The road to AI literacy education : from pedagogical needs to tangible game design

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and its increased use in everyday life have exacerbated the need to understand its underlying processes, and to raise awareness about its shortcomings and faults. Consequently there has been an increased effort to teach basic concepts of AI and machine learning (ML) from an early age. Digital games have been shown to be effective as teaching and learning tools, and there are ongoing efforts to increase AI literacy through educational digital games. To this effect, this work describes the process followed to extrapolate the design of such an educational game directly from the pedagogical needs emerging from stakeholders. Seven focus groups and workshops were conducted in Greece, Malta and Norway, with 55 teachers, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers, and 22 primary and secondary education students in total. These workshops identified seven goals which informed the design of a game for AI literacy called ArtBot. The game design process and the final interface and gameplay loop of ArtBot are explained in relation to these goals. The game was subsequently deployed across a variety of platforms, to enable dissemination to a broad audience in classrooms and elsewhere. The game was part of the tools developed in the framework of the LearnML Erasmus+ project. A preliminary online survey was used to gauge how well the game was received by teachers and students, with an overall positive result. A longer-term data collection of the game usage statistics has been initiated and will be analysed over the course of the game dissemination.peer-reviewe

CREATING A COHERENT SCORE: THE MUSIC OF SINGLE-PLAYER FANTASY COMPUTER ROLE-PLAYING GAMES

This thesis provides a comprehensive exploration into the music of the ludic genre (Hourigan, 2005) known as a Computer Role-Playing Game (CRPG) and its two main sub-divisions: Japanese and Western Role-Playing Games (JRPGs & WRPGs). It focuses on the narrative category known as genre fiction, concentrating on fantasy fiction (Turco, 1999) and seeks to address one overall question: How do fantasy CRPG composers incorporate the variety of musical material needed to create a coherent score across the JRPG and WRPG divide? Seven main chapters form the thesis text. Chapter One provides an introduction to the thesis, detailing the research contributions in addition to outlining a variety of key terms that must be understood to continue with the rest of the text. A database accompanying this thesis showcases the vast range of CRPGs available; a literature review tackles relevant existing materials. Chapters Two and Three seek to provide the first canonical history of soundtracks used in CRPGs by dissecting typical narrative structures for games so as to provide context to their musical scores. Through analysis of existing game composer interviews, cultural influences are revealed. Chapters Four and Five mirror one another with detailed discussion respectively regarding JRPG and WRPG music including the influence that anime and Hollywood cinema have had upon them. In Chapter Six, the use of CRPG music outside of video games is explored, particularly the popularity of JRPG soundtracks in the concert hall. Chapter Seven concludes the thesis, summarising research contributions achieved and areas for future work. Throughout these chapters, the core task is to explain how the two primary sub-genres of CRPGs parted ways and why the music used to accompany these games differs so drastically

MATERIALIZING MAKERSPACES: QUEERLY COMPOSING SPACE, TIME, AND (WHAT) MATTERS

This dissertation project explores makerspaces as non-traditional composing networks where makers work with (and against) unconventional digital and physical materials such as vinyl, cut paper, plastic filament, insects, Xacto blades, pipe cleaners, reclaimed wicker baskets, DNA, Python code, memes, and Raspberry Pi’s. Choosing materiality over multimodality as the best frame for understanding the material-discursive composing practices of makers, I build a queer- and feminist-inflected new materialist research methodology that orients attention toward embodiment, affect, and the production of difference in composing networks. Using playful, game-based data collection protocols, in conjunction with more traditional data sources, as well as three-dimensional analysis models crafted from foam board, yarn, safety pins, and paper, I document and analyze the material and affective dimensions of composing to build case studies around two diverse maker networks. The first case details participants’ making and composing experiences as part of a connectivist MOOC designed to increase STEM/STEAM literacies for underserved youth and youth educators. The second explores high school students’ experiences in “pop-up� makerspaces that are oriented toward 3D fabrication and prototyping; circuitry, robotics, and computer coding; and upcycling discarded objects and everyday waste for new audiences, purposes, and contexts. Both case studies address the following research questions: Who and what gets to make? Who and what gets made? What drives composition (as process and product) in the network? These questions are essential for understandings issues of representation, access, and equity in contemporary maker networks. The findings of this dissertation materialize “making� as more than a boot-strapping rhetoric that sponsors middle class white male literacies. They underscore the collective values, stances, and practices that are necessary for composing networks to become networkings which are capable of materializing a diversity of bodies and objects. This project turns Writing Studies toward a more material, embodied, and affective understanding of composing, and points to the need to rethink normative composition pedagogies that work to foreclose diversity, creativity, and experimentation. I conclude this project by articulating a queer material rhetoric I call composing sideways: this rhetoric makes space for lateral thinking, feeling, and composing practices which focus on composing the here and the now, and resisting vertical transfer as the most important pedagogical outcome for a writing classroom