Uncharted Waters? Exploring Experts’ Opinions on the Opportunities and Limitations of Serious Games for Foreign Language Learning.

The use of serious games has seen a remarkable growth in the past decade. This resulted in a substantial number of people with hands-on experience. However, to our knowledge, no research has been performed to harvest this source of information. By means of a survey with closed and open-ended questions, we explore the opinions of 50 serious game and CALL experts on serious games’ potential for foreign language learning. The first part of the paper discusses attitudes on serious games and learning. In general, we discern a rather strong belief in the potential of learning games. The second part of the paper zooms in on foreign language learning through games whereby some remarkable results emerge on the possibilities and limitations of foreign language learning games. Next, we discuss respondents’ opinions on issues regarding the integration of foreign language learning games in a classroom context and on their design. The final part of the paper elaborates on a SWOT analysis of foreign language learning games resulting in a nuanced view on the opportunities and limitations of foreign language learning games. As a consequence, this paper not only identifies topics which bear a broad consensus among experts, but also shows that strong differences in opinion exist

A Serious Games Development Environment

Un ambiente per lo sviluppo di Serious Game

Mediating skills on risk management for improving the resilience of Supply Networks by developing and using a serious game

Given their importance, the need for resilience and the management of risk within Supply Networks, means that engineering students need a solid under-standing of these issues. An innovative way of meeting this need is through the use of serious games. Serious games allow an active experience on how differ-ent factors influencethe flexibility, vulnerability and capabilities in Supply Networks and allow the students to apply knowledge and methods acquired from theory. This supports their ability to understand, analyse and evaluate how different factors contribute to the resilience. The experience gained within the game will contribute to the studentsâ abilities to construct new knowledge based on their active observation and reflection of the environment when they later work in a dynamic environment in industry. This game, Beware, was developed for use in a blended learning environment. It is a part of a course for engineering master students at the University of Bremen. It was found that the game was effective in mediating the topic of risk management to the students espscially in supporting their ability of applying methods, analyse the different interactions and the game play as well as to support the assessment of how their decision-making affected the simulated network

Virtual Heritage: new technologies for edutainment

Cultural heritage represents an enormous amount of information and knowledge. Accessing this treasure chest allows not only to discover the legacy of physical and intangible attributes of the past but also to provide a better understanding of the present. Museums and cultural institutions have to face the problem of providing access to and communicating these cultural contents to a wide and assorted audience, meeting the expectations and interests of the reference end-users and relying on the most appropriate tools available. Given the large amount of existing tangible and intangible heritage, artistic, historical and cultural contents, what can be done to preserve and properly disseminate their heritage significance? How can these items be disseminated in the proper way to the public, taking into account their enormous heterogeneity? Answering this question requires to deal as well with another aspect of the problem: the evolution of culture, literacy and society during the last decades of 20th century. To reflect such transformations, this period witnessed a shift in the museum’s focus from the aesthetic value of museum artifacts to the historical and artistic information they encompass, and a change into the museums’ role from a mere "container" of cultural objects to a "narrative space" able to explain, describe, and revive the historical material in order to attract and entertain visitors. These developments require creating novel exhibits, able to tell stories about the objects and enabling visitors to construct semantic meanings around them. The objective that museums presently pursue is reflected by the concept of Edutainment, Education + Entertainment. Nowadays, visitors are not satisfied with ‘learning something’, but would rather engage in an ‘experience of learning’, or ‘learning for fun’, being active actors and players in their own cultural experience. As a result, institutions are faced with several new problems, like the need to communicate with people from different age groups and different cultural backgrounds, the change in people attitude due to the massive and unexpected diffusion of technology into everyday life, the need to design the visit by a personal point of view, leading to a high level of customization that allows visitors to shape their path according to their characteristics and interests. In order to cope with these issues, I investigated several approaches. In particular, I focused on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE): real-time interactive virtual environments where visitors can experience a journey through time and space, being immersed into the original historical, cultural and artistic context of the work of arts on display. VLE can strongly help archivists and exhibit designers, allowing to create new interesting and captivating ways to present cultural materials. In this dissertation I will tackle many of the different dimensions related to the creation of a cultural virtual experience. During my research project, the entire pipeline involved into the development and deployment of VLE has been investigated. The approach followed was to analyze in details the main sub-problems to face, in order to better focus on specific issues. Therefore, I first analyzed different approaches to an effective recreation of the historical and cultural context of heritage contents, which is ultimately aimed at an effective transfer of knowledge to the end-users. In particular, I identified the enhancement of the users’ sense of presence in VLE as one of the main tools to reach this objective. Presence is generally expressed as the perception of 'being there', i.e. the subjective belief of users that they are in a certain place, even if they know that the experience is mediated by the computer. Presence is related to the number of senses involved by the VLE and to the quality of the sensorial stimuli. But in a cultural scenario, this is not sufficient as the cultural presence plays a relevant role. Cultural presence is not just a feeling of 'being there' but of being - not only physically, but also socially, culturally - 'there and then'. In other words, the VLE must be able to transfer not only the appearance, but also all the significance and characteristics of the context that makes it a place and both the environment and the context become tools capable of transferring the cultural significance of a historic place. The attention that users pay to the mediated environment is another aspect that contributes to presence. Attention is related to users’ focalization and concentration and to their interests. Thus, in order to improve the involvement and capture the attention of users, I investigated in my work the adoption of narratives and storytelling experiences, which can help people making sense of history and culture, and of gamification approaches, which explore the use of game thinking and game mechanics in cultural contexts, thus engaging users while disseminating cultural contents and, why not?, letting them have fun during this process. Another dimension related to the effectiveness of any VLE is also the quality of the user experience (UX). User interaction, with both the virtual environment and its digital contents, is one of the main elements affecting UX. With respect to this I focused on one of the most recent and promising approaches: the natural interaction, which is based on the idea that persons need to interact with technology in the same way they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life. Then, I focused on the problem of presenting, displaying and communicating contents. VLE represent an ideal presentation layer, being multiplatform hypermedia applications where users are free to interact with the virtual reconstructions by choosing their own visiting path. Cultural items, embedded into the environment, can be accessed by users according to their own curiosity and interests, with the support of narrative structures, which can guide them through the exploration of the virtual spaces, and conceptual maps, which help building meaningful connections between cultural items. Thus, VLE environments can even be seen as visual interfaces to DBs of cultural contents. Users can navigate the VE as if they were browsing the DB contents, exploiting both text-based queries and visual-based queries, provided by the re-contextualization of the objects into their original spaces, whose virtual exploration can provide new insights on specific elements and improve the awareness of relationships between objects in the database. Finally, I have explored the mobile dimension, which became absolutely relevant in the last period. Nowadays, off-the-shelf consumer devices as smartphones and tablets guarantees amazing computing capabilities, support for rich multimedia contents, geo-localization and high network bandwidth. Thus, mobile devices can support users in mobility and detect the user context, thus allowing to develop a plethora of location-based services, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits and cultural or tourist sites according to visitors’ personal interest and curiosity

