Tabletop prototyping of serious games for ‘soft skills’ training

Serious games offer a relatively low cost, highly engaging alternative to traditional forms of soft skills training. The current paper describes an approach taken to designing a serious game for the training of soft skills. A tabletop prototype of the game was created and evaluated with a group of 24 participants. Initial findings suggest that the game successfully created an environment in which it was advantageous to engage in appropriate collaborative decision making behaviors, as well as providing built-in opportunities for a tutor to guide under-performing groups

A simulation exercise for incorporating long-term path dependencies in urgent decision-making

Urban policymakers of the 2020s must act within various types of wicked socio-ecological disruptions. Under deep uncertainty and time pressure, they must make decisions which will define the scope of possible actions in the future. Our aim was to develop a research instrument that would enable researchers and practitioners to learn about such policymaking. We designed and ran a half-day simulation exercise, the Policy Operations Room (POR). The participants were the top politicians and a group of senior experts from the City of Helsinki, Finland. The design of the exercise was based on a review of simulation and gaming research literature. The exercise managed to integrate - albeit imperfectly - the utilitarian and emancipatory dimensions in futures studies: it gave the participants the utilitarian possibility to practice decision-making and the emancipatory possibility to critically reflect on decision-making in wicked, science-based scenarios. It also gave the researchers a chance to witness urgent decision-making in action. Issues deserving further attention include the inclusion of social-political complexity in the scenarios and practitioner involvement in the design process of the exercise. All in all, the POR constitutes a unique way of integrating science-based assessment of future path dependencies into science-policy research and interaction.Peer reviewe

Serious games in support of transformative multi-stakeholder sanitation planning for increased resource recovery: Specifications for game development

Globally, 2.3 billion people lack sanitation. Innovative solutions are needed that allow for rapid service expansion to underserved populations. Serious games can bring new perspectives into rigid planning and decision-making by increasing the understanding of complex issues, supporting learning of alternative perspectives and enhancing stakeholders cooperation. Existing games are inadequate for addressing the sanitation challenge and current frameworks for game development are neither comprehensive, nor tailored to sanitation planning. The objectives of this report are a) to develop a generic framework for development of serious games supporting transformative planning and governance; and b) to develop a set of specifications for a serious game for transformative sanitation planning specifically, c) to present a sanitation planning game prototype, and d) to report on an assessment of this game prototype. The report is based on literature studies and prototyping with user tests. A comprehensive framework for game development is presented and specifications for a serious game in sanitation planning are described. Initial game prototyping found that not all specifications could be fulfilled. Yet, focusing the framework on the serious purpose of the game, its worldview, its content, and its context of use brought a different but useful logic into the game design process

Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’ presents a range of research projects which aim to explore how to make engagement in learning (and teaching) more passionate. This interactive and experimental resource discusses innovations which pave the way to open collaboration at scale. The book introduces methodological and technological breakthroughs via twelve chapters to learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces. The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and the EU TELMap project have brought together the luminaries from the European research area to showcase their vision of the future of learning with technology via their recent research project work. The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more

Serious gaming in flood risk management

Serious gaming is increasingly used to explore important real-world problems and a growing number of serious games are addressing flood-related issues. However, there has been limited synthesis of these attempts and their contributions to the ongoing shift toward a more holistic and governance-based flood resilience perspective in flood risk management (FRM). This international review collates and analyses these attempts in order to develop a knowledge base of serious gaming in the field of FRM. It contains 37 games that were developed with different rationales that include engaging players in the topic of FRM, supporting practice by exploring future options through collaboration, improving communication of FRM, as educational tools, and to collect research data. The gameplay countries and player characteristics, game characteristics, relevance to FRM, game rationales, and collection of data are explored in this paper. Identified serious games provided an unconventional and entertaining approach to engage stakeholders on flood-related issues. The review analyzed the serious games in light of the shift toward flood resilience and identified limitations in the documentation of serious games and their potential in understanding the longer-term impacts of gameplay on players. Furthermore, the vast majority of reviewed games were played in a single country and missed out on understanding the cultural production and perspectives of FRM that could support cross-cultural learning and inspiration for future FRM strategies. Overall, the review identified an important role for serious games in the shift toward governance and the adoption of more holistic flood resilience perspectives. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Methods Science of Water > Water Extremes

The Effect of Intergroup Contact in Gaming on Improving Empathetic Feelings and Reducing Stereotypes Toward Immigrants

Video games have been designed and studied in the context of intergroup relations. Past studies have shown that overall gaming experience may induce empathy and reduce prejudice, however, the mechanism that leads to such an effect is not fully understood. The current study utilizes intergroup contact theory as a foundation to design a 2D game that allows mediated contact to occur through hiring and dialogue choices. It examines how perceived positive vs. negative contact valence with outgroup immigrant workers influences empathetic feelings and stereotypes toward immigrants. A user study of 81 adult players was conducted. Results showed that overall gameplay reduced negative stereotypes. Perceived positive contact predicts increased empathetic feelings and reduced negative stereotypes toward immigrants. However, there is no significant finding with regards to the influence of negative contact in the game. Implications and directions for further research are discusse