111,374 research outputs found
An evaluation of business simulation games for the Management module of the MEng Aeronautical Engineering degree at Loughborough University
There is a drive within engineering disciplines at Loughborough University to develop the employability skills of undergraduate students. The engCETL (Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning) has a broad remit to enhance links with industry and to underpin developments in learning and teaching with pedagogic research and technology development. The Centre does this through research and development projects that are proposed by academics within the engineering related departments and carried out in conjunction with specialists from the engCETL team. Prof Rob Thring, Head of the Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering Department proposed a project to the engCETL. His requirement was for some form of business simulation software for the undergraduates to use as part of the Management module on the MEng programme. Currently the students come up with an idea for a new business, create a business plan for the venture and take part in a âDragonsâ Denâ style presentation at the end of the project to representatives from the department and industry. However, the department would like to take this project a step further and provide the students with the opportunity to take part in a simulated business environment where they could explore the idea of setting up or running a business as close to the real world as possible. The intention would be to enliven and enrich the studentâs learning experience with skills development such as; enterprise, leadership, management, teamwork, fiscal sense, business judgement and inventiveness amongst others. An interdisciplinary project team was formed to try and resolve the pedagogic, technical and business aspects that would need to be addressed in order to implement such software within the MEng programme. The approach taken has been to form a set of criteria based on certain curriculum requirements but keep the brief broad and carry out a scoping study of existing software (commercial and open source) and take account of the academic literature in this area. After the initial scoping study, our findings indicate two commercial business simulations that have potential for use on the course. These were; âMarketplace Simulationâ (http://www.marketplace-simulation.co.uk) and SimVenture (http://www.simventure.co.uk). An in-depth evaluation was then carried out for the two simulations. This evaluation comprised two teams made up of academics, industrial representatives and engCETL staff. The software was thoroughly examined in terms of what each application could offer to the learning experience of the students, resources to support staff and the costs involved, for example, staff time in embedding the software into the curriculum.This paper will highlight the approach taken, findings and recommendations from the evaluation of the two business simulations. The recommendations will be presented in the context of all engineering disciplines and will cover; appropriateness of the chosen software for the programme level, plans for embedding into the curriculum, potential learning outcomes and assessment methods. It will benefit all those interested in methods for evaluating potential simulation games for suitability within the curriculum and the development of enterprise and employability skills
Gamification in higher education and stem : a systematic review of literature
In recent years, gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has drawn the attention of educators due to the possibility of making learning more motivating and engaging; this led to an increase of research in the field. Despite the availability of literature reviews about gamification and its effects, no work to this date has focused exclusively on Higher Education (HE). Next, worldwide there is an increasing demand for skilled Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals that meet the challenges related to scientific and technological innovations of the 21st Century. This lead to the need of strengthening STEM Higher Education. This brings us to the purpose of this work: presenting a systematic literature review of empirical studies about gamification STEM related Higher Education. This review study started from a systematic mapping design of 'Web of Science' articles, with following inclusion criteria: empirical gamification studies set up in HE, published between 2000 and 2016; focusing on undergraduate or graduate students; in the STEM knowledge field, and set up in authentic settings. An initial search resulted in 562 potentially relevant articles. After applying all selection criteria, only 18 studies could be retained. 12 additional articles were included by analyzing references from earlier literature reviews, resulting in 30 studies to be included. Analysis results show how a combination of game elements (e.g. leaderboards, badges, points and other combinations) positively affects students' performance, attendance, goal orientation and attitude towards mostly computer science related subjects. The analysis results also point at a lack of studies in certain STEM areas, a lack of studies that identify the particular game element associated with the positive differential impact on student performance; a lack of validated psychometric measurements, and lack of focus on student variables that could/should be taken into account as mediating/moderating variables clarifying the impact of gamification in the HE focus on STEM learning and teaching
GAMES: A new Scenario for Software and Knowledge Reuse
Games are a well-known test bed for testing search algorithms and learning methods, and many authors have presented numerous reasons for the research in this area. Nevertheless, they have not received the attention they deserve as software projects.
In this paper, we analyze the applicability of software
and knowledge reuse in the games domain. In spite of the
need to find a good evaluation function, search algorithms
and interface design can be said to be the primary concerns.
In addition, we will discuss the current state of the main
statistical learning methods and how they can be addressed
from a software engineering point of view. So, this paper
proposes a reliable environment and adequate tools, necessary in order to achieve high levels of reuse in the games domain
Computer game development education at university
This paper articulates some of the challenges for computer game development courses at university level. A typical course development of this type is described. The need to include creative methods alongside more formal software development methodologies as core elements of computer game education is proposed and placed within the context of an industry specific framework. The evolutionary nature of the computer game industry requires that computer game development programmes at university should be equally evolutionary and adaptable to change
Heuristic Evaluation for Serious Immersive Games and M-instruction
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Two fast growing areas for technology-enhanced learning are serious games and mobile instruction (M-instruction or M-Learning). Serious games are ones that are meant to be more than just entertainment. They have a serious use to educate or promote other types of activity. Immersive Games frequently involve many players interacting in a shared rich and complex-perhaps web-based-mixed reality world, where their circumstances will be multi and varied. Their reality may be augmented and often self-composed, as in a user-defined avatar in a virtual world. M-instruction and M-Learning is learning on the move; much of modern computer use is via smart devices, pads, and laptops. People use these devices all over the place and thus it is a natural extension to want to use these devices where they are to learn. This presents a problem if we wish to evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogic media they are using. We have no way of knowing their situation, circumstance, education background and motivation, or potentially of the customisation of the final software they are using. Getting to the end user itself may also be problematic; these are learning environments that people will dip into at opportune moments. If access to the end user is hard because of location and user self-personalisation, then one solution is to look at the software before it goes out. Heuristic Evaluation allows us to get User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) experts to reflect on the software before it is deployed. The effective use of heuristic evaluation with pedagogical software [1] is extended here, with existing Heuristics Evaluation Methods that make the technique applicable to Serious Immersive Games and mobile instruction (M-instruction). We also consider how existing Heuristic Methods may be adopted. The result represents a new way of making this methodology applicable to this new developing area of learning technology
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