Empowering vulnerable people with serious games and gamification

Although many people will associate games with entertainment and leisure, games can also aim more serious purposes, such as training or education. Games with such goals are called serious games. In addition, gamification means that a (serious) task is enhanced with game elements. Examples of serious games and gamification can be seen in many aspects of daily life. Loyalty programs of stores, educational games in schools, fitness wearables and their gamified applications, rehabilitation games, and so on. In this dissertation, the focus is on a specific domain in which serious games and gamification can create societal benefit, namely by using them to empower vulnerable target groups. In the first part of this dissertation, a literature review is performed to understand the domain of serious games and gamification for vulnerable target groups. Based on this review, research gaps can be identified. Moreover, the review resulted in a taxonomy that is used throughout the dissertation to classify different games and applications. In the following parts of the dissertation, projects addressing two different target groups and in total three vulnerabilities are discussed. The first target group is older adults, who are vulnerable in different ways. In this dissertation, safety risks for doorstep scams and health risks through malnutrition are addressed. The first vulnerability is addressed by a serious game using interactive scenarios of doorstep scams. A diet tracking system that was used to support participants in a diet trial addressed the latter vulnerability. The second target group is young adults, which is an age group with a vulnerable mental well-being. The last part of this dissertation aims to study how gamification can be used to enhance self-compassion among young adults via an online 6-weeks training program, to increase their resilience in the face of mental well-being difficulties. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies can be used to personalize and adapt the experience of a game to users. Tone of voice analysis was used to influence the progression in scenarios of the serious game about doorstep scams, and it gave players the possibility to assess the assertiveness of their voice. Machine learning algorithms were used to create personalized meal recommendations that can be used to improve the user experience of the diet tracking system for older adults. These algorithms base their recommendations on information about the historical intake of users to suggest meals and to additional items during meal editing. This makes the process of registering a meal less time-consuming. Sentiment analysis is used to adapt responses of the system in an exercise from the self-compassion training program. In addition, a topic detection algorithm was designed to assign one topic from a predefined set of topics to a note by a user of the training program. With this information, users can choose different types of situations to use in the exercises: frequently or rarely discussed topics. Aside from those techniques, knowledge representation is used in all projects, which is important for serious games/gamified applications since they are often based on expert and/or domain knowledge. This dissertation contributes to understanding the domain of serious games and gamification to empower vulnerable groups. The work also contributes to the research on the development of applications within that domain. On top of that, it contributes to understanding how AI techniques can be used to offer (personalized) features that enrich serious games or gamified applications. Finally, for each of the project centered parts, the results that are found in those parts contribute to the research in those specific fields

Integrating gamification into a system to improve diet compliance for elderly users

Nowadays, gamification is applied in many areas, including healthy lifestyle promotion. In earlier work, a system has been proposed to stimulate diet compliance and adherence of participants of a trial within the PROMISS-project. In this paper, we describe the design of a gamified version of this system. The goal of the gamification is to further stimulate diet compliance and adherence to the system, but also to increase the knowledge about the diet and make the use of the system more fun. To do so, we implemented gamification elements (profile page, achievements, mini-games, and a reward garden) to address multiple behaviour change techniques. Based on a small evaluation, the system has been improved so that it can be used by participants of the PROMISS trial. At the end of this paper, future improvements are suggested in the future work sectio

Evaluation of Interventions in Blended Learning Using a Communication Skills Serious Game

Serious games often employ a scripted dialogue for player interaction with a virtual character. In our serious game Communicate, a domain expert develops a structured, scripted scenario as a sequence of potential interactions in an authoring tool. A player is often a student learning communication skills and a virtual character represents a person that a student talks to. In the original version of Communicate, a player `converses' with a virtual character by clicking on one of the multiple statement options. Since 2018, we perform blended learning sessions for final year computer science students using Communicate. Our goal is to improve these sessions and in this paper, we apply the action research method over three semesters to iteratively improve these blended learning sessions. In the first semester, our baseline, we conduct sessions where students play a scenario in multiple choice format. In the second semester, we enhance Communicate by enabling a student to enter open text input in an improved scenario. In the third semester, we enhance a session by incorporating peer teaching. Students fill in an evaluation survey after a session and we compare the evaluation of students from the three semesters. Results show that student ratings are significantly higher in sessions incorporating peer teaching compared to the baseline

