Menganalisis Informasi pada Game Online Minecraft dalam Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran Ilmiah

Di era moderenisasi teknologi game menjadi salah satu yang paling banyak diminati. Namun masih banyak kontroversi tentang video game dijadikan sebgai alat pendidikan. Beberapa pemain dan pengembang beranggapan bahwa video game lebih baik dalam mengajarkan logika dan keterampilan pemecahan masalah dibandingkan dengan kurikulum disekolah. Disini saya bertujuan untuk menganalisis kembali manfaat yang diberikan dari video game guna menunjang proses pembelajaran bagi siswa di era serba digital saat ini. Adapun metode yang saya gunakan yaitu studi kualitatif dan literatur melalui buku, jurnal, mesin pencari seperti google schoolar dan banyak hal yang mendukung dalam penelitian. Minecraft adalah salah satu game yang dapat dijadikan solusi dari permasalahan ini, karena game ini merupakan game kotak pasir multipemain dimana dianjurkan mengumpulkan objek untuk meciptakan lingkungan sesuka hati. Dengann fungsi aspek ekologinya ini dapat digunakan sebagai media pengembangan konsep ilmiah untuk dijadikan sarana pembelajaran bagi siswa. Dengan mengadopsi Minecraft dalam pendidikan akan menguntungkan tak hanya hiburan yang diperoleh namun siswa mampu menciptakan kreativitas dalam belajar

Procedural Elaboration: How Players Decode Minecraft

Minecraft play practices reveal a type of analytic play in which significant work is invested in discovering esoteric details about the game, without necessarily providing practical prescriptions for optimizing play. This paper proposes the term “procedural elaboration” to describe such activities and the knowledge thereby produced. In contrast to the existing concept of theorycrafting, the products of procedural elaboration are primarily descriptive rather than prescriptive. However, this knowledge is far from trivial or banal. I argue that these knowledge-making activities can be explained through two functions of procedural elaboration. First, it provides players with a tool for dealing with the threatening inscrutability of some procedural game systems. Second, it acts as a ritual form of communication that helps to solidify a coherent Minecraft player community, while also establishing a social order within that community. Subsequently, I consider why players persist in using specifically experimental methods in procedural elaboration, even though the online availability of decompiled Minecraft source code means that the rules are not fully hidden as they are in most other games. I argue that the experimental method persists for these reasons: because it does not require specialized programming skills; because the gameplay already casts scientific experimentation as play; and because the iterative nature of Minecraft’s development has produced source code that is structured in a way that resists direct deciphering

Motivating Students to Learn AI Through Social Networking Sites: A Case Study in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, after-school activities have long been used to foster friendships and to allow students to pursue their interests in an informal setting. This case study reports on a three-phase action research process in which information technology teachers delivered after-school activities focused on artificial intelligence during the COVID-19 transition to remote learning. Using semi-structured interviews, a motivational questionnaire, and lesson observations, this study describes how extracurricular activities were delivered online using social networking sites and how students perceived the new experience. Our results suggest that, in order to deploy meaningful activities via social media, teachers need to build collaborative environments that facilitate social engagement among students. These findings have implications for new practices in social media and other blended technologies, and can help students strike a healthy balance between their academic and non-academic life during this challenging period

