Authoring Game-Based Adaptive Units of Learning with IMS Learning Design and <e-Adventure>

Burgos, D., Moreno-Ger, P., Sierra, J. L., Fernández Manjón, B., & Kooper, R. (2007). Authoring Game-Based Adaptive Units of Learning with IMS Learning Design and <e-Adventure>. International Journal of Learning Technology, 3(3), 252-268.Electronic games and simulations (eGames) are a valuable support for adaptive learning. This adaptation can be based on different inputs, such as the user´s performance, behaviour or cognitive load. Both adaptation and eGames can be modelled with IMS Learning Design or integrated from an external resource. In this article we show the relation between IMS Learning Design and the <e-Adventure> Project when it comes to authoring adaptive Units of Learning integrated with eGames. We first describe the challenges of this objective and the several different solutions on authoring and integration. We also describe the content-centered authoring approach in <e-Adventure>, and the need for a communication service with IMS LD that makes a bi-directional influence on the user’s adaptive learning experience. At the end, we describe a practical example that illustrates how an adaptive IMS LD Unit of Learning with an integrated <e-Adventure> eGame is developed.This paper is partially supported by the European projects TENCompetence (IST-TEL/2004-2.4.10, www.tencompetence.org) and ProLearn (IST 507310, www.prolearn-project.org), and the research group <e-Ucm> (www.e-ucm.es). The Education and Science Spanish Committee (projects MetaLearn TIN2004 08367 C02-02 and OdA Virtual TIN2005-08788-C04-01) and the Regional Government / Complutense University of Madrid (grant 4155/2005 and research group 910494) have also supported this work partially. Special thanks to Bruno Torijano Bueno for his participation in the creation and preliminary tests of the sample game

Narrative, history, and fiction: history games as boundary works

This work arises from the reflections generated by a post-doctoral study that investigates how history games can contribute to the production and dissemination of representations, pictures, and imaginaries of the past. We understand history games to be digital electronic games whose structure contains narratives or simulations of historical elements (Neves, 2010). The term notion of “border works” is used by Glezer and Albieri (2009) to discuss the role of literary and artistic works that, standing outside the historiographical field and having a fictional character, are forms of the dissemination of historical knowledge and approximation with the past. We want to show how, under the impact of the linguistic turn, the boundaries between history and fiction have been blurred. Authors such as White (1995) and Veyne (2008) found both a convergence with and identification between historical narrative and literary narrative that interrogates the epistemological status of history as a science. These critiques result in an appreciation of fictional works as both knowledge and the dissemination of historical knowledge of the past. We then examine the elements of the audiovisual narratives of electronic games (Calleja, 2013; Frasca, 1999; Jull, 2001; Murray, 2003; Zagalo, 2009) in an attempt to understand their specificity. Next, we investigate the place of the narrative and historical simulations of electronic games in contemporary culture (Fogu, 2009). Finally, we discuss how historical knowledge is appropriated and represented by history games (Arruda, 2009; Kusiak, 2002) and analyze their impact on the production of a historical consciousness or an imaginary about the past

Videojogos 2019: 11th International Conference on Videogames Sciences and Arts: book of abstracts

