A Participatory Approach to Redesigning Games for Educational Purposes

Even though games designed for educational purposes can be motivating, they usually shelter dated pedagogies, passive learning procedures, and often overlook learners' creativity. In an effort to reinforce the active participation of learners in games, this paper presents a participatory process in which students and teachers are involved in game design. The proposed process concerns redesigning existing commercial games into educational ones and includes establishing the learning goals, identifying appropriate commercial games, adapting the rules and context, crafting and playtesting the game. Using language learning as one application of this process, the paper presents how three well-known tabletop games were redesigned in a foreign language classroom with elementary and intermediate English language learners. The benefits that underlie the process concern students' active participation, boosting their problem-solving skills, and engaging them in creative learning

New frontiers of managerial training: the LiVES project

The evolution of the Internet allowed the Web to become, among the different media, the most global, inter-active and dynamic medium to share information. Therefore, in the last decades, e-Learning has been widely used not only in the academic community, but also in the business sector. Within this context, thanks to their own competences, people can develop specific characteristics which may provide a competitive advantage for their organizations. The development and use of new technologies for the creation of three-dimensional (3D) Virtual Worlds set new challenges and enlarge the very idea of ‘learning environment’. This paper aims at inves-tigating the characteristics of training activities directed at the managerial class, in such a way as to increase their efficacy; it also analyses how the use of specific innovative technologies may be an effective solution.The evolution of the Internet allowed the Web to become, among the different media, the most global, inter-active and dynamic medium to share information. Therefore, in the last decades, e-Learning has been widely used not only in the academic community, but also in the business sector. Within this context, thanks to their own competences, people can develop specific characteristics which may provide a competitive advantage for their organizations. The development and use of new technologies for the creation of three-dimensional (3D) Virtual Worlds set new challenges and enlarge the very idea of ‘learning environment’. This paper aims at inves-tigating the characteristics of training activities directed at the managerial class, in such a way as to increase their efficacy; it also analyses how the use of specific innovative technologies may be an effective solution.Monograph's chapter

Perception of complex engineering problem solving among engineering educators

According to the Washington Accord, skills to solve complex problems in engineering are important in the curriculum of engineering education. To fulfill the accreditation exercise, engineering educators must be able to design complex engineering problems to assess the learning of this important skill. Therefore, this research was conducted to explore what do engineering educators perceived as complex engineering problems and how did they design these problems in order to foster the skills among their students. A focus group discussion was conducted among 12 engineering educators. The audio recording was transcribed and analysed qualitatively. The result shows that only one engineering educator understands complex engineering problems and most of the attributes. The other were not able to tell more than three of the complex engineering problem attributes. As a conclusion, training on the attributes of complex engineering problems is needed to ensure that the teaching and learning of engineering programmes fulfill the accreditation criteria