Educational and Immersive Game Development

Educational Systems have remained the same for decades while the technology and its effect on our daily lives has undergone tremendous progress. Technology has been incorporated in various other fields with great success while education has been conservative and slow to adapt, this has been problematic in a number of ways, since entertainment, news, social media have evolved to better suit the human psyche. This creates a gap between these aforementioned systems and education where education is way behind in terms of engagement and immersion compared to entertainment and such. We propose one way to tackle this divide is to use “Educational Games” which use technology to make education engaging and entertainin

Monitoring the communication competence in an innovative context of project management learning

This document presents an innovative, formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students' specific competences. The subject of project management is the common theoretical and practical framework that articulates an experience that is carried out by multidisciplinary groups. Full utilization of Web 2.0 platforms and Project Based Learning constitutes the applied methodology. More specifically, this study focuses on monitoring communication competence when working in virtual environments, providing an ad-hoc rubric as a final result

Strengthening communication skills in an innovative context of engineering project management learning

This document presents an innovative, formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students’ specific competences when studying Project Management (PM) subject. The framework of the experience combines (1) theoretical concepts, (2) the development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinary groups of three different universities, (3) the use of software web 2.0 tools and (4) group and individual assignments of students that play different roles (project managers and team members). Under this scenario, the study focuses on monitoring the communication competence in the ever growing PM virtual environment. Factors such as corporal language, technical means, stage, and PM specific vocabulary among others have been considered in order to assess the students’ performance on this issue. As a main contribution, the paper introduces an ad-hoc rubric that, based on previous investigations, has been adapted and tested for the first time to this new and specific context. Additionally, the research conducted has provided some interesting findings that suggest further actions to improve and better define future rubrics, oriented to communication or even other competences. As specific PM subject concerns, it has been detected that students playing the role of Project Managers strengthen their competences more than those ones that play the role of Team Members. It has also been detected that students have more difficulty assimilating concepts related to risk and quality management. However those concepts related with scope, time or cost areas of knowledge have been better assimilated by the students

PENGEMBANGAN GAME “TeKeJe” SEBAGAI MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN INTERAKTIF PADA MATA PELAJARAN KOMPUTER DAN JARINGAN DASAR DI SMK NEGERI 3 BUDURAN SIDOARJO

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk (1) mengetahui apakah terdapat perbedaan hasil belajar antara siswa yang menggunakan game “TeKaJe” sebagai media pembelajaran interaktif dengan siswa yang tidak menggunakan game “TeKaJe” (2) mengetahui respon siswa terhadap game “TeKaJe” sebagai media pembelajaran interaktif. Jenis penelitian pada penelitian ini adalah Static Group Comparison dan menggunakan metode penelitian ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) dengan sampel siswa kelas X TKJ 1 (kelas kontrol) dan siswa kelas X TKJ 2 (kelas eksperimen) di SMK Negeri 3 Buduran Sidoarjo. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah metode Two Sample T-Test. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: (1) nilai rata-rata dari kelas kontrol X TKJ 1 adalah 81,89 dan nilai rata-rata kelas eksperimen X TKJ 2 adalah 86. Dari hasil data di atas menunjukkan bahwa rata-rata kelas eksperimen X TKJ 2 lebih tinggi dari pada kelas kontrol X TKJ 1 dengan selisih 4,11. Hasil nilai t hitung sebesar -2,07 pada degree of freedom (df) 70 dengan P-Value sebesar 0,043 dimana 0,043 ≤ 0,05. Dengan demikian disimpulkan bahwa hipotesis yaitu ada perbedaan hasil belajar siswa antara kelas eksperimen dengan kelas kontrol (2) Respon siswa terhadap game “TeKaJe” sebagai media pembelajaran interaktif pada mata pelajaran Komputer dan Jaringan Dasar adalah 83,747%. Jadi dapat disimpulkan bahwa siswa kelas X TKJ 2 SMK Negeri 3 Buduran Sidoarjo sangat setuju terhadap penggunaan game “TeKaJe” sebagai media pembelajaran interaktif pada mata pelajaran Komputer dan Jaringan Dasar.Kata Kunci : ADDIE, Game TeKaJe, Hasil Belajar, Respon siswa

The Impact of Game-Based Learning on the Achievement of Learning Goals and Motivation for Learning Mathematics - Literature Review