Videojogos is an annual conference on videogame sciences and arts, promoted by the Portuguese Society of Video Games Sciences (SPCV). Since its first edition, in 2009, the conference has been promoting the scientific gathering of researchers and professionals in the expanded field of videogames. As in the first edition, Aveiro once again holds the conference. The 11th Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts – Videojogos 2019 takes place in the University of Aveiro, Portugal, during November 27-29. The event is co-organized by the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro (DeCA), DeCA’s DigiMedia Research Center and the Portuguese Society of Video Games Sciences (SPCV). This year, 10 years after the first conference, SPCV and the co-organizers decided to convert the conference into a full international event, with English as a working language. As one of the outcomes of this decision, the proceedings of Videojogos 2019 will be published by Springer in their “Communications in Computer and Information Science” (CCIS) book series, part of a post-conference volume with the number 1164. This Book of Abstracts is more than a shortened version of the proceedings. Besides abstracts from the 20 selected papers that will be published in the book series, it contains abstracts from the research posters (8) and videogame demos (9) accepted for the conference, as well synopsis for other activities held at the conference such as keynotes (2) and workshops (3). Thanks to UA Editora, we were able to present this book in time for the conference, providing an overview into the diversity of contributions gathered in the videogame context. We would like to thank the scientific board for their contribution to guarantee and deliver the highest scientific quality, allowing the outstanding relevance of this selection. We also would like to thank the program chairs (demo, poster and workshops) and the organization team for all their concerns and efforts in the organization, an extremely important contribution for the overall success of the Videojogos 2019 Conference. Finally, a note of appreciation to the American Corner of the University of Aveiro, which provided essential logistical support, namely by ensuring the presence of Professor Ernest Adams as Keynote Speaker and to the University of Aveiro publisher, UA Editora, for their support and collaboration in this publication.publishe

Exploring Document Clustering Techniques for Personalized Peer Assessment in Exploratory Courses

Proceedings of: Computer-Supported Peer Review in Education: Synergies with Intelligent Tutoring Systems (CSPRED 2010), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA, June 14th, 2010.Peer review has been proposed as a complement to project-based learning in courses covering a wide and heterogeneous syllabus. By reviewing peers' projects, students can explore other subjects thoroughly apart from their own project topic. This objective relies however in a proper distribution of the works to review, which is a complex and time-consuming task. Beyond simple topic selection, students may report different types of works, which influence their peers' assessment; for example, works focused on a project development approach versus in-depth literature researches. Introducing detailed metadata is time-consuming (thus users are typically reluctant) and, even more important, prone to error. In this paper we explore the potential of text mining and natural language processing technologies for automatic classification of texts, in order to facilitate the adaptation and diversification of the works assigned to the students for review, in the context of a course on Artificial Intelligence.This work was partially funded by Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI, and eMadrid network, S2009/TIC-1650, “Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid”.Publicad

Vectorisation of male supremac(h)ist ideologies in high-impact narratives and sociopolitical statism in western contemporary patriarchies

