Gioco e Cambiamento Sociale. Fra ricerca educativa, edu-larp e intercultura.

I giochi possono essere agenti di cambiamento sociale? Possono cio\ue8 permettere di esplorare questioni civiche, politiche, valoriali o etiche? Se si, quali sono i fondamenti del gioco da impiegare in questo tracciato? E quali le esperienze culturali, ludiche ed educative vive chi partecipa a questa tipologia di giochi? Sono queste alcune delle domande che hanno aperto la strada a questo lavoro di ricerca, diviso in tre parti. Nel capitolo 1 sono descritte quelle che in questa tesi vengono identificate come le vertebre del gioco, le strutture nascoste, ma portanti. Quando guardiamo al gioco esso ci coinvolge, ammalia e ingaggia come in un carnevale. Ci facciamo rapire dai movimenti ipnotici e seduttivi del corpo giocante, ma cosa pulsa sotto quei vestiti di festa? Quali sono le ossature portanti del corpo del gioco, su cosa si poggia, e come mai risulta essere cos\uec potente, persuasivo e problematicamente bello? Nel capitolo 2 viene presentato uno studio sperimentale sull\u2019edu-larp \u201cYouth on The Run\u201d di Croce Rossa Italiana, gioco di ruolo educativo dal vivo sul tema dei richiedenti asilo in Italia. La ricerca presentata avrebbe dovuto riguardare lo studio comparato di due edu-larp a tema migrazione: \u201cYouth On The Run\u201d, un gioco che simula per 24 ore il viaggio migratorio di una famiglia dalla Somalia fino all\u2019Italia, e \u201c300, la battaglia delle tendopoli\u201d (Coccia, 2020) che simula per 4 ore una riunione municipale in cui si deve decidere il collocamento di 300 profughi. In seguito alla chiusura degli istituti scolastici per le disposizioni anti contagio COVID-19, non si sono potute svolgere le sperimentazioni del secondo gioco, portando a presentare la ricerca come studio caso singolo del gioco YOTR. La ricerca ha voluto sondare se e come la partecipazione a questo tipo di giochi possa avere impatti significativi sul grado di empatia, di pregiudizio etnico e sulle rappresentazioni rispetto alle tematiche migratorie di chi partecipa. Si \ue8 quindi cercato di indagare se e come quegli elementi costitutivi del gioco trattati nel Capitolo 1 possano portare ad un cambiamento sociale effettivo nell\u2019ambito interculturale. Infine, nel capitolo 3 e 4 vengono riportate le analisi e la discussione dei dati, che mostrano come il gioco si costituisca realmente come regione speciale dell\u2019umano e spazio di cambiamento.Can games be agents of social change? Can they allow for the exploration of civic, political, value, or ethical issues? If so, what are the foundations of play to be employed in this track? And what are the cultural, playful and educational experiences experienced by those who participate in this type of games? These are some of the questions that paved the way for this research work, divided into three parts. Chapter 1 describes what in this thesis are identified as the fundamentals of the game, the hidden but important structures. When we look at game, it involves us, bewitches us and engages us as in a carnival. We are enraptured by the hypnotic and seductive movements of the playing body, but what is pulsing under those festive clothes? What are the supporting frameworks of the game body, what does it rest on, and how is it so powerful, persuasive and problematically beautiful? Chapter 2 presents an experimental study of the Italian Red Cross edu-larp "Youth on The Run", a live educational role-playing game on the topic of asylum seekers in Italy. The research presented should have concerned the comparative study of two edu-larp on the theme of migration: "Youth On The Run", a game that simulates for 24 hours the migratory journey of a family from Somalia to Italy, and "300, la battaglia delle tentopoli" (Coccia, 2020) which simulates for 4 hours a municipal meeting in which the placement of 300 refugees must be decided. Due to the closure of educational institutions due to COVID-19 anti-contagiousness regulations, experimentation of the second game could not take place, leading to the presentation of the research as a single case study of the YOTR game. The research aimed to probe whether and how participation in this type of game can have significant impacts on the degree of empathy, ethnic bias, and representations with respect to migration issues of those who participate. It was then attempted to investigate if and how those constituent elements of the game discussed in Chapter 1 can lead to effective social change in the intercultural sphere. Finally, Chapters 3 and 4 report the analysis and discussion of the data, which show how play really constitutes itself as a special space of human and a space for change

