Pop-up Java: An Augmented Reality Mobile Game to Teach Java

As computers become more and more ubiquitous, it becomes increasingly important and prevalent to teach coding. Coding builds important life skills such as organization, higher order thinking, self-esteem, socialization and teamwork, among many others. However, learning the skills necessary to design and create an efficient program from scratch takes a lot of practice that can often be confusing and frustrating to newcomers. There are a large number of programming languages in the world, each with their own merits. The TIOBE Programming Community Index calculates the popularity of programming languages by tallying search queries on major search engines, and shows that Java is and has been the most widely used programming language for over a decade. A similar site called PYPL that aggregates results from Google Trends shows that Java makes up over 23% of programming language related queries, far outweighing any other programming languages on the list with python at 14% and PHP at 9.7%. Popular online job board Dice.com reports that Java-related job postings are much more common than other languages (What’s Hot (and Not) in Tech Skills, 2016), and the trend search on similar job board indeed.com shows that there are 2-3 or more Java-related job postings for every equivalent posting for other languages such as C++, Python, or C#. Despite Java’s popularity, pedagogical instruction of Java is typically handled in a standard lecture-and-exercises format. With the advancement of technology, there is always room for new technologies to emerge to provide new ways of learning. This paper presents an Pop-up Java, an augmented reality educational game that aims to teach Java programming constructs in an easy to use, fun, and immersive environment

May\u27s Journey: a serious game to teach middle and high school girls programming

May’s Journey is a game where you help a video game character, May, finding her friend and repairing the broken game world. This is a 3D puzzle game in which players solve an environmental maze by using the game’s pseudo code to manipulate the environment. The game is aimed at 12 to 18 year old girls and the purpose is to attract them into Computer Science fields by teaching them basics of programming by focusing on logics and concepts while still asking them to type simple instructions in our programming language. Players do this in a compelling environment, with characters they can identify with, embedded in a relevant story. Our design process was based on our research on young female preferences in games and current teaching techniques for programming. Each decision we made whether for the teaching content, the art style, or the game mechanics and the techniques used to develop this game are motivated by the goal of making programming more appealing and interesting for girls. For this we developed our own pseudo-code language in order to provide an interface that bridges the gap between drag and drop approach and real programming and introduce typing as part of the experience. We tested our game with 10 teenagers aged from 14 to 17 years old for educational content. We were pleased to see how engaged with the game they were. Overall, the testing results were mostly as expected. The players liked the game (rated 4.8 out of 6) and all of them wanted to play more of it. They all felt that they learned something and 8 of them expressed the will to learn more about programming. Unfortunately, the sample of players is too small to generalize our results so we plan to take the feedback into account, iterate and test it again with a larger study group and get conclusive results. Working on this project has allowed us to understand the importance of iterative design and early play test feedback. We have also learned the importance of tutorials in games and how that might completely change the users’ experience. Finally, a crucial point was the importance of the UI helpers and targeted feedback in serious games

A Cloud Based Disaster Management System

The combination of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and 3D virtual environments opens a new paradigm for their use in natural disaster management applications. It is important to have a realistic virtual environment based on datasets received from WSNs to prepare a backup rescue scenario with an acceptable response time. This paper describes a complete cloud-based system that collects data from wireless sensor nodes deployed in real environments and then builds a 3D environment in near real-time to reflect the incident detected by sensors (fire, gas leaking, etc.). The system’s purpose is to be used as a training environment for a rescue team to develop various rescue plans before they are applied in real emergency situations. The proposed cloud architecture combines 3D data streaming and sensor data collection to build an efficient network infrastructure that meets the strict network latency requirements for 3D mobile disaster applications. As compared to other existing systems, the proposed system is truly complete. First, it collects data from sensor nodes and then transfers it using an enhanced Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RLP). A 3D modular visualizer with a dynamic game engine was also developed in the cloud for near-real time 3D rendering. This is an advantage for highly-complex rendering algorithms and less powerful devices. An Extensible Markup Language (XML) atomic action concept was used to inject 3D scene modifications into the game engine without stopping or restarting the engine. Finally, a multi-objective multiple traveling salesman problem (AHP-MTSP) algorithm is proposed to generate an efficient rescue plan by assigning robots and multiple unmanned aerial vehicles to disaster target locations, while minimizing a set of predefined objectives that depend on the situation. The results demonstrate that immediate feedback obtained from the reconstructed 3D environment can help to investigate what–if scenarios, allowing for the preparation of effective rescue plans with an appropriate management effort.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Procedural-Reasoning Architecture for Applied Behavior Analysis-based Instructions

