A game based approach to improve traders' decision-making

Purpose: The development of a game based approach to improving the decision-making capabilities of financial traders through attention to improving the regulation of emotions during trading. Design/methodology/approach: The project used a design-based research approach to integrate the contributions of a highly inter-disciplinary team. The approach was underpinned by considerable stakeholder engagement to understand the ‘ecology of practices’ in which this learning approach should be embedded. Findings: Taken together, our 35 laboratory, field and evaluation studies provide much support for the validity of our game based learning approach, the learning elements which make it up, and the value of designing game-based learning to fit within an ecology of existing practices. Originality/value: The novelty of the work described in the paper comes from the focus in this research project of combining knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines informed by a deep understanding of the context of application to achieve the successful development of a Learning Pathway, which addresses the transfer of learning to the practice environment Key words: Design-based research, emotion-regulation, disposition–effect, financial traders, serious games, sensor-based game

Project:Filter - using applied games to engage secondary schoolchildren with public policy

Applied games present a twenty-first-century method of consuming information for a specific purpose beyond pure entertainment. Objectives such as awareness and engagement are often used as intended outcomes of applied games in alignment with strategic, organizational, or commercial purposes. Applied games were highlighted as an engagement-based outcome to explore noPILLS, a pan-European policy research project which presented policy pointers and suggested methods of interventions for reducing micropollution within the wastewater treatment process. This paper provides an assessment of a video game which was developed for the purpose of public engagement with policy-based research. The video game, Project:Filter, was developed as a means of communicating noPILLS to secondary school children in Scotland as part of a classroom-based activity. Knowledge development and engagement were identified using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to evidence topical awareness, depth of understanding, and suggested methods of intervention. Analysis of observations also provided insights into challenges surrounding logistics, pedagogy, social interactions, learning, and gender as contributing factors to the schoolchildren’s experiences of Project:Filter. The intention of this paper is two-fold: firstly, to provide an example of developing video games from policy-based research; and secondly, to suggest methods of phenomenological assessment for identifying play-based engagement

I\u27m Controlling and Composing : The Role of Metacognition in The Incredible Machine

The mouse sets the bowling ball in motion, which falls and squeezes the bellows, which sends out a puff of air, which sends the balloon into the gears that are connect by a belt to another mouse’s exercise wheel. The balloon pops. Having learned how this routine functions, I then move my mouse to connect the rest of the on-screen mice so that the pulleys of all of the caged mice spin with their wheels to punish the puzzle in time allowing me to move to the next level. Eventually, I will be able to make my own versions of Rube Goldberg machines turned into puzzles based on what I have seen and learned in playing through the eighty challenges provided for Mort the mouse, Bob the fish, and me. Although it is more than twenty-five years old, by teaching about games, learning through games, and learning itself, The Incredible Machine (Dynamix, 1992) continues to defy several key deterministic viewpoints about video games. Said another way, The Incredible Machine (TIM) anticipates Hacker’s defining study of meta-cognition—i.e., “knowledge of one’s own knowledge processes”—in games and simulations. As a game about learning, TIM resists the prevailing scholarly notion that pleasurable games must follow the cultural imperative for accumulation, competition, and/or conquest and that pleasurable games are not suitable for teaching. Indeed, Hacker’s later work emphasizes so-called “serious games,” which are explicitly and didactically aimed at learning, a process that has “met with mixed results.” Thus, my paper will examine the metacognition that occurs in and through the very unserious playing TIM

PR:EPARe: A game-based approach to relationship guidance for adolescents

AbstractEnsuring adolescents are equipped with the necessary skills to handle coercion and pressure from peers is a central component of effective relationship education. However, for teachers attempting to convey these principles, didactic methods have been shown to meet with limited success, as the highest-risk students may fail to engage with the subject matter in a meaningful fashion. In this paper, the potential a digital game may hold as a component of a blended learning solution to this problem is explored though the development of PR:EPARe (Positive Relationships: Eliminating Coercion and Pressure in Adolescent Relationships). Adopting a participatory design approach, designers considered relevant input from stakeholders, subject experts, teachers and students in the development of PR:EPARe. Participatory involvement has allowed the game to be developed in such a way that draws focus on the role of the end user to extend from the traditional concern of the student's learning needs to consider that of the practitioner's needs as another primary condition of successful game based learning. An examination of the first section of the PR:EPARe game is undertaken through a cluster randomized control trial of 507 students across three UK schools. Using ANOVA to demonstrating significant differences between control and game groups (p<0.05) for responses to a range of questions on preparedness and self-efficacy. An overall significant positive effect of the game over time when compared to the control (p<0.001) is observed. Based on these preliminary findings, the participatory approach to development is shown to lead to a developed game which is well- received by students, offering the potential to provide a valuable resource for teachers attempting to address this difficult subject within a classroom-based context