Game based learning as an alternative during the Covid-19 epidemic based on K-13 for Indonesia elementary schools

Serious-game is a new online learning approach, which is proven to increase students' knowledge and skills. During the COVID-19 period,students, especially in Indonesia, still experienced several obstacles in taking online learning using e-learning. For example, students quickly got bored. Therefore, to increase student interest in education, it is necessary to develop serious-game, with a fun element. In this study, to improve students' engagement with learning materials, we made a K-13 based serious-game. This paper describe it based on three aspects of Bloom's taxonomy and apply the activity theory model. At the validation stage, the validator consist of 20 multimedia experts, teachers,and students,respectively. In the testing phase, we tested serious-game on 60 students from elementary schools in East Java. Testing did by giving a questionnaire before playing and after playing 10, 25, and 30 times.They were testing to determine the improvement in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor students. The students' mean score during the pre-test was 58.23. After playing ten times, the students' mean score was 65.95. After playing 25 times, the students' achievement increased to 72.54, and after playing 30 times, the students' understanding rose to 79.61. The test results on 60 students stated that there was a significant positive increase. After playing, students' improvement proved to be balanced because the proposed design considered three aspects of Bloom's Taxonomy

The civil and family law needs of Indigenous people in Victoria

This report identifies the most pressing legal needs of Indigenous Victorians, which involve housing, discrimination and debt.The report presents key findings and recommendations of research conducted in 2012- 2013 by the Indigenous Legal Needs Project (ILNP) in Victoria. The ILNP is a national project. Its aims are to:identify and analyse the legal needs of Indigenous communities in non-criminal areas of law (including discrimination, housing and tenancy, child protection, employment, credit and debt, wills and estates, and consumer-related matters); and provide an understanding of how legal service delivery might work more effectively to address identified civil and family law needs of Indigenous communities. ILNP research is intended to benefit Indigenous people by improving access to civil and family law justice

Tourism in contemporary cities. Proceedings of the International Tourism Studies Association Conference: University of Greenwich, London, UK 17–19 August 2016 Conference Proceedings

The 6th International Tourism Studies Association (ITSA) Biennial conference was held at the University of Greenwich, London, England from 17‐19 August 2016. This was the first time that the conference had been held in Europe and it provided a unique opportunity to meet, hear from and network with tourism scholars and professionals from across Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. ITSA has a mission to encourage interaction and cooperation between developing and developed countries and the conference was successful in attracting 130 delegates from 29 countries. The main theme of the conference was 'Tourism in Contemporary Cities' with four conference sub‐themes of ‘Tourism Cities and Urban Tourism’, ‘The Chinese Market for European Tourism’, ‘River, Cruise and Maritime Tourism’, and ‘Heritage Tourism in Cities’, The subthemes were chosen to reflect the unique location of the conference on the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and London which is Europe’s most visited tourist destination. The conference also presented ‘Dark Tourism and Cities’ and ‘Tourism and Communist Heritage’ as special sessions

Object narratives, imaginings and multilingual communities: young people’s digital stories in the making

This paper draws on research from a global 5-year project, Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling (2012-2017), which links language and intercultural learning with literacy, active citizenship and the arts. A critical ethnographic approach was adopted in the research project and the multilingual digital stories were an integral part of the research process. With the project’s focus on multilingualism and creation of bilingual digital texts, young people had to imagine how to use language in new contexts, uncover narratives around objects, and negotiate interfaces between different cultural landscapes. The research findings revealed the complexity of multilingual digital storytelling and how young people (aged 6-18 years old) learnt to become meaning makers discovering their own voices in unfamiliar contexts. Through these digital stories the young people forged strong links with the past and created new multilingual communities