Encouraging persons to visit cultural sites through mini-games

Gamification has been recently proposed as a technique to improve user engagement in different activities, including visits to cultural sites and cultural tourism in general. We present the design, development and initial validation of the NEPTIS Poleis system, which consists of a mobile application and a Web interface for curators, allowing the definition, and subsequent fruition by users, of different minigames suitable for open-air assets

Learning First Aid with a Video Game

Any citizen can be involved in a situation that requires basic first aid knowledge. For this reason, it is important to be trained in this kind of activity. Serious games have been presented as a good option to integrate entertainment into the coaching process. This work presents a video game for mobile platforms which facilitate the formation and training in the PWA (Protect, Warn, Aid) first aid protocol. Users have to overcome a series of challenges to bring theoretical concepts closer to practice. To easily change the point of view of the game play, Augmented Reality technology has been used. In order to make each game looks different, neural networks have been implemented to perform the behavior of the Non-Playable Characters autonomous. Finally, in order to evaluate the quality and playability of the application, as well as the motivation and learning of content, several experiments were carried out with a sample of 50 people aged between 18 and 26. The obtained results confirm the playability and attractiveness of the video game, the increase of interest in learning first aid, as well as the greater fixation of the different concepts dealt with in the video game. The results support that this application facilitates and improves the learning of first aid protocols, making it more enjoyable, attractive, and practical.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (Project PID2019-106426RB-C32/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the Universitat Jaume I research project UJI-B2018-56

INGAME Transnational report

This Report describes and analyses the main research results carried out in the countries that make up the partnership and in the wider European context. In particular, the research methodology has seen the implementation of two phases, desk-based research conducted by all partner organisations through Literature Review and field-based research conducted in each country through online questionnaire

Human Computation and Human Subject Tasks in Social Network Playful Applications

Universal connectivity has made crowdsourcing - an online activity of a crowd toward the completion of a goal requested by someone in an open call - possible. The question rises whether users can be motivated to perform those tasks by intrinsic rather than extrinsic factors (money, valuables). The current work explores the gamification approach in order to appeal to the intrinsic motivation of players Namely, instead of bringing the serious task into the major focus of the contributors, it proposes to use storytelling and playful metaphors as the elements that can mask the serious tasks and at the same time may attract the attention of potential contributors. Furthermore, it explores the possibilities of constructing such system as social network playful applications and employs Facebook as a distribution platform. The results demonstrate a positive feedback of the players. Identified are also differences in female and male players' attitudes, which gives space for a deeper research of the players' profiling and motivation in the future

How to make classrooms creative and open spaces: ARIS games, digital artifacts and storytelling

As part of long-term research into interviewing users and visualizing digital artifacts, we have created a parallel archives of projects in our classroom. Ethnography helps us to discover the temporal trends of interactions with students and with the virtual environment. The outcomes expected motived us to repurpouse stories we co-create with students in a new form, retelling motivations, design, narratives, into a gaming scenario where the use of experiences become more digital and less tangible but always snapshots of their social existence.Peer Reviewe

Teachers learning to use the iPad in Scotland and Wales: a new model of professional development

In learning to use a new technology like the iPad, primary teachers adopt a diverse range of experiential, informal and playful strategies contrasting sharply with traditional models underpinning professional development which emphasise formal courses and events led by ‘experts’ conducted in formal settings such as the school. Since post-PC devices like the iPad have been linked with transformational educational learning, there is an imperative to better understand how teachers can be encouraged to use them more effectively. Despite their growing popularity in schools, there is little research to indicate how and under what circumstances teachers learn to integrate these technologies into their daily practices. This paper uses data collected from two national studies of iPad use in Scotland and Wales to propose a new model of professional development. This model reflects findings that the teachers reject traditional models of sequential, or staged, professional development (often led by external providers or ‘experts’), in favour of a more nuanced and fluid model where they learn at their own pace, in a largely experiential fashion, alongside their pupils in a relationship which reverses the traditional power nexus. The model has the potential to inform professional development for both trainee and serving teachers in learning to use the iPad in the primary classroom

Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gamified Interactions

© Lennart Nacke, 2015. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in CHI PLAY '15 Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, https://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2810260Serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions have become popular in the last years, especially in the realm of behavior change support systems. They have been used as tools to support and influence human behavior in a variety of fields, such as health, sustainability, education, and security. It has been shown that personalized serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions can increase effectivity of supporting behavior change compared to "one-size-fits all"-systems. However, how serious games and gamified interactions can be personalized, which factors can be used to personalize (e.g. personality, gender, persuadability, player types, gamification user types, states, contextual/situational variables), what effect personalization has (e.g. on player/user experience) and whether there is any return on investment is still largely unexplored. This full-day workshop aims at bringing together the academic and industrial community as well as the gaming and gamification community to jointly explore these topics and define a future roadmap.Österreichische ForschungsförderungsgesellschaftPeer-reviewe