The Role of Game in Promoting Museum Education Communication

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A Validation of Minecraft

UID/HIS/04666/2019The use of world-simulation videogames for cultural heritage (CH) communication presents one of the greatest opportunities for engaging people with the safeguarding of cultural resources. However, not all simulation videogames have the capacity to transmit heritage values efficiently. This article reviews the use of serious and commercial videogames in CH to frame and properly identify characteristics for the selection and assessment of videogames in the context of cultural communication. Based on the analysis of the capacities of videogames to motivate, immerse and represent reality, the videogame Minecraft is identified as one of the optimal solutions to represent and promote engagement with the cultural built environment. As such, the authors assessed the capacity of the videogame Minecraft to be used as an efficient tool to communicate built heritage environments, considering identified criteria on immersion, motivation, and fidelity on simulation.publishersversionpublishe

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

Digital 3D Technologies for Humanities Research and Education: An Overview

Digital 3D modelling and visualization technologies have been widely applied to support research in the humanities since the 1980s. Since technological backgrounds, project opportunities, and methodological considerations for application are widely discussed in the literature, one of the next tasks is to validate these techniques within a wider scientific community and establish them in the culture of academic disciplines. This article resulted from a postdoctoral thesis and is intended to provide a comprehensive overview on the use of digital 3D technologies in the humanities with regards to (1) scenarios, user communities, and epistemic challenges; (2) technologies, UX design, and workflows; and (3) framework conditions as legislation, infrastructures, and teaching programs. Although the results are of relevance for 3D modelling in all humanities disciplines, the focus of our studies is on modelling of past architectural and cultural landscape objects via interpretative 3D reconstruction methods

A serious game-based solution to prevent bullying

This paper presents a Serious Game with the main purpose of inducing attitude changes as a way to prevent bullying, in a target audience of young people between 10 and 12 years old. The rationale for prevention is: first, to help victims of these aggressive episodes to acquire or improve competencies in avoiding or dealing with future real bullying situations; and, second, to promote empathy towards the victims in bystanders. A back office application complements the game, providing substantial assistance to psychologists while using the game with patients in therapy or in research work. Both components, the game and the back office, were evaluated with volunteers. The user study lead us to the conclusion that the current version of the game holds good potential in bullying prevention: the young people that played the game in a continuous time span, at the end of this testing process have expressed improvements in their bullying prevention strategies. The back office application was positively assessed by the psychologists who tested it. The game deals with strong social features, such as number of friends and invitations to social events (e.g. a birthday party), to which young people give much importance. Additionally, it offers a variability of scenarios and consequences of actions, taking into account the user's performance in the game. The main factors that make the presented solution stand out in comparison with other similar bullying prevention solutions are mainly the following: it includes a back office application to assist therapists with data management features; the role of the player in the game can be chosen accordingly to his own profile; it is possible to play even outside a therapy session (e.g. at home) and it is a portable solution.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Game-Based Learning, Gamification in Education and Serious Games

The aim of this book is to present and discuss new advances in serious games to show how they could enhance the effectiveness and outreach of education, advertising, social awareness, health, policies, etc. We present their use in structured learning activities, not only with a focus on game-based learning, but also on the use of game elements and game design techniques to gamify the learning process. The published contributions really demonstrate the wide scope of application of game-based approaches in terms of purpose, target groups, technologies and domains and one aspect they have in common is that they provide evidence of how effective serious games, game-based learning and gamification can be

Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real

Innovation through Cross-Fertilization: Serious games and gamification in the EU-funded research projects