Information technologies are an integral part of a contemporary society which bases its progress on knowledge being one goal of education. Beside acquiring knowledge, skills and routines, the goal of education is to create a complete individual who can rationally and timely make decisions, purposefully react in new situations and be trained for life-long learning. In order to accomplish all this, it is necessary to make educational process more creative, contemporary and adjusted to new generations of computer literate pupils who demand quicker and more frequent interactions, a lot of information at the same time, generations who quickly acquire rules of computer games. Computer games meeting pedagogical criteria should become an integral part of learning. Teaching with mathematical computer games, which fulfil pedagogical criteria, influences pupils’ motivation, learning, retention and forgetting. This paper provides a review of literature in this field and determines whether the use of mathematical computer games contributes to more efficient realisation of educational goals at all level of education. Furthermore, considering prior research we have attempted to establish whether the use of mathematical games for teaching has an impact on the formation of a positive attitude of pupils of different ages toward the subject of mathematics, their motivation and knowledge acquisition when compared to learning without computer games. Finally, we have analysed different research methods concerning this issue and assessed the impact of pedagogically designed mathematical computer games on the realisation of educational goals and quality improvement of teaching and learning

Museum Visitors’ Perceptions of Mobile Games: A Case Study

Previous research in mobile gaming focused on use among grade school students and heavy gamers (e.g., Groff, Howells, & Cranmer, 2010; Poels, Kort, & Ijsselsteijn, 2012), but little is known about museum visitor usage. This study examined museum visitors\u27 mobile technology habits and perceived uses of mobile games in museums. A survey of individuals on a local museum\u27s mailing list found a positive relationship between visitors\u27 familiarity with mobile devices and their perceptions of enjoyment and learning experiences with mobile games. This indicates that mobile games may be a welcome addition to the museum experience for heavy users of mobile devices. Additionally, gratifications among respondents for intention to play mobile games at museums were categorized as information discovery, entertainment, and information quality

Learning Management Systems as a Tool for Community-based Project Management

This paper addresses a new conceptual framework for a communitybased project management learning model that aims to support learning within a project and enhance the distribution of knowledge within a particular virtual community. This model also aims to develop a virtual community of doctoral students, who can manage their own projects online with other community members who have the same interest. In order to develop that model, a checklist of community-based project management process has been developed in the light of the literature review and the needs of stakeholders (doctoral students and researchers). Within this model, community-based project management includes three main elements: community, project and management. In relation to project, there are two main sub elements. First is projectbased learning (PBL), which is based on constructivist perspective of learning that make students construct their knowledge when they work together to accomplish specific goals. Second is the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK), which is a project management guide, and an internationally recognized standard [PMBOK Guide, 2004], that provides the fundamentals of project management as they apply to a wide range of projects, including construction, software, engineering, automotive, so the study deploy this approach to scaffold based project management learning model. In the terms of the community element, this study adopted the community of inquiry model, which defines a good e-learning environment through three major aspects: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. The last element which is addressed in this study called knowledge management. After identifying these elements, this study investigates a range of tools in the light of this model. The study analyses six different learning and content management systems (OPAL, Moodle, Joomla, e107, ZMS and TUDWCMS) in order to find out tool(s) that is/are sufficient for implementing the suggested study model

Czytelność Wikipedii

Wikipedia is becoming widely acknowledged as a reliable source of encyclopedic information. However, concerns have been expressed about its readability. Wikipedia articles might be written in a language too difficult to be understood by most of its visitors. In this study, we apply the Flesch reading ease test to all available articles from the English Wikipedia to investigate these concerns. The results show that overall readability is poor, with 75 percent of all articles scoring below the desired readability score. The ‘Simple English’ Wikipedia scores better, but its readability is still insufficient for its target audience. A demo of our methodology is available at www.readabilityofwikipedia.com.Wikipedia jest powszechnie uznawana za wiarygodne źródło informacji encyklopedycznej. Pewnym problemem jest jednak jej czytelność. Artykuły Wikipedii bywają napisane w sposób niezrozumiały dla przeciętnego użytkownika. Do zbadania tego aspektu w odniesieniu do wszystkich dostępnych artykułów angielskiej wersji Wikipedii wykorzystano indeks czytelności Flescha. W rezultacie badań okazało się, że czytelność Wikipedii jest na niskim poziomie: 75% z wszystkich artykułów plasuje się poniżej spodziewanego poziomu. W teście lepiej wypada Wikipedia w wersji uproszczonej (Simple English Wikipedia), ale i jej czytelność okazuje się nieodpowiednia dla docelowej grupy użytkowników. Wersja demonstracyjna przyjętej metody badań dostępna jest na stronie: www.readabilityofwikipedia.com