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

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

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

College Students\u27 Understanding of Stereochemistry: Difficulties in Learning and Critical Junctures.

Because stereochemistry is an important part of both high school and college chemistry curricula, a study of difficulties experienced by students in the learning of stereochemistry was undertaken in a one-semester college organic chemistry course. This study, conducted over the course of two semesters with more than two hundred students, utilized clinical interviews, concept maps, and student journals to identify these difficulties, which were then tabulated and categorized. Although student journals were not a productive source of information, the types of difficulties that emerged from the concept maps were compared and contrasted with those that emerged from the clinical interviews. Data from the concept maps were analyzed using Kendall\u27s W, a nonparametric statistic that was deemed appropriate for determining concordance between individual concept maps. The correlation between values of Kendall\u27s W for sets of concept maps and multiple choice questions designed to evaluate the content of these same maps was determined, with values of Pearson\u27s r of .8093 (p = .051) and .7191 (p = .044) for the Fall, 1997 and Spring, 1998 semesters, respectively. These data were used to estimate the occurrence of critical junctures in the learning of stereochemistry, or points at which students must possess a certain framework of understanding of previous concepts in order to master new material (Trowbridge & Wandersee, 1994). One critical juncture was identified that occurred when the topics of enantiorners, absolute configuration, and inversion of configuration were introduced. Among the more important conclusions of this study to the learning of stereochemistry are the following. Both concept maps and interviews provided useful information regarding difficulties in the learning of stereochemistry; this information was complementary in some aspects and similar in others. Concept maps were useful in diagnosing difficulties in application of terms and definitions, whereas interviews were useful when seeking information about difficulties in the manipulation of chemical structures. Both concept maps and interviews were superior to student journals as tools to probe student difficulties in the learning of stereochemistry

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

Pedagogical Feedback for Computer-based Sport Training

Feedback in Computer-based Sport Training (CBST) may be synthetically designed to allow athletes to practise in a more effective way and enhance their skill acquisition. Little research has integrated pedagogic theory and instructional design with the design of feedback in CBST. To bridge this gap, the paper presents the design of pedagogically-informed feedback for the implementation of a CBST system. The heart of the design is to generate feedback based on the athletes’ achievement of their intended training outcome. The pedagogical feedback system measures athletes’ performance and compares it with the given training outcomes. The system then identifies the performance’s gap and generates feedback to reinforce better performance. A Counterbalanced experiment asked student rowers (N = 8) to explore the differences between the pedagogical feedback system and their current feedback system (Sean-Analysis). Pedagogical feedback was at least as good as Sean-Analysis with respect to the level of satisfaction of the athlete. Overall, it can be concluded that the pedagogical feedback appears to be a good model for generating feedback in CBST

Legislative Overview: The Florida Workers\u27 Compensation Act, 1979

The innovative, unprecendented changes in the Florida Workers\u27 Compensation Act have focused national attention on the state\u27s compensation reform efforts