A computational model for generating visually pleasing video game maps

In this work we introduce a computational model based on theories of graphical design to generate visually pleasing video game maps. We cast the problem of map generation as an optimization problem and prove it to be computationally hard. Then, we propose a heuristic search approach to solve the map generation problem and use it to generate levels of a clone of Super Mario Bros (SMB) called Infinite Mario Bros (IMB). Before evaluating the levels of IMB generated by our system, we perform a detailed study of the approaches commonly used to evaluate the content generated by computer programs. The evaluation used in previous works often relies on computational metrics. While these metrics are important for an initial exploratory evaluation of the content generated, it is not clear whether they are able to capture the player’s perception of the content generated. In this work we compare the insights gained from a user study with IMB levels generated by different systems with the insights gained from analyzing computational metric values. Our results suggest that current computational metrics should not be used in lieu of user studies for evaluating content generated by computer programs. Using the insights gained in our previous experiment, we performed another user study to evaluate the IMB levels generated by our method. The results show the advantage of our method over other approaches in terms of visual aesthetics and enjoyment. Finally, we performed one last user study that showed that our method is able to generate IMB levels with striking similarity to SMB levels created by professional designers.Neste trabalho apresentamos um modelo computacional baseado em teorias de design para gerar mapas de jogos de plataforma visualmente agradáveis. Nós estudamos o problema de geração de mapas como um problema de otimização e provamos que uma versão simplificada do problema é computacionalmente difícil. Em seguida, propomos uma abordagem de busca heurística para resolver o problema de geração de mapas e utilizamos ela para gerar níveis de um clone do Super Mario Bros (SMB), chamado Infinite Mario Bros (IMB). Antes de avaliar os níveis de IMB gerados pelo nosso sistema, realizamos um estudo detalhado das abordagens comumente utilizadas para avaliar o conteúdo gerado por programas de computador. A avaliação utilizada em trabalhos anteriores utiliza apenas métricas computacionais. Embora esses indicadores são importantes para uma avaliação inicial e exploratória do conteúdo gerado, não é claro se são capazes de capturar a percepção do jogador sobre o conteúdo gerado. Neste trabalho, comparamos os conhecimentos adquiridos a partir de um estudo com seres humanos usando níveis de IMB gerados por diferentes sistemas, com os conhecimentos adquiridos a partir de análise dos valores de métricas computacionais. Os nossos resultados sugerem que as m ́etricas computacionais atuais não devem substituir estudos com seres humanos para avaliar o conteúdo gerado por programas de computador. Usando os conhecimentos adquiridos em nosso experimento anterior, foi realizado outro estudo com seres humanos para avaliar os níveis de IMB gerados pelo nosso método. Os resultados mostram a vantagem do nosso método em relação a outras abordagens em termos de estética visual e diversão. Finalmente, foi realizado outro estudo com seres humanos, mostrando que o nosso método é capaz de gerar níveis de IMB semelhantes aos níveis de SMB criados por designers profissionais.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superio

Network traffic characterisation, analysis, modelling and simulation for networked virtual environments

Networked virtual environment (NVE) refers to a distributed software system where a simulation, also known as virtual world, is shared over a data network between several users that can interact with each other and the simulation in real-time. NVE systems are omnipresent in the present globally interconnected world, from entertainment industry, where they are one of the foundations for many video games, to pervasive games that focus on e-learning, e-training or social studies. From this relevance derives the interest in better understanding the nature and internal dynamics of the network tra c that vertebrates these systems, useful in elds such as network infrastructure optimisation or the study of Quality of Service and Quality of Experience related to NVE-based services. The goal of the present work is to deepen into this understanding of NVE network tra c by helping to build network tra c models that accurately describe it and can be used as foundations for tools to assist in some of the research elds enumerated before. First contribution of the present work is a formal characterisation for NVE systems, which provides a tool to determine which systems can be considered as NVE. Based on this characterisation it has been possible to identify numerous systems, such as several video games, that qualify as NVE and have an important associated literature focused on network tra c analysis. The next contribution has been the study of this existing literature from a NVE perspective and the proposal of an analysis pipeline, a structured collection of processes and techniques to de ne microscale network models for NVE tra c. This analysis pipeline has been tested and validated against a study case focused on Open Wonderland (OWL), a framework to build NVE systems of di erent purpose. The analysis pipeline helped to de ned network models from experimental OWL tra c and assessed on their accuracy from a statistical perspective. The last contribution has been the design and implementation of simulation tools based on the above OWL models and the network simulation framework ns-3. The purpose of these simulations was to con rm the validity of the OWL models and the analysis pipeline, as well as providing potential tools to support studies related to NVE network tra c. As a result of this nal contribution, it has been proposed to exploit the parallelisation potential of these simulations through High Throughput Computing techniques and tools, aimed to coordinate massively parallel computing workloads over distributed resources

The impacts of a science-based videogame intervention on interest in stem for adolescent learners