Playable Personas: Using Games and Play to Expand the Repertoire of Learner Personas

This article explores how playing and co-creating games in higher education contexts contributes to expanding learner personas and facilitating a multimodal learning experience. Working from the interdisciplinary perspectives of media/games studies, pedagogy, and linguistic anthropology, we conceptualize in-class learning as the making and playing of games, reporting on game experiments and playful practices targeted at learning key theoretical concepts in our disciplines. Game-based modifications to established educational practices involved: replacing lectures with Educational Live Action Role Play (Bowman 2014) sessions, using acting/performance games (Flanagan 2009) to critically reflect on ideas of community and collective identity, and introducing Twine (Werning 2017; Wilson & Saklofske 2019) to defamiliarize the expected structures and media modalities of academia. Based on evidence from participant reflections and classroom ethnographies, we argue that games can serve as a resource for extending the expressive spectrum of learner personas, for enabling embodied, participatory learning of theory, and for empowering students and educators to reflect on our internalized rules of the game of education

Accurate multiple time step in biased molecular simulations

Many recently introduced enhanced sampling techniques are based on biasing coarse descriptors (collective variables) of a molecular system on the fly. Sometimes the calculation of such collective variables is expensive and becomes a bottleneck in molecular dynamics simulations. An algorithm to treat smooth biasing forces within a multiple time step framework is here discussed. The implementation is simple and allows a speed up when expensive collective variables are employed. The gain can be substantial when using massively parallel or GPU-based molecular dynamics software. Moreover, a theoretical framework to assess the sampling accuracy is introduced, which can be used to assess the choice of the integration time step in both single and multiple time step biased simulations

Insights into Ligand–Protein Binding from Local Mechanical Response

Computational studies of ligand–protein binding are crucial for properly designing novel compounds of potential pharmacological interest. In this respect, researchers are increasingly interested in steered molecular dynamics for ligand–protein binding and unbinding studies. In particular, it has been suggested that analyzing the work profiles along the ligand–protein undocking paths could be fruitful. Here, we propose that small portions of work profiles, termed “local mechanical responses” of the system to a steering force, could serve as a universal measure for capturing relevant information about the system under investigation. Specifically, we first collected a high number of steering trajectories using two biological systems of increasing complexity (i.e., alanine dipeptide and (R)-roscovitine/CDK5 complex). Then, we devised a novel postprocessing tool to be applied to the local mechanical responses, to extract structural information related to the biological processes under investigation. Despite the out-of-equilibrium character of the trajectories, the analysis carried out on the work profiles provided pivotal information about the investigated biological processes. This could eventually be applied to drug design

Automated Analysis of Proliferating Cells Spatial Organisation Predicts Prognosis in Lung Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Lung neuroendocrine neoplasms (lung NENs) are categorised by morphology, defining a classification sometimes unable to reflect ultimate clinical outcome, particularly for the intermediate domains of adenocarcinomas and large-cell neuroendocrine carcinomas. Moreover, subjectivity and poor reproducibility characterise diagnosis and prognosis assessment of all NENs. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate an objective and reproducible approach to the grading of lung NENs, potentially extendable to other NENs, by exploring a completely new perspective of interpreting the well-recognised proliferation marker Ki-67. We designed an automated pipeline to harvest quantitative information from the spatial distribution of Ki-67-positive cells, analysing its heterogeneity in the entire extent of tumour tissue—which currently represents the main weakness of Ki-67—and employed machine learning techniques to predict prognosis based on this information. Demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed framework would hint at a possible path for the future of grading and classification of NENs. ABSTRACT: Lung neuroendocrine neoplasms (lung NENs) are categorised by morphology, defining a classification sometimes unable to reflect ultimate clinical outcome. Subjectivity and poor reproducibility characterise diagnosis and prognosis assessment of all NENs. Here, we propose a machine learning framework for tumour prognosis assessment based on a quantitative, automated and repeatable evaluation of the spatial distribution of cells immunohistochemically positive for the proliferation marker Ki-67, performed on the entire extent of high-resolution whole slide images. Combining features from the fields of graph theory, fractality analysis, stochastic geometry and information theory, we describe the topology of replicating cells and predict prognosis in a histology-independent way. We demonstrate how our approach outperforms the well-recognised prognostic role of Ki-67 Labelling Index on a multi-centre dataset comprising the most controversial lung NENs. Moreover, we show that our system identifies arrangement patterns in the cells positive for Ki-67 that appear independently of tumour subtyping. Strikingly, the subset of these features whose presence is also independent of the value of the Labelling Index and the density of Ki-67-positive cells prove to be especially relevant in discerning prognostic classes. These findings disclose a possible path for the future of grading and classification of NENs

