Ingenious Game: Insights Into Evolving From a Learning Card Game to a Learning Software Application Game

Ingenious is a collaborative and competitive learning game application in which groups of students compete against each other in a product design and development (PDD) scenario where each group is responsible for a multidisciplinary team of engineers. The game has been used since 2020 to support a mechanical engineering master course. In this period, the game evolved from a card game to a software application. During the four game rounds representing the PDD phases, the players learn when to use over 80 different engineering design techniques. By choosing varying engineers and techniques, a student group creates a design strategy with a cost to execute and might be proven more effective than the competitors' strategies. Winning the game is about effectiveness in solving the challenges posed in the PDD scenario at a minimum cost. Once the game allows scenario customisation, new PDD scenarios can be created with different complexity levels. In the gamified classroom, grading is not a result of winning the game but a reflection of the group's choices and consequences while playing the game. This article presents the different game versions, describes the Ingenious game mechanics and dynamics and reflects on the game evolution and coverage of the Octalysis dimensions.</p

Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes and Policy Outcomes in Brazil

We found that the driving force behind policies in Brazil is the strong set of powers given to the President by the Constitution of 1988. To have strong powers does not mean unbridled powers. Several institutions constrain and check the power of the President, in particular the legislature, the judiciary, the public prosecutors, the auditing office, state governors and the Constitution itself. The electorate of Brazil holds the President accountable for economic growth, inflation and unemployment. Because of the electoral connection, and perhaps reputational effects, presidents in Brazil have a strong incentive to pursue stable fiscal and monetary policies as their first priority. At least for the past ten years, and particularly in the new administration of Lula, executive power has been aimed at pushing policy towards macro orthodoxy. Although orthodoxy may not lead to short-term growth, international financial markets provide additional incentives for discipline, as deviations are instantly punished, with unfavorable consequences that are readily recognized by the electorate. Achieving stable macro policies required constitutional amendments as well as considerable legislation. To attain their goals, the past administrations (Cardoso and Lula in particular) used their property rights over pork to trade for policy changes. The rationale for members of Congress to exchange votes on policy for pork is that the electorates reward or punish members of Congress based on the degree to which pork lands in their district. With the exception of the devaluation of 1999, macro policy has become more stable over time. We categorize macro policies in Brazil as `stable but adaptable. `

Individual accessibility and segregation on activity spaces: an agent-based modelling approach

One of the main challenges of cities is the increasing social inequality imposed by the way population groups, jobs, amenities and services, as well as the transportation infrastructure, are distributed across urban space. In this thesis, the concepts of accessibility and segregation are used to study these inequalities. They can be defined as the interaction of individuals with urban opportunities and with individuals from other population groups, respectively. Interactions are made possible by people’s activities and movement within a city, which characterise accessibility and segregation as inherently dynamic and individual-based concepts. Nevertheless, they are largely studied from a static and place-based perspective. This thesis proposes an analytical and exploratory framework for studying individual-based accessibility and segregation in cities using individuals’ travel trajectories in space and time. An agent-based simulation model was developed to generate individual trajectories dynamically, employing standard datasets such as census and OD matrices and allowing for multiple perspectives of analysis by grouping individuals based on their attributes. The model’s ability to simulate people’s trajectories realistically was validated through systematic sensitivity tests and statistical comparison with real-world trajectories from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and travel times from London, UK. The approach was applied to two exploratory studies: São Paulo, Brazil, and London, UK. The first revealed inequalities in accessibility by income, education and gender and also unveiled within-group differences beyond place-based patterns. The latter explored ethnic segregation, unveiling patterns of potential interaction among ethnic groups in the urban space beyond their residential and workplace locations. Those studies demonstrated how inequality in accessibility and segregation can be studied both at large metropolitan scales and at fine level of detail, using standard datasets, with modest computational requirements and ease of operationalisation. The proposed approach opens up avenues for the study of complex dynamics of interaction of urban populations in a variety of urban contexts