133,311 research outputs found
The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments
Cataloged from PDF version of article.Considering the role of games for educational purposes, there has an increase in interest among educators
in applying strategies used in popular games to create more engaging learning environments.
Learning is more fun and appealing in digital educational games and, as a result, it may become more
effective. However, few research studies have been conducted to establish principles based on empirical
research for designing engaging and entertaining games so as to improve learning. One of the essential
characteristics of games that has been unexplored in the literature is the concept of uncertainty. This
study examines the effect of uncertainty on learning outcomes. In order to better understand this effect
on learning, a game-like learning tool was developed to teach a database concept in higher education
programs of software engineering. The tool is designed in two versions: one including uncertainty and
the other including no uncertainty. The experimental results of this study reveal that uncertainty enhances
learning. Uncertainty is found to be positively associated with motivation. As motivation increases,
participants tend to spend more time on answering the questions and to have higher accuracy in
these questions
Interactive Visual Reasoning under Uncertainty
One of the fundamental cognitive abilities of humans is to quickly resolve
uncertainty by generating hypotheses and testing them via active trials.
Encountering a novel phenomenon accompanied by ambiguous cause-effect
relationships, humans make hypotheses against data, conduct inferences from
observation, test their theory via experimentation, and correct the proposition
if inconsistency arises. These iterative processes persist until the underlying
mechanism becomes clear. In this work, we devise the IVRE (pronounced as
"ivory") environment for evaluating artificial agents' reasoning ability under
uncertainty. IVRE is an interactive environment featuring rich scenarios
centered around Blicket detection. Agents in IVRE are placed into environments
with various ambiguous action-effect pairs and asked to determine each object's
role. They are encouraged to propose effective and efficient experiments to
validate their hypotheses based on observations and actively gather new
information. The game ends when all uncertainties are resolved or the maximum
number of trials is consumed. By evaluating modern artificial agents in IVRE,
we notice a clear failure of today's learning methods compared to humans. Such
inefficacy in interactive reasoning ability under uncertainty calls for future
research in building human-like intelligence.Comment: Accepted at NeurIPS 2023 (Datasets and Benchmarks
von Neumann-Morgenstern and Savage Theorems for Causal Decision Making
Causal thinking and decision making under uncertainty are fundamental aspects
of intelligent reasoning. Decision making under uncertainty has been well
studied when information is considered at the associative (probabilistic)
level. The classical Theorems of von Neumann-Morgenstern and Savage provide a
formal criterion for rational choice using purely associative information.
Causal inference often yields uncertainty about the exact causal structure, so
we consider what kinds of decisions are possible in those conditions. In this
work, we consider decision problems in which available actions and consequences
are causally connected. After recalling a previous causal decision making
result, which relies on a known causal model, we consider the case in which the
causal mechanism that controls some environment is unknown to a rational
decision maker. In this setting we state and prove a causal version of Savage's
Theorem, which we then use to develop a notion of causal games with its
respective causal Nash equilibrium. These results highlight the importance of
causal models in decision making and the variety of potential applications.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Causal Inferenc
Do business games foster skills? A cross-cultural study from learners’ views
Purpose: This study seeks to analyse students’ perception of the effectiveness of business games as an e-learning method in management training. This analysis of games’ effectiveness is centred in the generic and managerial skills acquired, through the comparison of students’ opinions in different cultural contexts within Europe. Design/methodology: The analysis focuses on 120 management students at postgraduate level who use the same business game at different universities in five European countries: Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Germany. Findings: The results indicate that students positively assessed the generic and specific managerial skills fostered by the business game. The generic skills most valued were information and decision-making, and leadership. Regarding the specific skills, the most valued were management skills and the least valued, skills related to planning and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. However, significant differences were found between students in different cultural contexts and education systems in the case of certain specific managerial skills. Practical implications: This finding suggests that the students’ perception of how a business game helps them acquire specific managerial skills is influenced by cultural aspects and previous exposure to experiential learning, which determine that the teachers’ role and the teaching process should be adapted to the students’ learning model. Originality/value: With this study, a better knowledge about the students’ perception of this e-learning method is obtained, not just considering a specific educational environment, but comparing opinions of students from different cultural contexts, which adds value to the analyses developed.Peer Reviewe
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