Education vs. Entertainment: A Cultural History of Children's Software

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning This chapter draws on ethnographic material to consider the cultural politics and recent history of children's software and reflects on how this past can inform our current efforts to mobilize games for learning. The analysis uses a concept of genre as a way of making linkages across the distributed but interconnected circuit of everyday play, software content, and industry context. Organized through three genres in children's software -- academic, entertainment, and construction -- the body of the chapter describes how these genres play out within a production and advertising context, in the design of particular software titles, and at sites of play in after-school computer centers where the fieldwork was conducted

Power Explorer – a casual game style for encouraging long term behavior change among teenagers

When it comes to motivating teenagers towards energy awareness, new approaches need to be considered. One such is the use of pervasive games connected to the players own energy consumption. Earlier work has confirmed this to be a highly effective approach. The question however remains if post game effects on behavior can be achieved. In this paper we try to answer this by trying out a slightly different design compared to previous work. The hypothesis is that a more casual game play and a richer learning interaction enabled by building the game on a real time sensor system could stimulate more lasting effects. Electric consumption data after the 7 days evaluation on a test group of 15 players shows tentative indications for a persistent post game effect compared to the control group of 20 households. Findings also show a statistically significant positive change in the players’ attitude towards saving energy compared to the same group. Findings, at the same time, also indicate a negative effect on the player’s attitude toward environmental questions in general

Understanding Engagement within the Context of a Safety Critical Game

One of the most frequent arguments for deploying serious games is that they provide an engaging format for student learning. However, engagement is often equated with enjoyment, which may not be the most relevant conceptualization in safety-critical settings, such as law enforcement and healthcare. In these contexts, the term ‘serious’ does not only relate to the non-entertainment purpose of the game but also the environment simulated by the game. In addition, a lack of engagement in a safety critical training setting can have serious ethical implications, leading to significant real-world impacts. However, evaluations of safety-critical games (SCGs) rarely provide an in-depth consideration of player experience. Thus, in relation to simulation game-based training, we are left without a clear understanding of what sort of experience players are having, what factors influence their engagement and how their engagement relates to learning. In order to address these issues, this paper reports on the mixed-method evaluation of a SCG that was developed to support police training. The findings indicate that engagement is supported by the experience situational relevance, due to the player’s experience of real-world authenticity, targeted feedback mechanisms and learning challenges

Views from within a narrative : Evaluating long-term human-robot interaction in a naturalistic environment using open-ended scenarios

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Date of acceptance: 16/06/2014This article describes the prototyping of human–robot interactions in the University of Hertfordshire (UH) Robot House. Twelve participants took part in a long-term study in which they interacted with robots in the UH Robot House once a week for a period of 10 weeks. A prototyping method using the narrative framing technique allowed participants to engage with the robots in episodic interactions that were framed using narrative to convey the impression of a continuous long-term interaction. The goal was to examine how participants responded to the scenarios and the robots as well as specific robot behaviours, such as agent migration and expressive behaviours. Evaluation of the robots and the scenarios were elicited using several measures, including the standardised System Usability Scale, an ad hoc Scenario Acceptance Scale, as well as single-item Likert scales, open-ended questionnaire items and a debriefing interview. Results suggest that participants felt that the use of this prototyping technique allowed them insight into the use of the robot, and that they accepted the use of the robot within the scenarioPeer reviewe

Synthetic worlds, synthetic strategies: attaining creativity in the metaverse

This text will attempt to delineate the underlying theoretical premises and the definition of the output of an immersive learning approach pertaining to the visual arts to be implemented in online, three dimensional synthetic worlds. Deviating from the prevalent practice of the replication of physical art studio teaching strategies within a virtual environment, the author proposes instead to apply the fundamental tenets of Roy Ascott’s “Groundcourse”, in combination with recent educational approaches such as “Transformative Learning” and “Constructionism”. In an amalgamation of these educational approaches with findings drawn from the fields of Metanomics, Ludology, Cyberpsychology and Presence Studies, as well as an examination of creative practices manifest in the metaverse today, the formulation of a learning strategy for creative enablement unique to online, three dimensional synthetic worlds; one which will focus upon “Play” as well as Role Play, virtual Assemblage and the visual identity of the avatar within the pursuits, is being proposed in this chapter