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disability affecting as many as 1 in every 88 children. While there is no known cure for ASD, there are known behavioral and developmental interventions, based on demonstrated efficacy, that have become the predominant treatments for improving social, adaptive, and behavioral functions in children. Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA)-based early childhood interventions are evidence based, efficacious therapies for autism that are widely recognized as effective approaches to remediation of the symptoms of ASD. They are, however, labor intensive and consequently often inaccessible at the recommended levels. Recent advancements in socially assistive robotics and applications of virtual intelligent agents have shown that children with ASD accept intelligent agents as effective and often preferred substitutes for human therapists. This research is nascent and highly experimental with no unifying, interdisciplinary, and integral approach to development of intelligent agents based therapies, especially not in the area of behavioral interventions. Motivated by the absence of the unifying framework, we developed a conceptual procedural-reasoning agent architecture (PRA-ABA) that, we propose, could serve as a foundation for ABA-based assistive technologies involving virtual, mixed or embodied agents, including robots. This architecture and related research presented in this disser- tation encompass two main areas: (a) knowledge representation and computational model of the behavioral aspects of ABA as applicable to autism intervention practices, and (b) abstract architecture for multi-modal, agent-mediated implementation of these practices

DEVELOPING AN EDUCATIONAL VIDEO GAME FROM ARCHITECTURAL PRECEDENTS

Arch.D.Arch.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 201

Assessing a 3D digital Prototype for Teaching the Brazilian Sign Language Alphabet: an Alternative for Non-programming Designers

This study aims to analyse the users’ perceptions about a 3D digital artifacts prototype for teaching the fingerspelling alphabet of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS). For this purpose, a high-fidelity prototype was developed with a non-programming method, and a usability test was conducted using a structured questionnaire with 31 participants, including Deaf and hearing people. Most users (96.7%) rated the learning experience with the tool as positive, with 67.7% rating the experience as "good", 12.9% as "very good", and 16.1% as "excellent". Comparing the evaluation between Deaf and hearing people showed that both target groups mostly rated it positively. However, most hearing people rated it "good," while the majority of the Deaf rated it as "excellent" (29%) or "outstanding" (14%) compared to 13% and 12%, respectively, among the hearing. In summary, considering the variables presented, the experience was well rated and did not encounter solid obstacles or resistance

Proceedings, MSVSCC 2015

The Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) of Old Dominion University hosted the 2015 Modeling, Simulation, & Visualization Student capstone Conference on April 16th. The Capstone Conference features students in Modeling and Simulation, undergraduates and graduate degree programs, and fields from many colleges and/or universities. Students present their research to an audience of fellow students, faculty, judges, and other distinguished guests. For the students, these presentations afford them the opportunity to impart their innovative research to members of the M&S community from academic, industry, and government backgrounds. Also participating in the conference are faculty and judges who have volunteered their time to impart direct support to their students’ research, facilitate the various conference tracks, serve as judges for each of the tracks, and provide overall assistance to this conference. 2015 marks the ninth year of the VMASC Capstone Conference for Modeling, Simulation and Visualization. This year our conference attracted a number of fine student written papers and presentations, resulting in a total of 51 research works that were presented. This year’s conference had record attendance thanks to the support from the various different departments at Old Dominion University, other local Universities, and the United States Military Academy, at West Point. We greatly appreciated all of the work and energy that has gone into this year’s conference, it truly was a highly collaborative effort that has resulted in a very successful symposium for the M&S community and all of those involved. Below you will find a brief summary of the best papers and best presentations with some simple statistics of the overall conference contribution. Followed by that is a table of contents that breaks down by conference track category with a copy of each included body of work. Thank you again for your time and your contribution as this conference is designed to continuously evolve and adapt to better suit the authors and M&S supporters. Dr.Yuzhong Shen Graduate Program Director, MSVE Capstone Conference Chair John ShullGraduate Student, MSVE Capstone Conference Student Chai

Game design for a serious game to help learn programming

Tese de mestrado. Multimédia. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion