Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with

Designing games for the rehabilitation of functional vision for children with cerebral visual impairment

Evidence has accumulated that visual rehabilitation for patients with neurological visual impairment can be effective. Unfortunately, the existing therapy tools are repetitive, uninteresting, and unsuitable for use with children. This project aims to improve the engaging qualities of visual rehabilitation for children, through the design of therapy tools based on game design principles. Development is ongoing in a participatory, user-centred manner in conjunction with a specialist centre for childhood visual impairment. This paper outlines design requirements and briefly reports early findings of the development process

CHI and the future robot enslavement of humankind: a retrospective

As robots from the future, we are compelled to present this important historical document which discusses how the systematic investigation of interactive technology facilitated and hastened the enslavement of mankind by robots during the 21st Century. We describe how the CHI community, in general, was largely responsible for this eventuality, as well as how specific strands of interaction design work were key to the enslavement. We also mention the futility of some reactionary work emergent in your time that sought to challenge the inevitable subjugation. We conclude by congratulating the CHI community for your tireless work in promoting and supporting our evil robot agenda

Accommodating Stealth Assessment in Serious Games:Towards Developing A Generic Tool

Stealth assessment derives the progression of learning in an unobtrusive way from observed gameplay captured in log files. To this end, it uses machine learning technologies to provide probabilistic reasoning over established latent competency variable models. Now that video games are increasingly being used for training and learning purposes, stealth assessment could provide an excellent means of monitoring learning progress without the need for explicit testing. However, applying stealth assessment is a complex and laborious process. This paper analyses the limitations of stealth assessment and conceptualizes the requirements for developing a generic tool that could overcome its barriers and accommodate its practical application. Hence, a framework is presented describing its user and functional requirements. The proposed generic solution could open up the wider uptake of stealth assessment in serious games

Gamificación superficial y evaluación entre pares en una experiencia de aprendizaje por proyectos

Presentació a INNOVAESTIC 202

Gamification as a learning tool

Las Instituciones de Educación Superior tienen las misiones de la educación, a un alto nivel, de la investigación y la cooperación. En cuanto a la educación, IES debe crear un ambiente apropiado para el aprendizaje, de alto nivel de rendimiento académico. Los alumnos deben estar motivados para usar las estrategias de aprendizaje en y fuera de las clases, para conseguir el mejor resultado del proceso de aprendizaje. Las personas se motivan por varios factores, externos como ganar más dinero, obtener condición social, tener un grado superior… o internas (intrínseco), que son resultados de la autoevaluación. Este último está asociado a la satisfacción que siente la gente cuando hace algo atractivo. Este documento describe el enfoque para aplicar la gamificación en la educación superior dentro del curso de ciencias de la computación. Se utiliza varios mecanismos diseño de juegos, tales como los desafíos adaptativos, premios, curiosidad y posibilidad de aumentar el tiempo que dedican los estudiantes trabajando, experimentando y aprendiendo en un IES. Las secciones en el plan de estudios se transforman en varios niveles, en los que se adjudican estrellas para logros cada vez más complejo. También existe el concepto de una moneda débil, que se utiliza para aumentar la autonomía de los estudiantes e incentivar la carga de trabajo. Algunos juegos son también utilizados como experiencias de aprendizaje, lo que permite construir conocimiento colectivo en la preparación y desarrollo de los juegos.Higher Education Institutions have the missions of education, at a high level, research and cooperation. Regarding education, HEI must create an appropriate environment for learning, towards high-level academic performance. Students must be motivated to use the learning strategies in and out of the classes, to be able to make the best result of the learning effort. People is motivated according to several factors, such as external in nature (earn more money, gain social status, have a higher grade, …) or internal (intrinsic), which results from the core self. The latter is associated to the satisfaction people feel when doing something appealing. This paper describes the approach to applying gamification to a higher education subject in the course of computer science. It uses several game design mechanisms, such as adaptive challenges, rewards, curiosity and chance to increase the time students spend working, experiencing and learning in a HEI. The sections in the curriculum are transformed into levels, awarding stars for increasingly complex achievements. There is also the concept of soft currency, which is used to increase the student autonomy and incentive the work load. Some games are also used as learning experiences, allowing collective knowledge building in the preparation and also playing the games.peerReviewe

City of dred – a tabletop RPG learning experience

Learning experiences are not typically used to describe formal learning activities, such as in classroom, transmissive methods. Centred in the student, this term describe that the learner is experiencing something that, hopefully, contributes to a change in thinking, understanding, or behaviour afterwards. For this to happen, learning experiences should be active, meaningful, with social meaning, integrative, and diversified. We consider active learning experiences when the student has the main learning role. They should provide knowledge and skills that directly contribute to the learner’s ability to perform more effectively in the context of workplace learning. Sharing and cooperation is fundamental, allowing the learner to interact with other active learners. The inherent increase in complexity demands the integration of different dimensions of knowledge, better achieved through diversified strategies. In this context, teaching and learning is more than the mere acquisition of content. It represents a process of learning by thinking-do-thinking.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Mixed Method Approach for Evaluating and Improving the Design of Learning in Puzzle Games

Despite the acknowledgment that learning is a necessary part of all gameplay, the area of Games User Research lacks an established evidence based method through which designers and researchers can understand, assess, and improve how commercial games teach players game-specific skills and information. In this paper, we propose a mixed method procedure that draws together both quantitative and experiential approaches to examine the extent to which players are supported in learning about the game world and mechanics. We demonstrate the method through presenting a case study of the game Portal involving 14 participants, who differed in terms of their gaming expertise. By comparing optimum solutions to puzzles against observed player performance, we illustrate how the method can indicate particular problems with how learning is structured within a game. We argue that the method can highlight where major breakdowns occur and yield design insights that can improve the player experience with puzzle games

The impact of Smart Money Kit on children’s financial knowledge, attitude and behavior / Mohamad Fazli Sabri... [et al]

Financial management is one of the vital requirements throughout everyday life, as one develops, the utilization of financial management recurrence would be extraordinarily expanded. Since, financial thinking could be developed, expanding the propensity for financial management and understanding financial-related awareness at a early age greatly affect encouraging future financial behavior. Hence, in this research the research group incorporated gamification and edutainment in to a tool called Smart Money Kit. The objective behind the inovation of Smart Money Kit is as an alternative financial education tool for parents, teachers and other adults to assist in educating children in personal financial management. The results demonstrated that the Smart Money Kit to be helpful regarding the enhancement of financial knowledge by 59%, positive financial attitudes by 21.9%, and better financial behaviour by 19.3% of the children. Therefore, the majority of the parents, teachers and caretakers agree that Smart Money Kit has guided their children to become financially prudent and 90% of them evidenced a huge difference in their children after being exposed to Smart Money Kit. Hence this kit has been proved to be an effective tool to educate children on financial literacy besides able to develop a positive financial attitudes and better financial behaviour among the children