2,376 research outputs found

    Wargames: Non-Linear Experiential Modes of Historical Knowledge

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    This project is on wargames, a type of board and digital game concerned with the practice of war, leadership, command, strategy, tactics, and decision-making. The goal of the project is to explore whether wargames, as non-linear experiential forms of historical knowledge have any value in understanding how the public views, understands, and relates to the historical past. Moreover, the goal of the project is to help historical academia understand what wargames are as they have not been studied in any substantial way and open the door for further research projects regarding wargames, or in fact use wargames as a research aid

    A Player’s Sense of Place: Computer Games as Anatopistic Medium

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    This project works to understand how open-world computer games help generate a sense of place from the player. Since their development over a half century ago, computer games have primarily been discussed in terms of space. Yet the way we think about space today is much different than how those scientists calculated space as a construction of time, mass, and location. But as computer games have evolved, the language has failed to accommodate the more nuanced qualities of game spaces. This project aims at articulating the nuances of place through phenomenological methods to objectively analyze the player experience as performed through various behaviors. Using a conceptual model that partially illustrates sense of place, I demonstrate how players create out of place—or anatopistic—places through play. After a historical survey of play as it is manifested through interaction with miniaturized environments, I turn to computer games as they have helped embody their creators’ sense of place. The third and fourth chapters offer a pair of case studies that reflect upon the experiences of the individual player and player groups. First, I compare virtual photography with tourism to reveal an array of sensibilities suggestive of the pursuit of place. This is followed with a look at Niantic’s PokĂ©mon Go and how player groups use the game to act out ritualistic forms of play. Positioning the player as a “ludopilgrim,” I demonstrate how players perform individual or intersubjectively meaningful places as a form of transgressive placemaking

    “You Came to Not Normal Land”: Nurses\u27 Experience of the Environment of Disaster: A Phenomenological Investigation

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    Previous research suggests US nurses are unprepared for disaster, and suffer from adverse psychosocial outcomes following their disaster response. Current disaster preparedness focuses on providing hospital-centric trauma and acute care in fully resourced Western conditions, and does not include the environmental realities of the disaster setting. This study utilized an existential phenomenological approach to explore the meaning of the nurse’s experience of the disaster environment. Eleven nurses with broad disaster expertise and training levels participated in this research. The essence of their disaster experiences can be summed up by the central theme of “You came to not normal land.” Four global themes that describe this “not normal land” were “All the resources was gone”; “You prepare, you prepare, and you are unprepared”; “It can be done; it’s just different”; and “Stuff that sticks with you.” The environment of disaster was both “not normal” and challenging owing to the many simultaneous breakdowns in healthcare supportive systems. Nurses were surprised and unprepared for the environmental conditions surrounding them. Reductions in systems (i.e. water, power), structures, staff, and supplies were coupled with lack of familiarity with alternative care sites, unaccustomed patient populations, the prevailing need for public health and fundamental nursing, and the isolated nature of disaster environments. Policies and regulations that “normally” guide nurses’ actions were disregarded in the immediacy of providing care when the usual social framework no longer existed. Nurses continue to relive the disaster setting’s sights, sounds, smells, and stories of the people they encountered. A strong sense of pride, duty, and willingness to respond again prevailed in these nurses. Nurses can be prepared for the likely conditions of reduced resources and damaged infrastructure following disaster by including the contextual setting of disaster nursing in disaster education, practice, training, and policy. Suggestions for further research include determining the relevance of current disaster training to the nurses’ actual disaster experience; determining what non-clinical knowledge or skills or training disaster nurses think would be useful; and identifying and measuring the contribution of environmental factors to disaster nurses’ stress

    The Burden of Choice, the Complexity of the World and Its Reduction: The Game of Go/Weiqi as a Practice of "Empirical Metaphysics

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    The main aim of the text is to show how a game of Go (Weiqi, baduk, Igo) can serve as a model representation of the ontological-metaphysical aspect of the actor–network theory (ANT). An additional objective is to demonstrate in return that this ontological-metaphys⁠ical aspect of ANT represented on Go/Weiqi game model is able to highlight the key aspect of this theory—onto-methodological praxis

    A Life Worth Living: Evaluating and Assisting Army Chaplains in Suicide Prevention

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    Despite its efficiency and flexibility as a modern fighting force, the U.S. Army has experienced an alarming spike in the number of its soldiers committing suicide over the past decade – approximately a 20% increase. The goal of this project is to contribute to the lessening of future suicides by evaluating the current preparedness of U.S. Army chaplains to assist with suicide prevention and intervention efforts among U.S. Army soldiers. The study will provide actionable conclusions of how chaplains can more effectively identify, intervene, and influence U.S. Army soldiers away from the risk of suicide towards a life worth living
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