Synthetic worlds, synthetic strategies: attaining creativity in the metaverse

This text will attempt to delineate the underlying theoretical premises and the definition of the output of an immersive learning approach pertaining to the visual arts to be implemented in online, three dimensional synthetic worlds. Deviating from the prevalent practice of the replication of physical art studio teaching strategies within a virtual environment, the author proposes instead to apply the fundamental tenets of Roy Ascott’s “Groundcourse”, in combination with recent educational approaches such as “Transformative Learning” and “Constructionism”. In an amalgamation of these educational approaches with findings drawn from the fields of Metanomics, Ludology, Cyberpsychology and Presence Studies, as well as an examination of creative practices manifest in the metaverse today, the formulation of a learning strategy for creative enablement unique to online, three dimensional synthetic worlds; one which will focus upon “Play” as well as Role Play, virtual Assemblage and the visual identity of the avatar within the pursuits, is being proposed in this chapter

Co-located Augmented Play-spaces:Past, Present, and Perspectives

In recent years, many different studies regarding Co-located Augmented Play-spaces (CAPs) have been published in a wide variety of conferences and journals. We present an overview. The work presented in these papers includes end user's perspectives as well as researcher's perspective. We place these within four aspects in this review: 1) Argumentation, the underlying reasons or the higher end goals to investigate interactive play from a user's perspective, 2) Systems, the kind of systems that are created, this includes their intended use which fits the end user's perspective, 3) Evaluation, the way in which the researchers evaluate the system, 4) Contribution, the goal of the studies from the researcher's perspective; what does the study contribute to the research community. CAPs are often multimodal in nature; this survey pays attention to the multimodal characteristics in relation to all four aspects. This overview contributes a clearer view on the current literature, points out where new opportunities lie, and hands us the tools for what we think is important: bringing the end-user and research perspective together in intervention based evaluations. In short, this paper discusses CAPs: their past, the present, and the perspectives

The role of play

Play is seen as an activity that is fun, voluntary, offers escape, and is fundamentally exciting. Play is however, more than that; it is a working model of flexibility! There is a vital link between play, psychological development and learning. Moreover, the importance of play has gained importance by modern gaming, social networks and digital culture. Huizinga pointed out that play is of profound value to our culture. In his book Homo Ludens, play is restricted to a specific time and place. In the chair Design of Playful Interactions, we focus on new forms of play, which are integrated in daily activities (work, education) or other practices, e.g. art or citizenship, and share several qualities: exploration, communication, personalization and expression. In my lecture I will "play the ball", highlighting our educational and research efforts to design interactive toys, games, playgrounds, interactive art and (entertainment) applications. I will sketch future developments and relate these to examples in digital culture

Varying the texture: a study of art, learning and multimedia

Art Explorer is an innovative multimedia system being designed and developed within the Institute of Educational Technology, at The Open University. Based on an analogy to dreams, Art Explorer is structured into several episodes. Each episode is designed to help beginning students of Art History foster personal constructs about paintings and develop a richer understanding of how their perceptions of paintings work. This discussion focuses on the pedagogic rationale motivating Art Explorer's development and is structured around two strands of a design story. First, it highlights the research behind the design. The reported research is about learners' problems - most specifically about the varying conceptual, perceptual and affective challenges learners face as they begin to study Art History. But, more broadly, it is about the problems faced by learners as they begin academic study and seek to engage with the knowledge and methods of discipline experts. Secondly, and it is argued, as a second pedagogic priority, the spotlight shifts to multimedia. The discussion tracks design decisions that aim both to exploit the potential of the medium and to match pre-identified learner needs. The ingredients of Art Explorer are described to illustrate some of the rich potential of the medium for negotiating understanding between teacher and learner