Their memory:exploring veterans’ voices, virtual reality and collective memory

This paper focuses on the virtual reality (VR) project Their Memory and details the development and evaluation of virtual reality environments and experiences with respect to its impact on young people (14-35 demographic) with the narratives of veterans in Scotland. As part of the AHRC Immersive Experiences program, Their Memory was created to explore how game design techniques and immersive technology could be used to enhance existing historical research and enrich narratives to bring expansive experiences to hard-to-reach audiences. The project worked directly with the veterans’ charity, Poppyscotland, to create an environment and experience that would resonate with new audiences, and explore documentary and storytelling techniques for the commemoration of war and conflict. The design of the project evolved through co-design sessions with veterans and young people and culminated in the creation of a short, thought-provoking, narrative-driven experience. The VR experience enabled players to connect with the memories of veterans in Scotland and exploring the different conflicts or situations they experienced and how they make sense of them. The project brought together cross-sector expertise to research how immersive experiences can help memory-based organizations in engaging with wider audiences, raise awareness, and diversify current learning outputs. The paper details the design and development of the Virtual Reality project, through co-design, and how this engaged the audience and evolved the experience created. The paper includes a summative evaluation of events conducted with schoolchildren to assess the project and concludes with how the project evidences impact upon audiences and the potential for both technology and the experience

Active games: an examination of user engagement to define design recommendations

Active gaming is a form of video gaming that requires full body motion or varying degrees of physical activity to play a game. While active gaming has gained momentum, there is a lack of studies that provide insight on how they should be designed, specifically components of active games make them engaging. This study identifies, analyzes and categorizes specific design mechanics and features used in active games. It answers the question: Which, if any, game mechanics and features can a panel of experts in academia, health and the game industry agree on as valuable and impactful to the construction of successful and engaging active games? Using a Delphi study, nine experts answered questions related to active gaming. They reached agreement on 20 of the 21 inquiries regarding game design focused on motivation, social influences and flow. Their feedback offers recommendations on the design of future active games, and identifies emerging trends. This study shares their notes, and translates the findings into specific recommendations for developers on the design of active games

Crossing the Boundary: a study of the nature and extent of racism in local league cricket

Since the start of the 1993/4 football season the 'Let's Kick Racism Out of Football’ has had some success in persuading clubs and players to recognise racism in the game and act to counter it. This summer, following our own research (Long et al, 1995) the Rugby Football League and the Commission for Racial Equality launched a 13-point Action Plan for professional clubs to adopt. Within cricket 'Hit Racism for Six' (HR46) was set-up last year to act as a pressure group to stimulate discussion about racism in cricket. Issues of race and racism in sport have recently attracted considerable media attention and stimulated popular debate. Emotion has run high over the articles by Robert Henderson (1995) and Roger Bannister (Connor 1995), the continuing confrontation between Raymond Illingworth and Devon Malcolm, the Botham/Lamb v Khan court case and the trouble on the terraces at Headingley during the summer of 1996. The balance attempted by programmes in the Radio 5 series on ‘Race around the UK’ represented one attempt to encourage a more considered approach, but throughout it has been clear that there is still a shortage of substantive research on race in sport. The Carnegie National Sports Development Centre conducted a study of black and ethnic minorities in cricket in Yorkshire that focused on issues of participation and sports development. Following the success of our rugby league project, Leeds City Council were keen for us to try to explore the more sensitive issues around race and racism. While the study of rugby league had been on the professional game this study of cricket was to be of local league cricket. Within the region this is how most people experience their cricket with some 1,300 teams affiliated to the Yorkshire Cricket Association. To establish views on race and racism we sought responses from: a) the secretaries of local league clubs b) Asian, black and white players in the leagues c) league umpire

Constructing and contesting identities and community membership in online football forums

