208,304 research outputs found

    A game based approach to improve traders' decision-making

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    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

    (MU-CTL-01-12) Towards Model Driven Game Engineering in SimSYS: Requirements for the Agile Software Development Process Game

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    Software Engineering (SE) and Systems Engineering (Sys) are knowledge intensive, specialized, rapidly changing disciplines; their educational infrastructure faces significant challenges including the need to rapidly, widely, and cost effectively introduce new or revised course material; encourage the broad participation of students; address changing student motivations and attitudes; support undergraduate, graduate and lifelong learning; and incorporate the skills needed by industry. Games have a reputation for being fun and engaging; more importantly immersive, requiring deep thinking and complex problem solving. We believe educational games are essential in the next generation of e-learning tools. An extensible, freely available, engaging, problem-based game platform that provides students with an interactive simulated experience closely resembling the activities performed in a (real) industry development project would transform the SE/Sys education infrastructure. Our goal is to extend the state-of-the-art research in SE/Sys education by investigating a game development platform (GDP) from an interdisciplinary perspective (education, game research, and software/systems engineering). A meta-model has been proposed to provide a rigourous foundation that integrates the three disciplines. The GDP is intended to support the semi-automated development of collections of scripted games and their execution, where each game embodies a specific set of learning objectives. The games are scripted using a template based approach. The templates integrate three approaches: use cases; storyboards; and state machines (timed, concurrent, hierarchical state machines). The specification templates capture the structure of the game (Game, Acts, Scenes, Screens, Challenges), storyline, characters (player, non-player, external), graphics, music/sound effects, rules, and so on. The instantiated templates are (manually) transformed into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Play Engine. As a game is played, the game play events are logged; they are analyzed to automatically assess a player’s accomplishments and automatically adapt the game play script. Currently, we are manually defining a collection of games. The games are being used to ensure the GDP is flexible and reliable (i.e., the prototype can load and correctly run a variety of game scripts), the ontology is comprehensive, and the templates assist in defining well-organized, modular game scripts. In this report, we present the initial part of an Agile Software Development Process game (Act I, Scenes 1 and 2) that embodies learning objectives related to SE fundamentals (requirements, architecture, testing, process); planning with Gantt charts; working with budgets; and selecting a team for an agile development project. A student player is rewarded in the game by getting hired, scoring points, or getting promoted to lead a project. The game has a variety of settings including a classroom, job fair, and a work environment with meeting rooms, cubicles, and a water cooler station. The main non-player characters include a teacher, boss, and an evil peer. In the future, semi-automated support for creating new game scripts will be explored using a wizard interface. The templates will be formally defined, supporting automated transformation into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Engine. We also plan to explore transforming the requirements into a notation that can be imported into a commercial tool that supports Statechart simulation

    The Design Aspect of Videogame Creation

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    The goal of this project is to incorporate students from different academic disciplines to see if they can come together to create a working video game with educational components. While learning the necessary software to create the video game, students must come together to then put what they learned into action by creating an educational video game

    Using Online Role-playing Games for Entrepreneurship Training

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    This edited collection of chapters explores the application, potential and challenges of game-based learning and gamification across multiple disciplines and sectors, including psychology, education, business, history, languages and the ..

    A STEAM game-based learning framework: Maximizing integrated and immersive learning in the classroom

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    Digital simulation tools exist to compliment teaching strategies; however, there is tremendous potential to enhance their functionality by integrating them into immersive, educational simulations across the STEAM disciplines. To accomplish this, McMaster University’s Biology students, together with George Brown College students enrolled in the Game–Art, Game– Programming, Game Design, and Concept Art for Entertainment programs, have come together to create an immersive biological video game, Cells at War. Through this continued partnership, students work during their field placement requirements, towards the continued development, expansion, and pilot of this video game platform. This now includes partnerships across multiple institutes (eg. with the University of Wollongong, Australia), and across other STEAM disciplines including physics and music. This innovative WIL partnership will enable these multi-disciplinary students to emulate professional work-place practices used in the game industry, while leveraging technology to facilitate access, progression, and completion of this unique work-integrated learning project. As a combined applied-research/community and industry-engaged project, our industry partners provide consultation on the simulation design, types of interactions integrated into the simulation, and the user experience while playing the simulation. Our STEAM Game-Based Learning framework facilitates student skill development and experiences, while driving educational innovation. Through this project, students from all backgrounds engage in innovative WIL, while producing a robust, video game (eg. Cells at War) that will be employed across educational sectors, and will now include other STEAM disciplines. Presentation attendees are encouraged to bring their own device (eg. smartphone, tablet, laptop) so that they can engage with a browser-based game. This research was approved by the McMaster Research Ethics Board