Interest development is a topic that has fascinated and puzzled educators since the 20th century. Despite decades of research and important advances in the field, questions remain about interest and its relationship to learning. In particular, given the pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives, it is essential to understand how interest develops within these technology-enhanced environments. In this dissertation, I investigate the extent to which a digital sandbox game that allows for autonomy and peer-to-peer interaction can trigger interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), as well as explore how prior game mastery impacts these changes. The sandbox game, Minecraft, is used as a platform to test whether interest in STEM can be triggered within a digital learning environment for adolescent learners. This study seeks to contribute to our foundational understanding of how interest functions within a digital learning environment. From the educational psychology perspective, interest is both a psychological state and a motivational variable. Interest is fluid and dynamic; what triggers interest in one individual may not work for another. For the purposes of this dissertation, interest triggering is defined to occur when a learner shows a willingness to reengage with content, express positive effect, attach value to a subject, reflect about the learning content, or connect content based on prior knowledge or experience. Since 2016, our team has been developing a customized server in Minecraft that allows for participants to explore hypothetical scenarios of Earth (e.g., Earth on a tilted axis) supported by the National Science Foundation with the goal of designing an interest triggering experience for STEM topics. Participants in 2018 and 2020 were recruited at a local youth center in a Midwestern university town where we advertised our program as a five-day STEM-focused Minecraft summer camp. Selected case studies expressed the highest or lowest interest in STEM and Minecraft mastery in their respective groups on a 5-point Likert scale. Cases draw from a total of five sources: fieldnotes, STEM interest surveys, knowledge assessments, interviews, and self-reported levels of Minecraft mastery. Fieldnotes provide the contextual information necessary for understanding interest-triggering trends across the 2018 and 2020 camps. Surveys revealed the cases’ overall interest in STEM as well as specific subtopics (science and technology). Content introduced during short lessons throughout the camp experience were assessed by astronomy knowledge scores and habitability definitions, which indicated a change in knowledge. Lastly, interviews provided direct quotes for interest triggers that occurred. Instances of STEM-related interest triggering were first identified through the use of interviews and fieldnotes. Then, these episodes were quantified and categorized to unveil similarities and differences between each case, followed by specific examples of each type of interest triggering an episode. This research provides insights on how a sandbox videogame that enables freedom of choice and peer-to-peer interaction can act as a suitable context for triggering interest in STEM, even for those who expressed low interest in STEM prior to the intervention. Based on the four reviewed cases, a sandbox game that allows for peer-to-peer engagements and freedom of choice served as an effective context for triggering interest. Results showed an increase in interest for those with high Minecraft mastery prior to the intervention and mixed results for those with low Minecraft mastery. Outcomes from this study can be used to study interest triggering in other domains and out-of-school learning contexts and serve as a foundation for those examining interest development within digital learning environments. Results show positive effects of using a sandbox game to trigger interest in STEM for learners with varying degrees of incoming interest in STEM and Minecraft mastery. In three out of four cases, interest in technology improved regardless of changes in interest in STEM or level of Minecraft mastery. In cases of low Minecraft mastery, one-on-one technical support was needed to sustain engagement with content and STEM interest triggers seemed to rely on the unique preferences of learners. For those with high incoming interest in STEM, they exhibited majority explicit/prompted interest triggering episodes, whereas those with low incoming interest in STEM exhibited majority implicit/prompted interest triggering episodes. Future studies on interest triggering should continue to utilize a variety of measures to track changes in interest rather than rely on one type (e.g., using only surveys) and further explore how videogame technologies can be used to study interest development

Using Commercial Games to Support Teaching in Higher Education

Commercial games are those that are distributed primarily for entertainment. Because of their immersive and engaging characteristics, they are often used as teaching tools in Higher Education. However, it is not clear exactly how faculty members incorporate the games to their courses. This study analyzes the way commercial video games are used as an instructional tool in Higher Education. This study took a qualitative multiple-case approach. Three cases were studied pertaining to the games Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and SimCity. Fourteen faculty members who have used commercial video games as part of their courses were interviewed. Courses’ syllabi, calendars, and descriptions of assignments were also considered. Results of this study show that participants are influenced by their experience, personal and research interests, perceptions, and popularity of the games. Participants used the games as different types of media such as video, virtual environments or simulations. Participants tended to choose the game first, then figured out the pedagogy. They integrated the games at different levels: to illustrate something, as an object of study, as a context for class related activities, as a production tool, and as a context to apply theory. Overall, participants’ experiences using the games for teaching was positive but the majority only used games to support the teaching of lower order thinking skills and many did not proceed with game play according to pedagogical practices recommended by education specialists. Opportunities and limitations were specific to each game with the exception of technical issues and lack of informational resources on how to play the games

Methods of design, an overview of game design techniques

Key Summary Points The design of games for learning requires knowledge of game design and of instructional design. One cannot merely be layer on top of the other. A learning game must be designed to meet pre-specified learning objectives. Games have specific characteristics that require specific design skills: they are entertaining as well as instructional, interactive, visually appealing, and often replayable