Morality Play: A Model for Developing Games of Moral Expertise

According to cognitive psychologists, moral decision-making is a dual-process phenomenon involving two types of cognitive processes: explicit reasoning and implicit intuition. Moral development involves training and integrating both types of cognitive processes through a mix of instruction, practice, and reflection. Serious games are an ideal platform for this kind of moral training, as they provide safe spaces for exploring difficult moral problems and practicing the skills necessary to resolve them. In this article, we present Morality Play, a model for the design of serious games for ethical expertise development based on the Integrative Ethical Education framework from moral psychology and the Lens of the Toy model for serious game design

Global Sustainability Crossroads: A Participatory Simulation Game to Educate in the Energy and Sustainability Challenges of the 21st Century

Producción CientíficaThere is a general need to facilitate citizens’ understanding of the global sustainability problem with the dual purpose of raising their awareness of the seriousness of the problem and helping them get closer to understanding the complexity of the solutions. Here, the design and application of the participatory simulation game Global Sustainability Crossroads is described, based on a global state-of-the-art energy–economy–environment model, which creates a virtual scenario where the participants are confronted with the design of climate mitigation strategies as well as the social, economic, and environmental consequences of decisions. The novelty of the game rests on the global scope and the representation of the drivers of anthropogenic emissions within the MEDEAS-World model, combined with a participatory simulation group dynamic flexible enough to be adapted to a diversity of contexts and participants. The performance of 13 game workshops with ~420 players has shown it has a significant pedagogical potential: the game is able to generate discussions on crucial topics which are usually outside the public realm such as the relationship between economic growth and sustainability, the role of technology, how human desires are limited by biophysical constraints or the possibility of climate tipping point

Agent Based Modeling and Simulation: An Informatics Perspective

The term computer simulation is related to the usage of a computational model in order to improve the understanding of a system's behavior and/or to evaluate strategies for its operation, in explanatory or predictive schemes. There are cases in which practical or ethical reasons make it impossible to realize direct observations: in these cases, the possibility of realizing 'in-machina' experiments may represent the only way to study, analyze and evaluate models of those realities. Different situations and systems are characterized by the presence of autonomous entities whose local behaviors (actions and interactions) determine the evolution of the overall system; agent-based models are particularly suited to support the definition of models of such systems, but also to support the design and implementation of simulators. Agent-Based models and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have been adopted to simulate very different kinds of complex systems, from the simulation of socio-economic systems to the elaboration of scenarios for logistics optimization, from biological systems to urban planning. This paper discusses the specific aspects of this approach to modeling and simulation from the perspective of Informatics, describing the typical elements of an agent-based simulation model and the relevant research.Multi-Agent Systems, Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Legal Education at a Crossroads: Innovation, Integration, and Pluralism Required!

We conclude in this Article that expanded practice-based, experiential education will provide foundational learning for the successful transition from law student to law practice, and that clinical education (in-house clinics, hybrid clinics, and externships) is crucial to the preparation of competent, ethical law graduates who are ready to become professionals. We urge law schools to require each graduate complete a minimum of twenty-one experiential course credits over the three years of law school, including at least five credits in law clinics or externships. Twenty-one required credits (or roughly 25 percent of the eighty-three required credits for graduation from an American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law school) would bring legal education closer to, although still below, the experiential and clinical education course requirements of other professions

Legal Education at a Crossroads: Innovation, Integration, and Pluralism Required!

We conclude in this Article that expanded practice-based, experiential education will provide foundational learning for the successful transition from law student to law practice, and that clinical education (in-house clinics, hybrid clinics, and externships) is crucial to the preparation of competent, ethical law graduates who are ready to become professionals. We urge law schools to require each graduate complete a minimum of twenty-one experiential course credits over the three years of law school, including at least five credits in law clinics or externships. Twenty-one required credits (or roughly 25 percent of the eighty-three required credits for graduation from an American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law school) would bring legal education closer to, although still below, the experiential and clinical education course requirements of other professions

Jefferson Digital Commons quarterly report: October-December 2019

This quarterly report includes: Articles Dean\u27s Research Development Lunch Conference Dissertations Educational Materials From the Archives Grand Rounds and Lectures Journals and Newsletters Population Health Presentation Materials Posters Reports Symposiums What People are Saying About the Jefferson Digital Common

Sustainable Design and Postindustrial Society: Our Ethical and Aesthetic Crossroads

Mid-20th century transitions from industrial product society to postindustrial information society have marked profound but now familiar conversions to service economy, knowledge workers, and cybernetic reasoning. Second order, but equally important consequences of this change involve the transformation from predominantly human-machine heroics to human-human collaboration. Collectively, these events have revolutionized the bases of production and value across the developed world. Less appreciated however, are the more subtle shifts of postindustrialism and their ultimate epochal transformations of contemporary life. The short list of these more elusive transitions includes local scale isolation to macro and global scale interaction, mechanistic routine to systemic reasoning, static to dynamic assumptions, short-termism to scenario planning, profit to value motives, hero to team attribution, intuitive to cybernetic decisions, and a move away from rote procedural expertise in favor of reasoned principle, wisdom, and theory. Our historical perspective thus argues for the relevance of postindustrial society in the emergence of a sustainable future, with particular reference to the built environment and to the complex, collaborative, evidence based and cybernetic processes it involves. The difficulty here is that without a vivid and operational understanding of the aesthetic connections and ethical mandates inherent in these more sublime postindustrial events; it is entirely possible that all the best scientific, technical, and political efforts toward sustainability are hampered by old habits of piecemeal procedures, mechanistic approaches, individual expertise, quick profit, and simplistic short-termism. Postindustrial ethics and aesthetics, on the other hand, offer a new and different apparatus by embracing complexity and dynamic interaction. Within that new aesthetic lies a set of principles and sensitivities towards postindustrial and sustainable era ethics. As such, this present argument attempts to form a cohesive framework contextualizing sustainability, societal trends and nascent evolutions within an aspirational agenda. The underlying theory of this framework describes, explains, and predicts the co-evolution of sustainability and postindustrial events. Finally, the aesthetic basis of the theory is functionally aligned with human cognition. Just as humankind did not quit building with masonry at the end of the Stone Age however, the argument presented here does not demonize the progress of the industrial era that has doubled life expectancy in the last hundred years; nor does it belittle the advent of antibiotics, space travel, telecommunications, rapid transit and the like. It is now necessary however to acknowledge that the pioneer era nature-as-antagonist and industrial era of nature-as-resource have given way to an era of nature-as-model-and-host relation

Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how they may be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between them