Games, Simulations, Immersive Environments, and Emerging Technologies

International audienceThis entry presents an overview of advanced technologies to support teaching and learning. The use of innovative interactive systems for education has never been higher. Far from being just a trend, the objective is to use the current technology to cover educational needs and create relevant pedagogical situations. The arguments in their favor are generally their positive effects on learners’ motivation and the necessity to provide learning methods adapted to our growing digital culture. The new learning technologies and emerging trends are first reviewed hereunder. We thus define and discuss learning games, gamification, simulation, immersive environments and other emerging technologies. Then, the current limits and remaining scientific challenges are highlighted

A Student-Dominant View of the Readiness to use Metaverse in Education: The TRI-F Framework

This paper reports on students' readiness for using Metaverse for education in a university in a developing country facing infrastructure and poverty challenges. Covid-19 forced many universities to adopt a hybrid approach to teaching and supervision. While online meeting technologies have become commonplace, there is a lack of the connectedness of face-to-face meetings, for which Metaverse is promoted as a solution. We pose the question as to the level of readiness of students to use Metaverse technologies. Thematic analysis of students' self-reflections on their experience of supervision in a 2D virtual world revealed the usefulness of the technology readiness index model, from which an extension to the model was proposed to include facilitators for the application of the technology that may mediate the motivators and inhibitors when assessing readiness to use Metaverse in education settings

Evaluating a tactile and a tangible multi-tablet gamified quiz system for collaborative learning in primary education

[EN] Gamification has been identified as an interesting technique to foster collaboration in educational contexts. However, there are not many approaches that tackle this in primary school learning environments. The most popular technologies in the classroom are still traditional video consoles and desktop computers, which complicate the design of collaborative activities since they are essentially mono-user. The recent popularization of handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones has made it possible to build affordable, scalable, and improvised collaborative gamifled activities by creating a multi-tablet environment. In this paper we present Quizbot, a collaborative gamifled quiz application to practice different subjects, which can be defined by educators beforehand. Two versions of the system are implemented: a tactile for tablets laid on a table, in which all the elements are digital; and a tangible in which the tablets are scattered on the floor and the components are both digital and physical objects. Both versions of Quizbot are evaluated and compared in a study with eighty primary-schooled children in terms of user experience and quality of collaboration supported. Results indicate that both versions of Quizbot are essentially equally fun and easy to use, and can effectively support collaboration, with the tangible version outperforming the other one with respect to make the children reach consensus after a discussion, split and parallelize work, and treat each other with more respect, but also presenting a poorer time management.We would like to thank Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's Summer School for their collaboration during the development of this study, as well as Colegio Internacional Ausias March for their support in the development of educational content.This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and SportGarcía Sanjuan, F.; El Jurdi, S.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Nácher-Soler, VE. (2018). Evaluating a tactile and a tangible multi-tablet gamified quiz system for collaborative learning in primary education. Computers & Education. 123:65-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.04.011S658412

A Smartphone Application Designed to Engage the Elderly in Home-Based Rehabilitation

As life expectancy increases, it is imperative that the elderly take advantage of the benefits of technology to remain active and independent. Mobile health applications are widely used nowadays as they promote a healthy lifestyle and self-management of diseases, opening new horizons in the interactive health service delivery. However, adapting these applications to the needs and requirements of the elderly is still a challenge. This article presents a smartphone application that is part of a multifactorial intervention to support older people with balance disorders. The application aims to enable users to self-evaluate their activity and progress, to communicate with each other and, through strategically selected motivational features, to engage with the system with undiminished interest for a long period of time. Mock-up interfaces were evaluated in semi-structured focus groups and interviews that were performed across three European countries. Further evaluation in the form of four pilot studies with 160 participants will be performed and qualitative and quantitative measures will be used to process the feedback about the use of the application

From libertarian paternalism to liberalism: behavioural science and policy in an age of new technology

Behavioural science has been effectively used by policy makers in various domains, from health to savings. However, interventions that behavioural scientists typically employ to change behaviour have been at the centre of an ethical debate, given that they include elements of paternalism that have implications for people’s freedom of choice. In the present article, we argue that this ethical debate could be resolved in the future through implementation and advancement of new technologies. We propose that several technologies which are currently available and are rapidly evolving (i.e., virtual and augmented reality, social robotics, gamification, self-quantification, and behavioural informatics) have a potential to be integrated with various behavioural interventions in a non-paternalistic way. More specifically, people would decide themselves which behaviours they want to change and select the technologies they want to use for this purpose, and the role of policy makers would be to develop transparent behavioural interventions for these technologies. In that sense, behavioural science would move from libertarian paternalism to liberalism, given that people would freely choose how they want to change, and policy makers would create technological interventions that make this change possible

Collaborative educational environments incorporating mixed reality technologies: a systematic mapping study

In this paper, we report findings from a systematic mapping study, conducted to review the existing literature on collaborative educational environments incorporating mixed reality technologies. There is increasing interest in mixed reality technologies in education, especially with the introduction of new Over Head Mounted Displays (OHMDs), such as HoloLens, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. with the consideration of areas such as education, dynamic technology and complex environments, a research area is identified. We carried out an extensive review of the literature from 2007 to 2017 and conducted an analysis of the works on mixed reality technologies and its subcategories applied to collaborative education environments. Results highlighted the lack of research across the mixed reality spectrum, especially in the augmented virtuality subcategory, as well as technical limitations such as response time in the development of mixed reality technologies for collaborative environments. Furthermore, the difficulty of teaching professionals to replicate mixed reality experiments in real environments, due to the technical skills required, was identified. The main contribution of this article is the discussion of the current works with visualization of the present state of the area, which is aimed to encourage educators to develop mixed reality artefacts and conduct further research to support collaborative educational environments

Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

Augmented Reality in Smart Cities: A Multimedia Approach

Intro: This paper presents an advance overview of utilizing Augmented Reality (AR) in smart cities. Although, Smart cities contain six major aspects (mobility, economy, government, environment, living, and people), this paper focuses on three of them that have more potentiality in using virtual assistant (mobility, environment, and living). Methodology: Presenting a state-of-the-art review studies undertake between 2013 and 2017, which is driven from highlighted libraries is the aim of this research. After exact examine, 15 emphasized studies are chosen to divide the main aspects while 120 selective articles are supporting them. These categorizes have been critically compared with an aim, method and chronological perspectives. Results: First of All, Environmental issues (Museums industry) attract the most attention of researchers while the living issues (maintenance) have lower significant compare t latter and mobility (indoor-outdoor navigation) attract the least. Moreover, a close connection between academic and industry fields is going to be created. Conclusions: it has been concluded that, because of economic advantages, utilizing AR technology has improved in the tourism and maintenance. Moreover, until now, most of studies try to prove their concept rather than illustrate well stablished analytic approach. Because of hardware and software improvement, it is essential for the future studies to evaluate their hypothesis in a real urban context

Digital Cultural Strategies Within the Context of Digital Humanities Economics

Staying sustainable in the world of cultural heritage is a major organizational challenge nationally and internationally. Due to the global financial crisis the funds available to sustain the operations of museums and libraries become difficult not only to obtain them but also to utilized them effectively and efficiently. The operational costs of museums increase over the time due to exhibit maintenance and acquisition costs. This cost is inversely proportional to the revenues that can be generated. Virtual reality, avatar technologies, virtual worlds, holograms, gaming and gamification can offer creative interactivity and unique experiences with low or no cost to the global visitor and introduce new revenue streams. This paper practically integrates the realization of digital cultural strategies and operations within the context of digital humanities economics that can turn museums and libraries from cost centres to profit centres for the benefit of the humanity and the society