited children to share their preferences for being listened to in future

A Survey Of The Leisure Time Activities Of The Negro Physical Education Teachers Of Houston, Texas

The old adage, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy has long since become an accepted and confirmed statement among people of the world. Although at all periods of history there have been persons who ap~reciated the true value of recreation, popular opinion has frequently been lacking in sympathy toward those who employ leisure for other than strictly utilitarian purposes. This has been true of our O\ffl country as well as of others. It has not always been considered respectable for American youth to have spare time or to use it as they please. The Methodist Discipline of 1792, outlining the policy of Cokesbury College toward leisure, says: We prohibit play in the strongest terms ••• The student shall rise at five o\u27clock ••• summer and winter ••• Their recreation shall be gardening, walking, riding, and bathing without doors, and the carpenter\u27s joiner\u27s and cabinet-maker\u27s bench within doors ••• A person skilled in gardening shall be appointed to overlook the students ••••••• in this recreation ••••• A master shall always.ys be present at the time of bathing. Only one shall bathe at a time and no one shall remain in the water above a minute. No student shall be allowed to bathe in the river ••• The students shall be indulged in nothing that the world calls play. Let this rule be observed with the strictest nicety; for most who play \u27When they are young will play when they are old. If the elders who imposed these Spartan regulations could survey the present-day scene, they would be astonished at the extent to which play is tolerated and actually encouraged. They would find the idea generally accepted that it is normal for people to wish to relax from their usual labors and to pursue various activities for which their ordinary occupations offer no scope. They would discover, no doubt with dismay, that the cultivation or leisure interests is not only looked upon as harmless but is considered to have definite values 1 to the individual and to society. In 1906 a group of men and women met at Washington and established the Playground and Recreation Association of America. The aim of the organization has been to induce both municipal and rural communities to establish well-directed playgrounds and recreation centers. It was also during this period the city governments came to recognize that their obligations to young Americans included the providing of facilities for play

Volume 08, Number 09 (September 1890)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Musical Study Abroad Music Study in America vs. Germany What Shall We Play? Musical Thinking and Doing Influence of School Music on Piano Pupils Music for the Masses Value of Pupils\u27 Musicales in Cultivating Confidence Value of Pupils\u27 Recitals Pupils\u27 Musicales Letter from a Progressive Teacher L\u27Arpa Cost of Studying Abroadhttps://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/etude/1341/thumbnail.jp

Two Children of the Foothills

Preface: If this record of a happy year spent with two children will help to make some other woman study more earnestly Froebel\u27s great book I shall be satisfied. To any in whose heart it may awaken this impulse I would recommend Mr. Denton J. Snider\u27s Mother\u27s-Play-Songs , and Miss Susan E. Blow\u27s Letters to a Mother from both of which books I have been permitted to quote freely. I wish also to acknowledge my obligations to D. Appleton and Company for their courtesy in allowing me avail myself of the illustrations from their Mottos and Commentaries of Froebel\u27s Mother-Play-Book , which are the reduced fac-simile of the larger pictures we used with these children. - E.H.https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/harrison-writings/1033/thumbnail.jp

Logical Varieties of Instrumental Reasons

Instrumental reasons play a central role in our practical deliberations because we apply the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable not only to beliefs, but to actions also. The question of what one has an instrumental reason to do is an important substantive question that is relevant to the general theory of practical reasoning and to ethics, too. It will be my object in the present study to show that we have different kinds of instrumental reasons, which depend solely on their logical structure. To this end, I shall in the first section deal with the validity of instrumental reasoning in general. In the remainder of the paper I outline five types of instrumental reasons and show how they depend on their logical structure. In so doing, I hope to shed some light on the concept of instrumental reasons, which is not well understood

Spartan Daily, September 27, 1934

Volume 23, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2184/thumbnail.jp

Credible Equilibria in Games with Utility Changing during the Play

Publicado por Tilburg Center Economic Research 1992Whenever one deals with an interactive decision situation of long duration, one has to take into account that priorities of the participants may change during the conflicto In this paper we propose an extensiveform game model to handle such situations and suggest and study a solution concept, called credible equilibrium, which generalizes the concept of Nash equilibrium. We also discuss possible variants to this concept and applications of the model to other types of games