Serious Game Design Using MDA and Bloom’s Taxonomy

The field of Serious Games (SG) studies the use of games as a learning tool and it has been in existence for over forty years. During this period the primary focus of the field has been designing systems to evaluate the educational efficacy of existing games. This translates to a lack of systems designed to aid in the creation of serious games, but this does not have to remain an issue. The rise in popularity of games means that there is no shortage of ideas on how to methodically create them for commercial production which can just as easily be applied to SG creation. However, showing a clear linkage between a game’s components and its learning objectives is a primary difficulty. Created by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek, the Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics (MDA) methodology is an understandable and robust construct for creating commercial games using mechanics to produce an intended level of aesthetic appreciation from its consumers. However, an educational Serious Game (SG) must not only be fun, but through experience it must convey the intended learning objectives to its players. This thesis explores utilizing the MDA methodology, with Bloom’s taxonomy, to create and evaluate a game to meet two learning objectives for a Cyber focused class. The created game CyComEx, was designed to teach cyber students to identify tradeoffs between security and mission execution, and to explain how policies can impact cyber mission areas. The game was evaluated to have conveyed these objectives during a playthrough and that it was sufficiently enjoyable to students participating in this case study

What makes or breaks a campaign to stop an invading plant pathogen?

Diseases in humans, animals and plants remain an important challenge in our society. Effective control of invasive pathogens often requires coordinated concerted action of a large group of stakeholders. Both epidemiological and human behavioural factors influence the outcome of a disease control campaign. In mathematical models that are frequently used to guide such campaigns, human behaviour is often ill-represented, if at all. Existing models of human, animal and plant disease that do incorporate participation or compliance are often driven by pay-offs or direct observations of the disease state. It is however very well known that opinion is an important driving factor of human decision making. Here we consider the case study of Citrus Huanglongbing disease (HLB), which is an acute bacterial disease that threatens the sustainability of citrus production across the world. We show how by coupling an epidemiological model of this invasive disease with an opinion dynamics model we are able to answer the question: What makes or breaks the effectiveness of a disease control campaign? Frequent contact between stakeholders and advisors is shown to increase the probability of successful control. More surprisingly, we show that informing stakeholders about the effectiveness of control methods is of much greater importance than prematurely increasing their perceptions of the risk of infection. We discuss the overarching consequences of this finding and the effect on human as well as plant disease epidemics

Multilayer motif analysis of brain networks

This work was partially supported by the EU-LASAGNE Project, Contract No. 318132 (STREP)

Bioinspired snapping-claw apparatus to study hydrodynamic cavitation effects on the corrosion of metallic samples

A creative low-cost and compact mechanical device that mimics the rapid closure of the pistol shrimp claw was used to conduct electrochemical experiments, in order to study the effects of hydrodynamic cavitation on the corrosion of aluminum and steel samples. Current-time curves show significant changes associated with local variations in dissolved O2 concentration, cavitation-induced erosion and changes in the nature of the surface corrosion products