Lessons Learned from Creating a Mobile Version of an Educational Board Game to Increase Situational Awareness

This paper reports on an iterative design process for a serious game, which aims to raise situational awareness among different stakeholders in a logistics value chain by introducing multi-user role-playing games. It does so in several phases: After introducing the field of logistics as a problem domain for an educational challenge, it firstly describes the design of an educational board game for the field of disruption handling in logistics processes. Secondly, it de-scribes how the board game can be realized in an open-source mobile serious games platform and identifies lessons learned based on advantages and issues found. Thirdly, it derives requirements for a re-design of the mobile game and finally draws conclusions.SALOM

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Transport 2040: Autonomous ships: A new paradigm for Norwegian shipping - Technology and transformation

The main section of this study summarizes overall trends and provides a global overview about developments in all four modes of transport. However, as highlighted in its main findings, technology and automation evolves in different ways in different contexts and environments.https://commons.wmu.se/lib_reports/1072/thumbnail.jp

Investigating Avatar Customization as a Motivational Design Strategy for Improving Engagement with Technology-Enabled Services for Health

Technology-enabled services for physical and mental health are a promising approach to improve healthcare globally. Unfortunately, the largest barrier for effective technology-based treatment is participants' gradually fading engagement with effective novel training applications, such as exercise apps or online mental health training programs. Engaging users through design presents an elegant solution to the problem; however, research on technology-enabled services is primarily focused on the efficacy of novel interventions and not on improving adherence through engaging interaction design. As a result, motivational design strategies to improve engagement---both in the moment of use and over time---are underutilized. Drawing from game-design, I investigate avatar customization as a game-based motivational design strategy in four studies. In Study 1, I examine the effect of avatar customization on experience and behaviour in an infinite runner game. In Study 2, I induce different levels of motivation to research the effects of financial rewards on self-reported motivation and performance in a gamified training task over 11 days. In Study 3, I apply avatar customization to investigate the effects of attrition in an intervention context using a breathing exercise over three weeks. In Study 4, I investigate the immediate effects of avatar customization on the efficacy of an anxiety reducing attentional retraining task. My results show that avatar customization increases motivation over time and in the moment of use, suggesting that avatar customization is a viable strategy to address the engagement barrier that thwarts the efficacy of technology-enabled services for health

Communication technology and education

Probably as far back as people can remember, education has drawn on communication technologies, either to teach students how to use them effectively or to make use of those technologies in the educational process itself. In the former instance, the educational sector typically follows a cultural valuation that regards a given technology as so essential that people cannot leave its use or teaching to chance—reading and writing provide the clearest examples here, with schools teaching both the mechanics of writing and reading (forming or deciphering letters, spelling properly, adhering to a common grammar, and so on) and the composition of texts, arguments, expositions, explanations, essays, etc. In the latter instance, schools use communication technology to provide information or to connect with their students: again, books provide an historical example as does educational television more recently. A great deal of existing research in pedagogy, learning theory, and classroom management examines how learning with technology occurs and how to measure its impact (Jonassen, 2004). Similarly, a great deal of writing addresses the practical issues of making the best use of communication in or for the classroom. This review will not address the learning theory or the pedagogy, except indirectly as it appears in other studies; it will focus instead specifically on the communication technology—a very wide field— and how educators incorporate the various means of communication in the schooling of a younger generation. These typically occur in two ways: distance education and supplemental education. Distance education refers to the use of communication technology to reach students who cannot or do not physically attend a school. Supplemental education refers to the use of communication technology to supplement face-toface or in-school programs. Looking at the recent past (the last 10 years or so), this review will examine published studies discussing communication in or for schools as well as some more accessible online materials describing current work.