A Serious Game Approach for the Electro-Mobility Sector

Serious Games (SGs) represent a new approach to improve learning processes more effectively and economically than traditional methods. This paper aims to present a SG approach for the electro-mobility context, in order to encourage the use of electric light vehicles. The design of the SG is based on the typical elements of the classic "game" with a real gameplay with different purposes. In this work, the proposed SG aims to raise awareness on environmental issues caused by mobility and actively involve users, on improving livability in the city and on real savings using alternative means to traditional vehicles. The objective of the designed tool is to propose elements of fun and entertainment for tourists or users of electric vehicles in the cities, while giving useful information about the benefits of using such vehicles, discovering touristic and interesting places in the city to discover. In this way, the user is stimulated to explore the artistic and historical aspects of the city through an effective learning process: he/she is encouraged to search the origins and the peculiarities of the monuments.Comment: This paper has been presented at 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC

DMSTE publications & research projects : a catalogue of publications and research projects by members of the Department of Mathematics, Science & Technical Education within the Faculty of Education of the University of Malta

This catalogue charts the past and present research and gives a direction for future initiatives. As such, it celebrates the past while looking at the future. Like the Maltese rubble wall, the catalogue stretches across different landscapes, is made up of unique pieces of stone all of different shapes and sizes, but as they come together they build a solid wall. As each stone (or each research project) is pieced together to shape the rubble wall, they join older stones (older research projects), building on without obscuring each other. And as the rubble wall is formed, it changes the landscape according to the different needs of the society that is building it. Like the changing face of the rubble wall, the catalogue is not a static historical record but a process of collective learning, the narrative of a research journey and the reflections of a departmental community of practice that continues to change and evolve through the academic conversations and research initiatives.peer-reviewe

Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Reality guides for life before death

The rise of the digital game industry has brought along a plethora of game design tools and frameworks. They are likely to be named specifically as design frameworks for games because their creators have been positioned themselves on the field of game research due to their personal interest in games or due to the fast rising game business. There appears often not to be a reason why these tools and frameworks could not be used in any other kind of interaction design too. Furthermore, even the definition of a game is elusive. In effort to be able to consider what is a game and what is not, the concept of Reality Guides was developed. A Reality Guide guides the user in their surrounding reality. By its definition it is not necessarily a game, and a game by its definition is not necessarily a Reality Guide, but it is possible for something to be both. Reality Guides can come in the form of paper booklets, human guides, digital applications, or something else. The focus in this thesis is in guides that are mixed reality digital applications. Looking at Reality Guides through several game design frameworks, a new theoretical model was constructed: The GEM Game Experience Model is a result of Grounded Theory based work to find a single underlaying model behind all the existing ones. Two non-game initiatives have been worked on with the guidance of Reality Guide thinking and GEM thinking: Life Before Death aims at producing services that will help people with premature end of life circumstances to make the best possible out of their remaining life. Reality Guides for the end-of-life. Also, in the initiative of creating a community around Digital Theology a project course was organized using gamer community originated Discord as a central Reality Guide for the course participated by students from four continents

Virtual Heritage

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments

Virtual Heritage

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments

ANYCaRE: a role-playing game to investigate crisis decision-making and communication challenges in weather-related hazards

This study proposes a role-playing experiment to explore the value of modern impact-based weather forecasts on the decision-making process to (i) issue warnings and manage the official emergency response under uncertainty and (ii) communicate and trigger protective action at different levels of the warning system across Europe. Here, flood or strong-wind game simulations seek to represent the players' realistic uncertainties and dilemmas embedded in the real-time forecasting-warning processes. The game was first tested in two scientific workshops in Finland and France, where European researchers, developers, forecasters and civil protection representatives played the simulations. Two other game sessions were organized afterwards (i) with undergraduate university students in France and (ii) with Finnish stakeholders involved in the management of hazardous weather emergencies. First results indicate that multi-model developments and crowdsourcing tools increase the level of confidence in the decision-making under pressure. We found that the role-playing approach facilitates interdisciplinary cooperation and argumentation on emergency response in a fun and interactive manner. The ANYCaRE experiment was proposed, therefore, as a valuable learning tool to enhance participants' understanding of the complexities and challenges met by various actors in weather-related emergency management.</p