[eng] In recent years, ecosystems of innovation have gained substantial momentum in academic research. As a response to recent calls in open innovation literature for novel research, this doctoral thesis extends the study of the process and ecosystems of innovation in projects that include serious games and gamification by considering the cross-fertilization of knowledge and technologies. Organizations’ orchestration of activities within their activity systems and transformation of their business models through innovation to realize opportunities with the objective to increase value creation are part of the topic of this dissertation. It has endeavoured to improve the understanding of how cross-fertilized alliances are formed, what their outcomes are, what causes them to generate value (or not) and what capabilities organizations need in order to successfully manage and reap value from the innovation process. For this purpose, two approaches that support innovation have been complementarily taken into account: the knowledge-technological perspective and the management perspective. These perspectives are analysed with the information retrieved from a database of 87 H2020 projects including serious games and/or gamification, 519 organizations and 597 observations. Later, in order to get more insights into the Innovation Management Strategies, a project coordinators survey was conducted. The Knowledge-Technology perspective presents how creating adequate multidisciplinary knowledge and technology is fundamental to ensuring the long-term success of an emerging technology including serious games and/or gamification, and how important is the research and innovation that takes place in the practitioners’ communities. The Management perspective presents the analysis of the innovation management strategies that boost the cross-fertilization of technologies that include serious games and/or gamification. These strategies were analysed by considering literature on innovation and network theories, absorptive capacity and dynamic capabilities. Some personal interviews were conducted with independent experts to understand and have elements for the analysis and discussion of the previous results. Findings suggest that the multidisciplinarity of a project is highly influenced by the creation of knowledge and technology. Furthermore, the management strategies boosting high levels of cross-fertilization of knowledge and technologies -including serious games and/or gamification- are principally market and customer-oriented strategies. Practical and methodological contributions from this study could enrich innovation literature from the point of view of technological and management approaches. The thesis concludes with fruitful avenues for future research.[nor] I de senere årene har økosystemer for innovasjon fått vesentlig fart i akademisk forskning. Nylig har det oppstått et større behov for mer forskning i området åpen innovasjon. Som et respons til dette, utvider denne avhandlingen seg på studier om prosesser og økosystemer av innovasjon i prosjekter. Prosjektene inkluderer seriøse spill og det som kalles for gamification. Målet er å vurdere kryss-befruktning av kunnskap og teknologi. En del av tema for denne avhandling er hvordan organisasjoner, gjennom innovasjon, virkeliggjør mulighetene for å øke verdiskapning. Dette vurderes ut ifra organisasjoners orkestrering av aktiviteter innenfor deres aktivitetssystemer og transformasjon av forretningsmodellene. Det har lenge vært forsøkt på å forbedre forståelsen av hvordan kryss-befruktet allianser dannes, hva er resultatene, hva skal til for å generere verdi (eller ikke), og hvilke evner organisasjoner trenger for å kunne forvalte og innhente verdier. På bakgrunn av dette, har to tilnærminger som støtter innovasjon, blitt komplementært tatt med i betraktningen. Disse er, den kunnskaps-teknologiske perspektiv og ledelses perspektivet. Perspektivene blir analysert med informasjon hentet fra en database med 87 H2020 prosjekter, inkludert seriøse spill og eller gamification. Det er totalt 519 organisasjoner og 597 observasjoner. I senere tid, for å få et større innblikk i strategier for innovasjonsledelse, ble det gjennomført en prosjekt koordinator undersøkelse. Det kunnskaps-teknologiske perspektivet innebærer hvordan en kan skape tilstrekkelig tverrfaglig kunnskap. Her er teknologi grunnleggende for å sikre langsiktig suksess til en fremtredende teknologi, som inkluderer seriøse spill og eller gamification, og viktigheten av forskningen og innovasjonen som fremkommer i utøvernes samfunn. På den andre siden, ledelses perspektivet inkluderer analysen av innovasjonsstrategier som har som mål å øke kryss-befruktning av teknologier som inkluderer seriøse spill og eller gamification. Strategiene ble analysert ved å vurdere innovasjon- og nettverks teorier, evnen til å absorbere, og dynamisk kapasitet litteratur. For å forstå og samle elementer for analysen og diskusjonen av tidligere resultater, bestemte personlige intervjuer ble gjennomført med uavhengige eksperter. Funnene viser at flerfaglighet av et prosjekt er sterkt påvirket av etablering av kunnskap og teknologi. Videre, ledelses strategier er med på å øke nivåer av kryss-befruktning av kunnskap og teknologi. Dette inkluderer seriøse spill og eller gamification, men hovedsakelig markeds- og kundeorienterte strategier. De praktiske og metodologiske bidrag fra denne studien er med på å berike innovasjons litteratur fra det teknologiske og det ledelsesmessig synspunkt. Avhandlingen avsluttes med fruktbare veier for fremtidig forskning.