The present thesis dissertation, oriented at the fulfilment of the requirements for the obtention of the Philosophy Doctor, aims provide an intensive analysis on the deployment of traditional and contemporary narrative formats, in the context of the patriarchal establishments which have governed the Western world since early foundational civilisations, for the endurance of their supremac(h)ist organisation principles through the creation and maintenance of a conceptually recreated gender breach. The appropriate obtention of relevant data, for the surveyal of the potential encoding of gender unequal ideological concerns, as oriented to the alterity portrayal of the male and the female with socio-political stratification purposes, from the analysis of such a wide variety of narrative formats entails the implementation of diverse, text-specific, methodological guidelines. The technology in the contemporary world has imposed the inevitable presence of penetrating audiovisual ideological narratives with a massive outreach. Such would be the case of television, whose brief, but precise, advertisement narrations are studied to intergenerationally perpetuate the patriarchal task distribution that displaces women to the private sphere for the performance of kitchen and cleansing duties in a world were women cannot be denied to work and efforts for conciliation are necessary, as exhibited in the analysed costumbrist spots by major and highly consumer-endorsed brands ‘Natillas La Lechera’ and ‘La Cocinera’, or ‘Lejía Conejo’ bleach, ‘Vileda Windomatic’ squeege and ‘Philips Perfect Care’. As opposed to television advertising, other audiovisual formats, such as animation, do not intend to depict spectators’ daily life, but to present easy-to-embrace characters, who are studied to hold a powerful faculty to channelise narrative-controlled feelings and ideas. Such a factor would justify the eligibility of The Simpsons, as the longest scripted show in TV history and the most popular family in UK, over the royal family. In ‘The Diatribe of a Mad Housewife’, the female incorporation to the public sphere of professional life, which materialises in female writing, is deceitfully conceived as a source of misandry and conflict between the male figures of reference. Another audiovisual narrative format for male chauvinist ideologisation, video games, would interestingly resort to the immersion of fictional worlds governed by representational rules tacitly accepted by players when interacting with such influential major entertainment products, so the player-avatar identification facilitates the extrapolation of the gender-based in-game representations to the players’ external reality. Specifically, top-sales Resident Evil 4 (2005) and Bioshock Infinite (2013) present their respective female protagonists, Ashley Graham and Elisabeth Comstock, as passive entities to possess and custody in the private sphere, being both the characters the unfortunate threat to the socio-political stability of the status quo when the private custody decays and their control is usurped by male figures who move them to other public or private spaces. As observed in Resident Evil 4, the reversibility of such a systemic unbalance may be feasible when the damsel in danger is rescued from the private captivity setting and the initial custody by the male president of the United States and head of the free patriarchal world is restored. However, the male custody of Elisabeth Comstock in Bioshock Infinite’s public sphere, which implies her presence outside the house prophylactic confinement, is contrastively portrayed as the catalyser of the unleash of female uncontrolled powers and the inevitable destruction of the malecreated civilisation. The first five games in Pokémon saga offer a peaceful alternative to Resident Evil 4 and Bioshock Infinite, where gender alterity is imposed by the necessary-to-progress interaction of the player with male and female flat stereotypical characters, and the peaceful coexistence of humans and monsters is guaranteed by a hierarchised power apparatus with a minimal female representation. On the contrary, contemporary written formats, along with the atemporal urban legend and news, are also examined to complement the holistic contribution performed by narratives for the creation of a multiplatform supremac(h)ist ideological apparatus. Thus, wide-outreach social networking interactions may be contemplated to resort to hoaxes, pseudo-informative narratives, for the fostering of gender-biased conceptions which justify the organisation of the community around the male figure. Specifically, Twitter is analysed to have been utilised by Spanish (ultra)right political forces to summon the population’s fear to massive concentrations in early COVID-19 crisis to depict Spanish 8M feminist activism and overtly feminist first-order female politicians as peril for the wellbeing of the community, which prioritises their ambitions to individuals’ health and integrity. In order to filter and retrieve the tweets to explore, term (8M, 8-M), chronological (March 6th – June 21st, 2020) and geolocation (Spain) Boolean operators have been implemented in Twitter internal browser. Boolean operators may also prove relevant for the discovery of news as a written narrative genre actively contaminated by writers’ ideological communicative intentions during text elaboration and design, as observed in the ideological justification and ‘laundering’ of the toxic model of possessive masculinity exhibited upon Will Smith’s aggressive restitution of the woman-channelised family name staining at 2022 Academy Awards. To these regards, the filtered journalistic