    Researching adaptivity for individual differences in numeracy games

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    There is increasing evidence that mathematics video games can play a large role in mathematics education, in support of children's learning. However, despite the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, research in this area has traditionally been fragmented between disciplines. The RAIDING project was conceived to bring together researchers in neuroscience, maths cognition, and game-based learning to develop a maths game that can act as a research platform for furthering knowledge in this field. The game will employ free-to-play design elements, alongside an adaptive learner model to investigate how children learn maths, through a range of empirical studies

    Digital Game-Based Approach to Math Learning for Students

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    Mathematics is an important subject that is pervasive across many disciplines. It is also a subject that has proven to be challenging to both teach and learn. Students face many challenges with learning math such as a lack of motivation and anxiety. To address these challenges, game-based learning has become a popular approach to stimulate students and create a more positive classroom environment. It can serve as an alternative or supplement to traditional teaching and can better engage students while developing a positive attitude toward learning. The use of games in a classroom can create a more exciting and engaging environment, while still reinforcing learning concepts. This paper explores the development of three math games to supplement classroom learning and analyses the game mechanics and designs implemented in each game

    Using Game Development to Engage Students in Science and Technology

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    Game design workshops, camps and activities engage K-12 students In STEM disciplines that use game engine and development tools. Game development will have students create games and simulations that Will inspire them to love technology while learning math, physics, and,logic. By using tools such as Gamemaker, Alice, Unity, Gamesalad and others, students will get a sense of confidence and accomplishment creating games and simulations

    Exploring the use of game making across the school curriculum

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    Computer games as part of education is a well-established topic for research, suggesting that creating games is linked to a range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Creating games in all subject disciplines is becoming increasingly possible due to the increasingly higher status of computing in schools across Europe and the prevalence of visual programming languages such as Scratch and Pocket Code. The use of games within education is not new; in a systematic review of 129 papers [1] found that playing games impacts across a range of areas including engagement, cognitive ability and, most commonly, knowledge acquisition and content understanding. However, while research has thus far examined game play and game based learning in education there is limited work focussing on the process of game creation as a method of classroom teaching. This is a prospect which is increasingly possible with the introduction of visual programming languages such as Scratch [2] and Pocket Code. It is suggested that playful learning through computer games could stimulate students’ intrinsic motivation ([3] and that knowledge creation can emerge through the construction of artefacts in a playful learning environment via the co-creation of games [4]. The research presented in this paper is from a pilot study examining the impact of game making in traditional primary and secondary school classrooms (5-18 years) in the United Kingdom (UK). The research, funded by Horizon 2020, is part of a wider European project; No-one Left Behind. In the UK the project has introduced game making into disciplines such as Religious Education, Science and History. Data indicates that although not all students found this a positive experience, computational thinking skills have increased, and students, disaffected with their learning, have re-engaged with learning, increasing their persistence and resulting in a deeper understanding of subject knowledge. In addition initial results suggest that game making has the potential to increase engagement with classroom learning and lead to increased learner satisfaction within lessons. Non-computing teachers have gained in confidence in developing game creation in their subject discipline, increasing their awareness of computational thinking. Barriers identified include teacher familiarity with programming as a means to teach non-STEM subject knowledge, a potential to decrease knowledge acquisition during the process of familiarisation with the teaching tool and a need for software developers to consider design for children with SEND. The project is changing the learning environment and emerging pedagogy has been identified which will be shared in this paper. As a result of the study lesson resources have been created for teachers to use across disciplines which are now available via the project URL; these will be shared in this paper

    The Game of Teaching Resource Allocation

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    In response to the increased prevalence of remote learning, and exhortation that educators adopt more experiential pedagogy, a methodology is presented to use a free, commercially available game to teach a variety of resource allocation problems in various disciplines. The use of games to provide experiential learning has been shown to increase student enjoyment and mastery of learning outcomes. The technique is appropriate for students at different levels from secondary school through graduate-level university instruction. The lack of cost to the student or university coupled with the ease of adaptability of the game makes the technique widely available to all instructors in both traditional classrooms and distance education settings
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