Enhancing Teaching-Learning Effectiveness in Mechanical Engineering Education Through Structured Interventions and Action Learning

Established teaching and learning methods are increasingly coming under scrutiny. This research documents the application of progressive methods of teaching and learning whilst introducing a range of disparate Action Learning (AL) delivery methods. Action Research (AR) methodology forms the basis for this work. As a means for learning, Games Base Learning (GBL) has historically been used in a range of subject areas but with limited application in Engineering and Technology. Although GBL provides a good means of motivating the learner whilst also promoting learning as fun, its effect in meeting quantifiable educational objectives remains much under-researched and therefore unknown. This research attempts to introduce GBL as part of Mechanical Engineering Education and evaluate the outcomes in both qualitative (by gauging the student learning experience) and quantitatively (by measuring changes in assessed work results as well as application). Game Based learning (GBL) activity is introduced as part of a holistic approach in supporting knowledge acquisition within a Mechanical Design undergraduate programme. This research reports on the level of student engagement and the extent to which learning outcomes were met through the introduction of such activities as part of the case studies. Novel approaches in delivery of engineering education are presented. Frameworks and methodology are produced that can be adopted in other Higher Education Institutions for improved delivery, attainment and engagement and student achievement. Novelty in the work is also presented through the empirical data as evidence of the pedagogical benefits of educational games. This research reports on the design, development, implementation and evaluation through analysis, blended learning based on Action Research (AR) methodology. This research bridges the gap between current and ‘traditional’ practice in teaching and learning in Mechanical Engineering Education through structured interventions in order to quantify enhanced learning experiences. Although it applies interventions to teaching and learning in the subject area of Mechanical Engineering subjects, specifically, but not exclusively, within design and manufacture. It focuses on Active Learning techniques such as Activity Based learning (ABL) and Games Based Learning (GBL) with the intention of reinforcing and applying prior underlying theoretical fundamentals. It reviews and evaluates a selection of approaches in teaching and learning on undergraduate mechanical engineering courses. As part of a blended learning environment, the use of Electronic Voting System for reflective learning and explorative thinking is considered. The work demonstrates how such voting systems can enhance the student learning experience by integration within a flipped classroom approach, coupled with reflective learning and experiential learning. Varied instruments of delivery and assessment along with novel methods to encourage student engagement and participation has led to improved student performance and acquisition of knowledge and skills, often with significant improvement. Each of the approaches described as part of this research has brought unique benefits to teaching and learning fundamentals however there is evidence that combined, produce a powerful set of tools for mechanical engineering education