reports on Smith’s assault on Chris Rock upon Jada Pinkett’s alopecia joke, in Spanish, English and Portuguese, highlight Pinkett’s passivity in favour of the male participants’ interventions, who are to impose offence on the defenceless woman, in the case of Rock, and deliver medieval-like justice, as providentially assigned by the Catholic divinity, for the effective exercise of the custody of the damsel in danger, as incarnated by Smith. In this context, contemporary broadcasting platforms reveal as powerful vectors of influencer-based toxic masculinities. The last of the written genres examined befits those high impact viral accounts, with adaptative contextual flexibility to enhance its relevance for the narratee, a sense of veracity and a cautionary ending which exhort narratees to vectorise the subliminally ideological precepts encoded in the story ‘DNA’. These atemporal narratives, extracted from Spanish and English language Ortí and Sampere (2017), Camacho (2005, 2007), Brown & Flynn (2003) and Brunvald’s (1999) anthologies are filtered to obtain urban legends which depict women ‘in action’ under no male custody, as in Camacho’s (2007) “Secado Rápido”, a story at the crossroads of gender and Elder age inferiority in the private sphere, where an unsupervised widow kills an innocent puppy while arrogantly trying to microwave-dry it after an unplanned bath; Brown and Flynn’s (1999) “Chain reaction”, where an uncivil, yet irrelevant, woman’s behaviour in a public transport space causes a massive disaster which redounds in the destruction of the male-created urban skyline; or Hayes’ (2013), where the female ambition’s to trespass women’s patriarchal limitations lead her to reach the top of the Catholic Church under the disguise of John Anglicus, in early 13th century, but meets the capital penalty when misguided by her lust and her subsequently unexpected public labor during a religious service in the surroundings of Rome’s colosseum and St. Clement’s church.La presente tesis doctoral, que está orientada a la satisfacción de los requisitos para la obtención del título de doctor en la rama de lenguas y culturas, pretende llevar a cabo un análisis intensivo de la utilización de formatos narrativos tradicionales y contemporáneos, en el contexto de los statu quo patriarcales que han gobernado el mundo occidental desde los albores de sus civilizaciones fundacionales, con el objeto de perdurar sus principios de organización ‘supremac(h)istas’ por medio de la creación y mantenimiento de una brecha de género de origen conceptual. La obtención adecuada de información relevante sobre la posible existencia de codificaciones ideológicas en base a la desigualdad de género, que estarían dirigidos a una descripción altérica de la mujer y el hombre para la estratificación sociopolítica, en tan amplia variedad de formatos narrativos, requiere la implementación de líneas metodológicas diversas y adaptadas al formato textual correspondiente. Las prestaciones tecnológicas del mundo contemporáneo han impuesto la presencia ineludible de narrativas ideológicas audiovisuales de largo alcance. Este sería el caso de la televisión y sus cortas narrativas publicitarias, que, aunque cortas pero precisas, contribuyen a la perpetuación intergeneracional de la distribución de tareas patriarcal, que desplazaría a la mujer a la esfera privada para la satisfacción de obligaciones, en lo que a la cocina y a la higienización del hogar se refiere, en un mundo en el que no se puede alienar el derecho a la mujer a trabajar y que impone un esfuerzo extra para la conciliación familiar, como se observa en los anuncios, de corte costumbrista, de productos de marcas punteras como ‘Natillas La Lechera’, ‘La Cocinera, ‘Lejía Conejo’, ‘Vileda Windomatic’ o ‘Philips Perfect Care’. Al contrario que en el caso de la publicidad televisiva, otros formatos audiovisuales, como la animación, no persiguen retratar la vida diaria del espectador, sino ofrecer personajes con los que simpatizar, dada su probada valía para la canalización de ideas y emociones en las narrativas en las que se enmarcan. Este factor justifica la elección de Los Simpsons, que se erigen como el espectáculo guionizado de mayor duración en la historia de la televisión, así como la familia más popular en Reino Unido, incluso por encima de la familia real del país. En ‘Diatriba de una ama de casa loca’, la incorporación de la mujer a la vida profesional de la esfera pública, que en el caso de Marge se materializa en la escritura femenina, se concibe, no exenta de engaño, como una fuente de misandria y conflicto entre las figuras masculinas de referencia en el entorno de social de Marge. Otro formato narrativo audiovisual de ideologización supremac(h)ista tendría su seno en los videojuegos, que ofrecen a los jugadores una experiencia inmersiva en la que, como fruto de la interacción con estos productos de entretenimiento de gran influencia, los jugadores aceptan tácitamente las reglas representacionales y operativas que gobiernan el mundo ficticio del juego. En particular, los títulos superventas Resident Evil 4 (2005) y Bioshock Infinite (2013), muestran a sus protagonistas femeninos respectivos, Ashley Graham and Elisabeth Comstock, como sujetos pasivos a poseer y custodiar en la esfera privada, suponiendo ambos personajes una amenaza para la estabilidad del statu quo cuando la custodia privada inicial decae y su control es apropiado indebidamente por otras figuras masculinas, que ejercerán una custodia forzosa de la mujer cautiva en otros contextos públicos y privados. Como se puede observar en Resident Evil 4¸el desequilibrio sistémico causado por dicho ‘traspaso’ solo reviste