Il focus group: un duplice strumento per la ricerca educativa e la formazione docenti

Il contributo descrive l’utilizzo del focus group come strumento integrativo di raccolta di informazioni, nell’ambito di un progetto di ricerca che ha coinvolto i docenti della scuola secondaria di primo grado del Comune di Genova, e che ha attivato iniziative di confronto e condivisione tra pari in un ambiente di apprendimento cloud-based. Tra i diversi dispositivi di raccolta dati predisposti nel corso del progetto, lo scopo dei focus group era quello di sondare in profondità il concetto di autoefficacia dei docenti e le rappresentazioni ad esso correlate. Dall’esperienza condotta sono emersi alcuni elementi che sembrano indicare la valenza del focus group non soltanto come dispositivo di ricerca, ma anche come dispositivo formativo all’interno di un percorso di apprendimento professionale. Sulla base dell’osservazione e dell’analisi effettuata, lo strumento si è rivelato determinante sia per la costruzione degli indicatori del dispositivo di indagine conclusivo, sia per generare occasioni di discussione e autoriflessione tra docenti, sostenendo la diffusione di nuclei di sviluppo formativo e di apprendimento tra pari all’interno della comunità professionale

Playable Personas: Using Games and Play to Expand the Repertoire of Learner Personas

This article explores how playing and co-creating games in higher education contexts contributes to expanding learner personas and facilitating a multimodal learning experience. Working from the interdisciplinary perspectives of media/games studies, pedagogy, and linguistic anthropology, we conceptualize in-class learning as the making and playing of games, reporting on game experiments and playful practices targeted at learning key theoretical concepts in our disciplines. Game-based modifications to established educational practices involved: replacing lectures with Educational Live Action Role Play (Bowman 2014) sessions, using acting/performance games (Flanagan 2009) to critically reflect on ideas of community and collective identity, and introducing Twine (Werning 2017; Wilson & Saklofske 2019) to defamiliarize the expected structures and media modalities of academia. Based on evidence from participant reflections and classroom ethnographies, we argue that games can serve as a resource for extending the expressive spectrum of learner personas, for enabling embodied, participatory learning of theory, and for empowering students and educators to reflect on our internalized rules of the game of education

Sito del Nuovo manuale di didattica multimediale

Il sito è articolato in quattro sezioni: I) Il manuale, in cui viene presentato il volume di cui il sito costituisce un'estensione di rete e si dà la possibilità all'utente di scaricare e stampare in formato pdf il testo di: Premessa, Capitolo VI, Indice. II) Sitografia, dove è presentata una sitografia ragionata dei temi toccati dal manuale, organizzata in forma di base dati consultabile anche motore interno di ricerca. III) Percorsi didattici, che presenta esperienze e oggetti di didattica multimediale realizzati da lettori e utenti del manuale e ad esso ispirati. Fornisce anche, liberamente scaricabile, DidaIT, ossia un software originale (alla cui produzione ha collaborato l'équipe del Laboratorio di Tecnologie Audiovisive)per lo studio e la realizzazione di progetti di documenti di impianto ipertestuale e reticolare. IV) Forum, dove lettori del manuale e utenti del sito possono incontrarsi, discutere, scambiare impressioni e materiali.

Progettazione e realizzazione dell'edizione on line degli insegnamenti M-PED/03 del collegio didattico Scienze della Comunicazione, a.a. 2005-2006, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

Gli studenti hanno interagito con il corpo docente e tra di loro, acquisito materiali, simulato esperienze, svolto compiti su piattaforma. Il loro grado di soddisfazione per l'esperienza, significativa sia sul piano tecnico sia su quello didattico, è stato unanimemente elevato.