A Research Report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Psychology by Coursework and Research Report in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 16 February 2015.The internet has provided a new medium of communication that has resulted in distinct forms of social interaction and provided a new social space in which people from all over the world come together as a community to discuss football. Within this space they are socialised, cultures are transmitted, social structures are reproduced and identity is transmitted. Thus the aim of this study was to understand how followers of a particular football team invoke and contest membership into the categories of football supporter and community of supporters in an online forum. The method used was Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) within the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. The sample was a critical case study and consisted of interactions from a single discussion thread of an online football supporter forum. The results revealed that the Opening Post (OP) formed a space in which potential respondent identities and status as community members could be made relevant however implicitly provided constraints regarding how members were expected to respond. Agreeing members produced a community consensus on how other members should respond however as more members with disagreeing responses expressed their opinion, a more moderate community consensus emerged in which disagreement and agreement between members was not a requisite for contestation of community membership. When there was contestation for community membership and identity, members used collective pronouns, account-giving, partial agreement, category-tied predicates, vernacular specific to a team and phrases like “in my opinion” and “to me”. The study concluded that within an online setting, football supporter identity and community membership are dynamic processes that constantly change, are context-dependent and are managed by the members in order to achieve certain aims

Speech-based recognition of self-reported and observed emotion in a dimensional space

The differences between self-reported and observed emotion have only marginally been investigated in the context of speech-based automatic emotion recognition. We address this issue by comparing self-reported emotion ratings to observed emotion ratings and look at how differences between these two types of ratings affect the development and performance of automatic emotion recognizers developed with these ratings. A dimensional approach to emotion modeling is adopted: the ratings are based on continuous arousal and valence scales. We describe the TNO-Gaming Corpus that contains spontaneous vocal and facial expressions elicited via a multiplayer videogame and that includes emotion annotations obtained via self-report and observation by outside observers. Comparisons show that there are discrepancies between self-reported and observed emotion ratings which are also reflected in the performance of the emotion recognizers developed. Using Support Vector Regression in combination with acoustic and textual features, recognizers of arousal and valence are developed that can predict points in a 2-dimensional arousal-valence space. The results of these recognizers show that the self-reported emotion is much harder to recognize than the observed emotion, and that averaging ratings from multiple observers improves performance

Investigating the effects of psychoeducation interventions in improving misconceptions of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among undergraduate university students.

There exists a substantial number of studies exploring the misconceptions of TBI and concussion in various geographical regions, but an insufficient number of studies have focused on why this may be the case and what can be done to improve the knowledge amongst different populations. The current study attempted to explore low cost psychoeducation interventions around misconceptions, which can hinder TBI-related prevention, help-seeking behaviours, and recovery. This study includes both quantitative and qualitative components. The study is divided into three parts: Part A: the pre-test component, which seeks to measure TBI knowledge and misconceptions through survey format. Part B: the implementation of different types of psychoeducation interventions delivered through a lecture, video or pamphlet. It also includes the re-administration of the survey (post-test). Part C: an online survey exploring the participants' experiences with the various interventions. All undergraduate students enrolled in the first year psychology PSY1005/7S course at the University of Cape Town (UCT) were invited to participate through the use of convenience sampling and the Student Research Participation Program (SRPP). Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, one-way and repeated measures ANOVAs, and thematic analyses, related to parts A-C of the study, respectively. The results of the study suggested the positive impact of all three interventions. Each intervention was shown to increase knowledge gain in both TBI and concussion knowledge, at least descriptively. A between-groups analysis showed a significance of p = 0.01 where the lecture intervention yielded the greatest results followed by the video and pamphlet intervention respectively. Adequate awareness, knowledge and understanding of TBI are paramount to the prevention and recovery of trauma-related brain injuries, which is particularly relevant in countries with (probable) high rates of TBI, such as South Africa

Investigating the effect of gamification on the adoption of fitness apps on mobile devices in South Africa