reversibilidad cuando se rescata a la ‘damisela en apuros’ del escenario privado donde se mantiene cautiva y se restaura la custodia inicial, a cargo del presidente de los Estados Unidos y líder del mundo patriarcal libre. Por el contrario, la custodia masculina de Elisabeth Comstock en la esfera pública de Bioshock Infinite, que implica inherentemente la presencia de la mujer fuera de su confinamiento profiláctico entre las cuatro paredes del hogar, se conceptualiza como el catalizador de la liberación de los poderes descontrolados de la misma y la destrucción inevitable de la civilización creada por la mano del hombre. Por otro lado, los cinco primeros títulos de la saga Pokémon ofrecen una alternativa pacífica al mundo ficticio de Resident Evil 4 y Bioshock Infinite, donde la interacción del jugador con personajes masculinos y femeninos estereotípicos y planos se impone como una necesidad para el progreso de los jugadores en la narrativa, y la convivencia pacífica entre seres humanos y monstruos viene de la mano de un aparato de poder jerarquizado en el que la presencia de la mujer es mínima. Por otro lado, los formatos escritos contemporáneos, junto con otros formatos atemporales como la noticia o la leyenda urbana, también son objeto de análisis, de cara al descubrimiento de la contribución holística de narrativas diversas a la creación de un aparato ideológico supremac(h)ista multiplataforma. En este contexto, se examina la manera en la que las interacciones en redes sociales de amplio alcance recurren a los bulos, narrativas pseudo-informativas, para la promoción de concepciones basadas en la desigualdad de género, que vendrían a justificar la organización sociopolítica de la comunidad en torno a la figura del hombre. En particular, se analiza el uso de Twitter, por parte de fuerzas de la (ultra)derecha política española, para avivar el miedo de la población general a las concentraciones masificadas en los albores de la crisis sanitaria de la COVID-19 y retratar, así, al activismo feminista español en torno al 8M, y a las políticas de primer orden que lo encabezan, como un peligro para el bienestar de la comunidad que priorizaría sus ambiciones a la salud e integridad de los ciudadanos. Para la recuperación y subsiguiente filtrado de los tuits a estudiar, se implementan los operadores booleanos terminológicos (8M, 8-M), cronológicos (del 6 de marzo al 21 de junio de 2020) y de geolocalización (España) en el buscador interno de Twitter. La pertinencia de los operadores Booleanos para el estudio de la noticia, como género narrativo que adolece de una contaminación por parte de las intenciones comunicativas ideológicas de sus escritores, durante el proceso de elaboración textual, se puede observar en la justificación ideológica y el ‘blanqueamiento’ del modelo de masculinidad tóxica exhibida por Will Smith en la restitución agresiva de la honra familiar, previamente violada por medio de la explotación de la mujer del núcleo familiar como instrumento para ello. En relación a esto, los relatos periodísticos filtrados en español, inglés y portugués destacan la pasividad de Pinkett en favor de la intervención de los intervinientes masculinos, quienes imponen su ofensa verbal sobre la mujer indefensa, en el caso de Rock, e imparten una justicia cuasi-medieval, de acuerdo a los designios providenciales de la divinidad católica, para el ejercicio de la custodia de la ‘damisela en apuros’, en el caso de Smith. En este contexto, las plataformas de retransmisión de contenidos contemporáneas se erigen como vectores poderosos de las masculinidades tóxicas exhibidas por las figuras influyentes antes mencionadas. El último de los géneros escritos explorados en la presente tesis correspondería a aquellos relatos virales de alto impacto, que destacarían por su flexibilidad contextual adaptativa al público meta, la sensación de veracidad que recrean y su final precautorio, factores que contribuirían, de forma holística, a la vectorización de los preceptos ideológicos imbricados subliminalmente en el ‘ADN’ de la narración. Estas narrativas atemporales, que han sido exploradas en las antologías en lengua castellana e inglesa de Ortí y Sampere (2017), Camacho (2005, 2007), Brown y Flynn (2003) y Brunvald (1999), han sido sometidas, con posterioridad, a su filtrado para la obtención de leyendas urbanas que crean un retrato distorsionado de la mujer ‘en acción’, lejos de la custodia masculina, como sería el caso de “Secado Rápido” (Camacho, 2007), una historia que entremezcla género y edadismo, como factores clave en la inferioridad del individuo, en la que una viuda sin supervisión acaba con la vida de un cachorro de perro al intentar, en un alarde de inteligencia arrogante, secarlo en el microondas tras un baño que no estaba en los planes de la ‘abuelita’. Así mismo, en la leyenda urbana de título “Chain Reaction” (Brown and Flynn, 1999), el comportamiento tan inadecuado como inocuo de una mujer poco cívica en el espacio público del transporte colectivo origina la devastación del paisaje urbano civilizado creado por el patriarcado. Por último, también es objeto de análisis la leyenda urbana de Hayes (2013), en la que la ambición femenina lleva a una mujer a traspasar las limitaciones previstas por el patriarcado para su género y alcanzar así, a principios del siglo XIII y bajo la identidad de John Anglicus, la cima de la jerarquía católica, siendo presa de su lujuria, que asombrará a los allí presentes con un inesperado parto durante una procesión religiosa en las cercanías del Coliseo Romano y la iglesia de San Clemente, y su posterior ejecución, como único sino de la mujer que invade los espacios reservados para el hombre

