Serious Games to Enhance Education. Play, Technology and Archaeology in a Spanish museum

Serious games are a powerful resource in the teaching-learning process in formal and informal learning settings since this kind of activity motivates participants to take part actively in their own learning process. Within informal learning environments, they serve to improve their pedagogical role, which is sometimes difficult to be perceived by users. Nevertheless, serious games play another equally important role in museums, Art galleries or Science centres: engaging part of the surrounding society with this kind of institutions. This paper describes a “serious game” using new technology that includes Information and Communication Technologies and 3D digitized models to be played in informal learning settings. It aims to enhance their didactic role and look for social engagement. An experimental experience was carried out in the National Museum of Roman Art (Mérida, Spain) to attract and retain a specific group of people, teenagers, reluctant to visit archaeological museums most of the time since they considered them boring places. Finally, this experience served to assess the applicability and versatility as an educational resource of the game scheme proposed

Incorporating Local Culture in English Language Teaching for Papuan Junior High School Students

Local culture is a crucial aspect in human life. Local culture relates to the way of human life such as thinking, feeling, and acting. It is undeniable that local culture could be used in the academic context as the medium in learning English. By using local culture, students will be able to empower their ability in thinking, speaking, and writing. Therefore, the teachers are required to design the learning process by providing local culture contents or materials that the students are familiar with. This research aimed to analyse whether Junior High School's teachers have implemented three ways in a local culture based on teaching English which was proposed by Goldberg and to find out whether the students feel more enthusiastic in learning by using local culture content. Besides that, this study was to investigate and measure the influence of local culture on students’ skills before and after using local culture contents in learning English. The data of research were collected from two Junior High Schools in Timika-Papua, Indonesia. They were SMP N 2 and SMP N 8. The method of this research was both quantitative and qualitative. In gaining the data, the researcher distributed the questionnaire to 107 students and interviewed two teachers and two students. After that, the researcher collected the data, identified, and analysed it by using SPSS 26.0. The findings revealed that Papuan English teacher have used local culture contents in providing the English materials for the students. On the other hand, students’ skills can be improved to be better by using local culture contents in learning English.

MAPPING HUMAN CAPITAL FOR SELF-EMPLOYMENT: EDUCATION FOR JOB CREATION—AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

A widely-suggested educational policy solution for youth unemployment is to increase employability; however, this approach tends to neglect an alternative path—that of education for job creation and self-employment. This study emphasizes the importance of this alternative strategy and calls for greater attention to it for two reasons: 1) increasing employability is no longer sufficient in today’s saturated labor market; and 2) the relationship between skills and successful entrepreneurship is still sketchy at best. This study investigates how education can play a role in creating one’s own job, and what the best way to foster self-employment competencies is. It is designed to help policy makers capture perspectives on education in relation to self-employment so that they can debate, design, and implement programs in the future. The study specifically focuses on how education, related to human and social capital, might play a role in the business creation process. The study employs social cartography both to select data for analysis and also to present the final findings of the study. Meta-study procedures were applied for the data analysis. The study found three types of human capital (basic, specific, and entrepreneurial) and two types of social capital (cognitive and structural). The findings from the data-analysis were synthesized and mapped on a time-line of business creation and the management process. This map shows that basic human capital is constantly necessary throughout the process; however, the importance of specific and entrepreneurial human capital shifts along with the progress of business creation. The most effective educational strategies also shift parallel with the type of human capital. The impact of social capital also shifts; cognitive social capital has more of an impact in earlier stages, while structural social capital affects the process more in later stages. The recommendations for policy implications and further research possibility were made based on what the map shows, and does not show. This theoretical study is an effort to elucidate the underlying structures of human and social capital in the job creation process in an attempt to strengthen entrepreneurial education policy and programs in the future

Understanding The Growth Of Takeaway Food Apps in The UK: A Supplier and Consumer Perspective

This research investigates the development, use and consumer acceptance of online takeaway food ordering (OTFO) apps in the UK. Although the online takeaway food ordering sector is well-established, it continues to improve services by bringing new technology and innovation in the sector. Among the latest technologies introduced into the sector is the development of takeaway apps. Given the recent developments and advancements in technology, there is limited evidence on how consumers view and use takeaway apps. In addition, the development and operation of the sector has so far received little attention in the academic literature. To develop a more in-depth understanding of this new technology and its adoption, the study employed a mixed methods approach. The first approach adopted a case study perspective to investigate the growth of technology within one organisation. The second approach focused on consumer acceptance of the technology through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 12) and a questionnaire survey (n = 150). The findings from this study suggest that organisations that supply takeaway apps tend to adopt innovation to improve business growth and ensure customer satisfaction. The best way for the organisation to encourage consumers to adopt the new technology was evidenced through the marketing mix such as through television advertisements. Although organisations have been active in promoting the apps, there are still insufficient information of consumer perception of how the technology. Through investigating the consumer perspective, it was revealed that the consumer perceived the use of takeaway apps similar to purchasing takeaway food. To understand consumer acceptance of takeaway apps, the study used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by studying perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived trust, perceived risk security and perceived social influence on the intention to use and actual use of the apps. This study contributes to the emerging body of knowledge on the online takeaway food ordering sector. In addition, it has an applied contribution in contributing to the development of new theory in the technology influence on university student takeaway food purchase and the acceptance of takeaway food apps