A Conceptual Framework for Supporting Gender-Inclusivity in Games

Gender-inclusivity in games has been a much debated issue and despite the dramatic growth of gender and games research, many challenges remain in designing a more gender-inclusive game. Gender-inclusivity in games may support certain features and in turn may even determine the features of applications built based on it. This poses a challenge: although we have good techniques for analyzing, designing and evaluating current games, our techniques for gender-inclusive games are much less formed. We present a brief outline of some unresolved issues concerning gender-inclusivity in games and the gaps in designing a more gender-inclusive game. There is little reported experience in the issues that arise in determining what features should go into a gender-inclusive game and for determining the success or failure in the evaluation of those features. The questions that arise from this situation are how to define gender-inclusivity in games, how to incorporate gender-inclusivity into a game creation process and how to accurately measure gender-inclusivity in games. We propose a framework that defines gender-inclusivity in three key themes: (1) gameplay, describing the game behaviour and how a player experiences the game. It include non-violent action (NVA), game support (GS), forgiving gameplay (FG), non-violent challenge (NVC), feedback system (FS), variety of activities (ACT), personalization (PER) and collaboration (COLL); (2) content, describing the aesthetics elements of a game. It consists of character/avatar portrayal (AVP), game world graphics (GW), sound/music (SM) and storyline (STOR) and; (3) genre, categorizes games into twelve broad genres: racing, simulation, classic/board, strategy, sports, shooting, role playing game, platform, children, puzzle/quiz, action and adventure. On-going research is being planned for experiments to validate the framework through expert reviews, game evaluations and game design projects. We believe the results may extend to other domains in technology enhanced teaching and learning applications to commercial games design

Spectroscopic and kinetic studies of highly excited diatomic species

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D74089/87 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Guidance Notes for Cloud Research Users

There is a rapidly increasing range of research activities which involve the outsourcing of computing and storage resources to public Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), who provide managed and scalable resources virtualised as a single service. For example Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) are two widely adopted open cloud solutions, which aim at providing pooled computing and storage services and charge users according to their weighted resource usage. Other examples include employment of Google Application Engine and Microsoft Azure as development platforms for research applications. Despite a lot of activity and publication on cloud computing, the term itself and the technologies that underpin it are still confusing to many. This note, as one of deliverables of the TeciRes project1, provides guidance to researchers who are potential end users of public CSPs for research activities. The note contains information to researchers on: •The difference between and relation to current research computing models •The considerations that have to be taken into account before moving to cloud-aided research •The issues associated with cloud computing for research that are currently being investigated •Tips and tricks when using cloud computing Readers who are interested in provisioning cloud capabilities for research should also refer to our guidance notes to cloud infrastructure service providers. This guidance notes focuses on technical aspects only. Readers who are interested in non-technical guidance should refer to the briefing paper produced by the “using cloud computing for research” project

Reducing latency when using Virtual Reality for teaching in sport

Latency is a frequently cited shortcoming of Virtual Reality (VR) applications. To compensate for excessive latency, prediction mechanisms may use sophisticated mathematical algorithms, which may not be appropriate for complex virtual teaching applications. This paper suggests that heuristic prediction algorithms could be used to develop more effective and general systems for VR educational applications. A fast synchronization squash simulation illustrates where heuristic prediction can be used to deal with latency problems

A Conceptual Teacher-Learner Model for a Collaborative Learning with Serious Games

This paper introduces a conceptual Teacher-Learner framework for a collaborative learning with serious games. An initial study identified twelve attributesof educational serious games that can be used to support effective learning. These attributes are used in the conceptual framework to support learning and pedagogy in combination with a game. A considerable number of serious games have been developed over the last ten years, with varying degrees of success. Due to a lack of clear standards and guidelines for game developers; it is difficult to justify claims that a specific game meets the learner’s requirements and/or expectations. This paper defines a conceptual model for serious games that will contribute to their design and the measurement of achievement in meeting the learners’ requirements