The Maltese gift : tourist encounters with the self and the other in later life

This thesis takes a case study approach of the tourist-host encounter in the Maltese Islands, an ex-British Colony and older British tourists (OBTs). OBTs are an important source market for tourism as this is set to grow in volume and propensity. The research investigates how OBTs negotiate identity and memory through their narratives. It does so by examining what is being transacted at a social, cultural and symbolic level between the Maltese and the OBT. It then enquires as to the extent the previous colonial relationship is influencing the present ex-colonial and neocolonial Anglo-Maltese tourist encounter. The ethnographic study employs a two-pronged strategy. The first interrogates the terms under which spatial and temporal dimensions of the cultural production of the post colony, and the ongoing representations of specific spaces and experiences, are circulated and interpreted by these tourists. The second examines the relationship through the ‘exchange lens' which is manifested along social and cultural lines within the Maltese tourism landscape context. The research indicates that older adult British visitors have a ‘love’ for the island, which is reciprocated by the Maltese Anglophiles, in spite of some tensions between the two nations in the past. The relationship extends beyond a simple economic transaction but is based on more of a social, symbolic and cultural exchange. This research is one of the first to examine the phenomenon of non-economic capital and gift exchange and the role exchange plays in building relationships at the tourist-host interface. The study concludes that the value, which is placed on the gifts, or capital which are generated or exchanged through the tourist encounter, encourages further visits to the island. Much of this value is based on the significance of Empire to the OBTs who re-discover lost traces of Britishness in Malta through experiencing Anglo-Maltese cultural hybridity. It also advances the view that tourism is really about the self rather than the other - or, at least, that the other is in some senses a mirror of the self

Designing Terminal Encounters with Erikson and Kübler-Ross for Life Before Death

Designing digital interaction for people facing the end-of-life at an early or middle adult life is a challenging task. The user, who may be a person of similar age, culture and social status as the designers, is nevertheless living in a reality nothing short of alien to them. For the designer, approaching the users and considering their circumstances – their reality is extremely stressful. A theoretical framework is built to help the designers. Two psychological theories that address the end-of-life have been fused together through the Grounded Theory paradigm. The first theory is the Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, focusing primarily on the ninth stage. The second theory is the Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, taken in her original, non-sequential manner describing a person’s grief over their own demise (preparatory grief) rather than more general grief. Co-Design, Agile and Design Science Research are brought together with this theoretical framework to assist the user to face their own death and to realistically appreciate that reality, which gives the designers solid ground on which to stand, when facing this ultimate application area. The outcome is a framework of 13 categories of human desires at end-of-life, accompanied with conceptual ideas of how to meet these desires with digital solutions

Fostering creativity through the use of digital tablets (an investigation into the potential of tablet use for creative production among seven- to ten-year-old children in Malta)

Many digital media tools are at children’s disposal today, providing more opportunities for learning and self-expression than ever before. Such opportunities bring new challenges as these tools enter primary schools. A key aim of this thesis is to argue that constructionist, sociocultural and critical pedagogical theories can support the development of a method that can engage children in creative production with digital tablets as a form of self-organised and interdisciplinary learning in the classroom. Qualitative and quantitative methods are used to map the current use of digital devices among seven- to ten-year-old children in Malta from the perspectives of children, parents and teachers. A research method of a three-day workshop aims to engage seven- to ten-year-old children in a project-based exercise. The participants are asked to use digital tablet applications to make story narratives and audio-visual content as a means to engage in self-organised and interdisciplinary learning by making concrete projects. This research demonstrates these children’s current limited use of digital tablets for creative production. The workshops reveal children’s ability and enthusiasm to self-organise in creative production using various digital applications as means to self-expression and creative thought. The implications of this study relate to the national policy to roll out tablets in the primary schools in Malta. This thesis argues that mainstream primary schools in Malta impose a rather limited use of digital tablets leaving no room for seven- to ten-year-old children to creatively express through such tools. While more workshops must be carried out and for longer period than three days, this thesis draws the conclusion that the Maltese educational policy of one-tablet-per-child in primary schools must include children’s interpretations of creativity with such devices and make room for creative expression, as creativity is integral to individuals’ identity, wellbeing and learning