[cat] Al llarg dels darrers anys, els ecosistemes d’innovació han pres un impuls substancial en la recerca acadèmica. Com a resposta a les darreres crides a noves recerques en la literatura sobre innovació oberta, aquesta tesi doctoral amplia l’estudi del procés i els ecosistemes d’innovació en projectes que inclouen jocs seriosos i gamificació al considerar la fertilització creuada de coneixement i tecnologies. L’orquestració d’activitats per part de les organitzacions dins dels seus sistemes d’activitats i la transformació dels seus models comercials a través de la innovació per generar oportunitats amb l’objectiu d’augmentar la creació de valor són part dels temes d’aquesta tesi. Hi ha hagut un esforç per millorar la comprensió de com es formen aliances amb la fertilització creuada, quins són els seus resultats, què fa que generin valor (o no) i quines capacitats necessiten les organitzacions per gestionar i assolir valor a través del procés d’innovació. Amb aquest propòsit, dos enfocaments que recolzen la innovació s’han tingut en compte de manera complementària: la perspectiva coneixement-tecnologia i la perspectiva de gestió. Aquestes perspectives s’analitzen amb la informació obtinguda d’una base de dades de 87 projectes H2020 que inclouen jocs seriosos i/o gamificació, 519 organitzacions i 597 observacions. Posteriorment, amb l’objectiu d’obtenir informació addicional sobre les Estratègies de Gestió de la Innovació, es va realitzar una enquesta adreçada als coordinadors dels projectes. La perspectiva de Coneixement i Tecnologia mostra com la creació adequada de coneixement i tecnologia multidisciplinaris és fonamental per garantir l’èxit a llarg termini d’una tecnologia emergent, que inclogui els jocs seriosos i la gamificació, i com d’important és la recerca i la innovació que té lloc en les comunitats de professionals. La perspectiva de Gestió mostra l’anàlisi de les estratègies de gestió de la innovació que fomenten la fertilització creuada de tecnologies que inclouen jocs seriosos i/o gamificació. Aquestes estratègies es van analitzar a partir de la literatura en innovació i teories de xarxes, capacitat d’absorció i capacitats dinàmiques. També, es van dur a terme entrevistes personals amb experts independents per comprendre i tenir elements per a l’anàlisi i la discussió dels resultats anteriors. Els resultats suggereixen que la multidisciplinarietat d’un projecte està molt influenciada per la creació de coneixement i tecnologia. A més, les estratègies de gestió que impulsen els alts nivells de fertilització creuada de coneixement i tecnologies –inclosos els jocs seriosos i/o la gamificació- són principalment estratègies orientades al mercat i al client. Les contribucions pràctiques i metodològiques d’aquest estudi podrien enriquir la literatura sobre innovació des del punt de vista dels enfocaments tecnològics i de gestió. La tesi conclou amb suggeriments de línies de recerca futures.[spa] Durante los últimos años, los ecosistemas de innovación han tomado un impulso sustancial en la investigación académica. Como respuesta a las recientes llamadas a nuevas investigaciones en la literatura sobre innovación abierta, esta tesis doctoral amplía el estudio del proceso y los ecosistemas de innovación en proyectos que incluyen juegos serios y gamificación al considerar la fertilización cruzada de conocimiento y tecnologías. La orquestación de actividades por parte de las organizaciones dentro de sus sistemas de actividades y la transformación de sus modelos comerciales a través de la innovación para generar oportunidades con el objetivo de aumentar la creación de valor son parte de los temas de esta tesis. Ha habido un esfuerzo por mejorar la comprensión de cómo se forman alianzas con fertilización cruzada, cuáles son sus resultados, qué hace que generen valor (o no) y qué capacidades necesitan las organizaciones para gestionar y cosechar valor a través del proceso de innovación. Con este propósito, dos enfoques que apoyan la innovación se han tenido en cuenta de manera complementaria: la perspectiva conocimiento-tecnología y la perspectiva de gestión. Estas perspectivas se analizan con la información obtenida de una base de datos de 87 proyectos H2020 que incluyen juegos serios y/o gamificación, 519 organizaciones y 597 observaciones. Posteriormente, con el objetivo de obtener información adicional sobre las Estrategias de Gestión de la Innovación, se realizó una encuesta a los coordinadores de los proyectos. La perspectiva de Conocimiento y Tecnología muestra cómo la creación adecuada de conocimiento y tecnología multidisciplinarios es fundamental para garantizar el éxito a largo plazo de una tecnología emergente, que incluya los juegos serios y la gamificación, y cómo de importante es la investigación y la innovación en las comunidades de profesionales. La perspectiva de Gestión muestra el análisis de las estrategias de gestión de la innovación que fomentan la fertilización cruzada de tecnologías que incluyen juegos serios y/o gamificación. Estas estrategias se analizaron a partir de la literatura en innovación y teorías de redes, la capacidad de absorción y las capacidades dinámicas. También, se realizaron entrevistas personales con expertos independientes para comprender y tener elementos para el análisis y la discusión de los resultados anteriores. Los hallazgos sugieren que la multidisciplinariedad de un proyecto está muy influenciada por la creación de conocimiento y tecnología. Además, las estrategias de gestión que impulsan los altos niveles de fertilización cruzada de conocimientos y tecnologías -incluidos los juegos serios y/o la gamificación- son principalmente estrategias orientadas al mercado y al cliente. Las contribuciones prácticas y metodológicas de este estudio podrían enriquecer la literatura sobre innovación desde el punto de vista de los enfoques tecnológicos y de gestión. La tesis concluye con sugerencias de líneas de investigación futuras

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for June to December 2015

The 33rd edition of the conference list covers selected events that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2015 are complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held from January 2016 onward. In order to protect the privacy of individuals, only URLs are used in the listing as this enables readers of the list to obtain event information without submitting their e-mail addresses to anyone. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next