Connecting Undergraduate Students as Partners in Computer Science Teaching and Research

Connecting undergraduate students as partners can lead to the enhancement of the undergraduate experience and allow students to see the different sides of the university. Such holistic perspectives may better inform academic career choices and postgraduate study. Furthermore, student involvement in course development has many potential benefits. This paper outlines a framework for connecting research and teaching within Computer Science- though this is applicable across other disciplines. Three case studies are considered to illustrate the approach. The first case study involves students in their honours’ stage (level 6, typically 3rd year) project, the second an undergraduate intern between stages 5 and 6, and finally, a MSc (level 7) project. All three case studies have actively involved students in core parts of the University’s teaching and research activities, producing usable software systems to support these efforts. We consider this as a continuing engagement process to enhance the undergraduate learning experience within Computer Science

Math empowerment: a multidisciplinary example to engage primary school students in learning mathematics

This paper describes an educational project conducted in a primary school in Italy (Scuola Primaria Alessandro Manzoni at Mulazzano, near to Milan). The school requested our collaboration to help improve upon the results achieved on the National Tests for Mathematics, in which students, aged 7, registered performances lower than the national average the past year. From January to June, 2016, we supported teachers, providing them with information, tools and methods to increase their pupils’ curiosity and passion for mathematics. Mixing our different experiences and competences (instructional design and gamification, information technologies and psychology) we have tried to provide a broader spectrum of parameters, tools and keys to understand how to achieve an inclusive approach that is ‘personalised’ to each student. This collaboration with teachers and students allowed us to draw interesting observations about learning styles, pointing out the negative impact that standardized processes and instruments can have on the self‐esteem and, consequently, on student performance. The goal of this programme was to find the right learning levers to intrigue and excite students in mathematical concepts and their applications. Our hypothesis is that, by considering the learning of mathematics as a continuous process, in which students develop freely through their own experiments, observations, involvement and curiosity, students can achieve improved results on the National Tests (INVALSI). This paper includes results of a survey conducted by children ‐’About Me and Mathematics‘

Gamification with the universal game heuristic to develop a mobile web game for learning Viena Karelian dialect and culture

Abstract. Learning Viena Karelian dialect and culture require an innovative approach to increase the willingness of learners to learn in a fun and an effective way. Karelian is an endangered language with only around 35,000 speakers, in contrast with 640,000 people who live in the Republic of Karelia. If the number of speakers slowly decrease every year and there are limited ways to learn, then those problems may lead this endangered language to be extinct in the future. Therefore, gamification approach was used to design and build an educational game from non-gaming contexts. In this research, a functional prototype was built to learn Viena Karelian dialect and culture, where the beginner learners, from English and Finnish speakers, can learn with desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices. Design science research was used as the research method and the universal game heuristic was used as the design cycle. A functional prototype that can be accessed by using web browsers was built with Laravel PHP framework and Bootstrap frontend framework. Learners can play the game and explore various features to learn Viena Karelian dialect and culture. Testing phase was conducted in the 3rd international GamiFIN conference with 38 players and 12 received feedback, and the result shown that the game motivated the test participants to play, with 91.7% positive engagement. The feedback is available for further improvement of Viena game development project and as a foundation to develop similar games for other Karelian dialects and culture

Heuristic Evaluation for Gameful Design

© Lennart Nacke, 2016. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in CHI PLAY Companion '16 Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, https://doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2987729Despite the emergence of many gameful design methods in the literature, there is a lack of evaluation methods specific to gameful design. To address this gap, we present a new set of guidelines for heuristic evaluation of gameful design in interactive systems. First, we review several gameful design methods to identify the dimensions of motivational affordances most often employed. Then, we present a set of 28 gamification heuristics aimed at enabling experts to rapidly evaluate a gameful system. The resulting heuristics are a new method to evaluate user experience in gameful interactive systemsNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaPeer-reviewe

Glitchspace:teaching programming through puzzles in cyberspace

There is an increasing need to address the player experience in games-based learning. Whilst games offer enormous potential as learning experiences, the balance between entertainment and education must be carefully designed and delivered. Successful commercial games tend to focus gameplay above any educational aspects. In contrast, games designed for educational purposes have a habit of sacrificing entertainment for educational value which can result in a decline in player engagement. For both, the player experience is critical as it can have a profound effect on both the commercial success of the game and in delivering the educational engagement. As part of an Interface-funded research project Abertay University worked with the independent games company, Space Budgie, to enhance the user experience of their educational game Glitchspace. The game aimed to teach basic coding principles and terminology in an entertaining way. The game sets the player inside a Mondrian-inspired cyberspace world where to progress the player needs to reprogramme the world around them to solve puzzles. The main objective of the academic-industry collaborative project was to analyse the user experience (UX) of the game to increase its educational value for a standalone educational version. The UX design focused on both pragmatic and hedonic qualities such playability, usability and the psychological impact of the game. The empirical study of the UX design allowed all parties to develop a deeper understanding of how the game was being played and the initial reactions to the game by the player. The core research question that the study sought to answer was whether when designing an educational game, UX design could improve philosophical concepts like motivation and engagement to foster better learning experiences.</p

Heuristic Evaluation of Play4Fit Health and Fitness App: A Comparison Between Experts and Novices Evaluators