An architecture supporting the development of serious games for scenario-based training and its application to Advanced Life Support

The effectiveness of serious games for training has already been proved in several domains. A major obstacle to the mass adoption of serious games comes from the difficulties in their development, due to the lack of widely adopted architectures that could streamline their creation process. In this thesis we present an architecture supporting the development of serious games for scenario-based training, a serious games for medical training we developed exploiting the architecture and the results of a study about its effectivenes

Spartan Daily, November 14, 2005

Volume 125, Issue 45https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10188/thumbnail.jp

Simulation games as tools for integrative dynamic learning: The case of the management course at the University of Algarve

Today, in order to people or organizations survive in a changing environment it is essential to adapt. Learning provided to people is a key feature for an active response since it implies acquiring knowledge, skills and competencies to cope successfully with different circumstances. Literature has focused on how digital games support education because simulators represent dynamic models of real situations; so, their goal is to ensure that the player denotes his decisions consequences. When teaching certain skills through these games, a reflection stage is crucial to evaluate the experiences gathered during the simulation and promote knowledge appliance by participants into the real world. Due to its multiple scientific contributions, gaming can overlap a valid solution to prepare learners understanding regarding complex contexts. This research denotes an ongoing PhD research about the characteristics of a management course unit (at the University of Algarve, Portugal) that explores a business simulator- Cesim Global Challenge- for learning purposes, as well as the effectiveness of an integrative approach (new learning environments) on students’ engagement and dynamic learning outcomes. From the earlier empirical data is understandable game-based learning advantages and disadvantages within Management and Entrepreneurship courses

Space, Time and Nature: The process and the myth

The article fits into the debate regarding space, time and nature in dialogue with the world lived by subjects that build up themselves or are built as mythological heroes, source of speech and spacial concrete practices. It's a poorly explored field in Geography that recently approaches to the cultural dynamic debate, to the symbolic field and also to their spacialization processes. The aim is to discuss the possibility of understanding in the present time about the space organization processes related to the society's previous moments, in a space/time dialectics which articulate the present and past times in a complex and non linear way. Methodologically, starting from a literature review about the theme, the present study was linked to the field and documental research about migration to the vicinal ways of Transamazônica Highway (BR-230 Highway), the creation of the "Centro Espírita União do Vegetal", a religion that arises in the Amazon and set up its headquarters in Brasília and the construction of Brasilia as a modern metropolis without a past. The conclusion points at the possibility of space/time nexuses linking the Myth of Nature to the Creation of Heroes, constantly appropriated and with new meanings, in order to support speeches and new actions dialectically throughout the Brazilian contemporaneous space