Despite the large number of downloads of mobile apps and the growth of the fitness mobile app industry, research shows that fitness mobile apps are faced with the issue of having a low adoption rate. This thesis focusses on fitness mobile apps and attempts to understand this issue of adoption or continuous fitness mobile app usage in a South African context and specifically looks at the role of gamification in fitness mobile app adoption. The research is conducted to better understand how gamification affects and can improve fitness mobile app adoption. Gamification can be defined as the addition of points, badges, leaderboards and other elements found in games to other non-game related areas such as fitness apps. A survey was administered to three cohorts of students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa to assess this. The cohorts focused on MyFitnessPal, Nike+ or Strava gamified fitness mobile apps, respectively, in order to allow for comparisons of survey responses across the three fitness mobile apps. The survey design used an extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to quantitatively measure the relationship between gamification in fitness mobile apps and the behavioural intention to adopt the fitness mobile app. User perspectives on how gamification affects adoption of fitness mobile apps was also gathered in the survey. Perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived enjoyment (PE) were found to have a positive relationship to the behavioural intention (BI) to adopt a fitness mobile app in the sample. Across the cohort’s subjective norm didn't significantly contribute to the BI to adopt a fitness mobile app. Interestingly it was found to correlate negatively with the variable BI when analyzing the responses from the Nike+ cohort. In the cohorts for MyFitnessPal and Strava this was not the case as these two variables were found to be positively correlated. The progress bar was perceived to be the most useful gamification element in a fitness mobile app in all three cohorts when compared with leaderboards, badges, levels and points. When looking at how gamification improves adoption motivations the following popular reasons were provided by participants: progress tracking and achievement (encourage improvement). This was followed by the common themes PEU, PE, award/incentive, competitive aspect and goal setting assistance. The findings from this study contribute to better understanding how gamification improves fitness app adoption in a South African context

EVALUATION OF VIDEO CHALLENGE SYSTEM IN VOLLEYBALL FROM THE POINTS OF CLASSIFICATION REFEREES

In order to prevent referee mistakes in volleyball, Video Challenge System has been used in our country since 2015. The aim of the research is to examine the functionality of this system from the perspective of Classification Volleyball Referees assigned in the Efeler and Sultans Leagues and to offer opinions and suggestions for the development of the system. The research was carried out with the screening model, which is one of the quantitative research methods. Participants were reached with a 20-question Video Challenge System Questionnaire, which was developed for the purpose of collecting data in the research. The sample of the research consists of a total of 67 people who participated in the interim seminar with the participation of A and AB Classification volleyball referees in Ankara on 18 December 2021, with a physical questionnaire. The analysis of the data was made with the SPSS 26.0 program and the data on demographic variables were analyzed according to frequency analysis. When the findings of the study are examined; 91.1% of A and AB Classification Volleyball Referees said that the Video Challenge System contributed positively to the course of the match, 98.5% found the VCS applied in our country useful, 94% said that the referees were more comfortable in the matches played with VCS. observed that, 98.6% of them stated that VCS minimized the wrong decisions in numbers that could affect the match or set result, 91.1% stated that VCS directly positively affected the set or match result in competitions with high game quality, and 97%. They stated that the VCS facilitated the work of the referees in terms of making decisions, especially in the most difficult moments of the match. As a result, it has been concluded that the satisfaction of the referees who referee the Efeler and Sultans League matches, which are the highest level leagues of the Turkish Volleyball Federation, with the Video Challenge System is at a very high level. With the results obtained, it is thought that the Video Challenge System has a positive contribution to the fair conclusion of the matches and the surrender of the right.  Article visualizations

Designing the Learning Experiences in Serious Games: The Overt and the Subtle—The Virtual Clinic Learning Environment

: Serious Games are becoming more common in the educational setting and must pass muster with both students and instructors for their learning experience and knowledge building. The Virtual Clinic Learning Environment has recently been developed and implemented at East Carolina University using a design framework based on Bloom’s variables, and in the process of refining those design questions, identifies the methods of how serious games provide an overt and subtle learning experience. The overt learning experience is based in the design questions defined and the subtle experience was derived by examining the idea of sense of place as it relates to the virtual environment. By considering these two streams of learning, designers can avoid pitfalls and build on these design elements of a virtual learning environment