Heuristic evaluation (HE) can be used to effectively identify usability issues in various interfaces. However, it has not been widely used in evaluating smartphone apps, especially in the health and fitness domain. One reason is the lack of HCI experts, which makes incorporating HE into the design process difficult. This paper presents the results of a study that compared HE performed by three HCI experts and three novices in evaluating a gamification app for health and fitness on a smartphone. The study used Smartphone Mobile Application heuRisTics (SMART), which focuses on smartphone apps, and a severity rating scale to determine the severity of the usability issues. These issues were mapped to the SMART heuristic. The findings indicate that novices may identify usability issues that the experts overlooked. While the experts identified eighteen usability issues, the novices found only four; however, the novice’s findings may be used as a substitute for HE when experts are unavailable. Both experts and novices identified two similar usability issues, but their severity ratings differed. One possible solution to address the lack of usability issues identified by novices in HE is to use more novices instead of experts in the evaluation process

Gamified-Assessment For Learning Indonesian as A Foreign Language: Heuristic Evaluation Approach

While the current assessment mostly repletes with paper-based or switching to online-based to see the assessment efficiency, gamified-assessment is underexplored yet. Even though the widespread of gamification phenomenon has been observed in the particular foreign language, the scarcity of game-based for assessment in learning Indonesian as foreign language forces this study to heuristically evaluate ‘travelling-like’ game. It aims to assess non-native students in higher education for learning Indonesian as a foreign language (BIPA). To this end, the study was supported by six Indonesian teachers who are currently teaching the Indonesian language in various countries or regions. The outcome of the study is thirteen heuristics which contains a set of checklist items related to an educational game framework called HEDEERS. Both the heuristics and the discussions can identify essential aspects of assessment design in both educational and game perspectives that will impact users experiences for learning the Indonesian language in a better approac

Heuristic Evaluation of Play4Fit Health and Fitness App: A Comparison Between Experts and Novices Evaluators

Heuristic evaluation (HE) can be used to effectively identify usability issues in various interfaces. However, it has not been widely used in evaluating smartphone apps, especially in the health and fitness domain. One reason is the lack of HCI experts, which makes incorporating HE into the design process difficult. This paper presents the results of a study that compared HE performed by three HCI experts and three novices in evaluating a gamification app for health and fitness on a smartphone. The study used Smartphone Mobile Application heuRisTics (SMART), which focuses on smartphone apps, and a severity rating scale to determine the severity of the usability issues. These issues were mapped to the SMART heuristic. The findings indicate that novices may identify usability issues that the experts overlooked. While the experts identified eighteen usability issues, the novices found only four; however, the novice’s findings may be used as a substitute for HE when experts are unavailable. Both experts and novices identified two similar usability issues, but their severity ratings differed. One possible solution to address the lack of usability issues identified by novices in HE is to use more novices instead of experts in the evaluation process

EXAMINING THE USE OF USER-CENTERED DESIGN IN GAMIFICATION: A DELPHI STUDY

This study examined using the user-centered design (UCD) approach in gamification product development with the research question, What opinions do experienced gamification designers have in using the UCD method as they develop and design gamification products? Through the multi- phase interactions between researcher and participants of this Delphi study, specific survey questions were developed such as, how does the UCD method work in gamification design, how well does it work, and suggestions on how it should be used. Gamification design experts were recruited as research participants and four Delphi rounds of data collection were conducted. Thirtythree design heuristics within five themes (UCD workflow, defining players, play testing, gamification evaluation, and user participation) about using UCD in gamification were created from Phase A. Participants’ consensus on these design heuristics were examined through three rounds in phase B: four design heuristics or statements were removed, seven design heuristics or statements did not reach consensus based on a series of stability calculations, and all the remaining design heuristics reached consensus. Findings of this research also included gamification design challenges and recommended references for gamification design beginners. This document includes a listing of design heuristics and recommendations, as well as suggestions for future studies on gamification design

Videojogos 2019: 11th International Conference on Videogames Sciences and Arts: book of abstracts

Videojogos is an annual conference on videogame sciences and arts, promoted by the Portuguese Society of Video Games Sciences (SPCV). Since its first edition, in 2009, the conference has been promoting the scientific gathering of researchers and professionals in the expanded field of videogames. As in the first edition, Aveiro once again holds the conference. The 11th Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts – Videojogos 2019 takes place in the University of Aveiro, Portugal, during November 27-29. The event is co-organized by the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro (DeCA), DeCA’s DigiMedia Research Center and the Portuguese Society of Video Games Sciences (SPCV). This year, 10 years after the first conference, SPCV and the co-organizers decided to convert the conference into a full international event, with English as a working language. As one of the outcomes of this decision, the proceedings of Videojogos 2019 will be published by Springer in their “Communications in Computer and Information Science” (CCIS) book series, part of a post-conference volume with the number 1164. This Book of Abstracts is more than a shortened version of the proceedings. Besides abstracts from the 20 selected papers that will be published in the book series, it contains abstracts from the research posters (8) and videogame demos (9) accepted for the conference, as well synopsis for other activities held at the conference such as keynotes (2) and workshops (3). Thanks to UA Editora, we were able to present this book in time for the conference, providing an overview into the diversity of contributions gathered in the videogame context. We would like to thank the scientific board for their contribution to guarantee and deliver the highest scientific quality, allowing the outstanding relevance of this selection. We also would like to thank the program chairs (demo, poster and workshops) and the organization team for all their concerns and efforts in the organization, an extremely important contribution for the overall success of the Videojogos 2019 Conference. Finally, a note of appreciation to the American Corner of the University of Aveiro, which provided essential logistical support, namely by ensuring the presence of Professor Ernest Adams as Keynote Speaker and to the University of Aveiro publisher, UA Editora, for their support and collaboration in this publication.publishe