Acquiring 21st Century Skills: gaining insight in the design and applicability of a serious game with 4C-ID

Despite the growth of interest in serious games, there is little systematic guidance on how to assure a game fits the instruction required. Game design frameworks are still under development and do not help to articulate the educational merits of a game to a teacher nor fit with their background. In this paper we discuss the results of a GaLA workshop which examined how a widely applied instructional design model, 4C-ID, can ease the uptake of serious games by offering teachers a model fitting their background to assess games on the applicability for their learning contexts. The paper will introduce the 4C-ID model and its use in the CHERMUG project with the design of mini-games for research methods and statistics. Next, we will discuss how workshop participants used the 4C-ID model to evaluate two games on their applicability for a given learning context. The participants indicated that the approach can support teachers in deciding if and how to use a given serious game.The work described in this paper was partially supported by the European Community under the Lifelong Learning Programme project CHERMUG nr. 519023-LLP-1-2011-1-UK-KA3-KA3MP. The paper does not represent the opinion of the European Community, and the European Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of its content

Shallow rainwater lenses in deltaic areas with saline seepage

In deltaic areas with saline seepage, freshwater availability is often limited to shallow rainwater lenses lying on top of saline groundwater. Here we describe the characteristics and spatial variability of such lenses in areas with saline seepage and the mechanisms that control their occurrence and size. Our findings are based on different types of field measurements and detailed numerical groundwater models applied in the south-western delta of the Netherlands. By combining the applied techniques we could extrapolate measurements at point scale (groundwater sampling, temperature and electrical soil conductivity (TEC)-probe measurements, electrical cone penetration tests (ECPT)) to field scale (continuous vertical electrical soundings (CVES), electromagnetic survey with EM31), and even to regional scale using helicopter-borne electromagnetic measurements (HEM). The measurements show a gradual mixing zone between infiltrating fresh rainwater and upward flowing saline groundwater. The mixing zone is best characterized by the depth of the centre of the mixing zone <i>D</i><sub>mix</sub>, where the salinity is half that of seepage water, and the bottom of the mixing zone <i>B</i><sub>mix</sub>, with a salinity equal to that of the seepage water (Cl-conc. 10 to 16 g l<sup>−1</sup>). <i>D</i><sub>mix</sub> is found at very shallow depth in the confining top layer, on average at 1.7 m below ground level (b.g.l.), while <i>B</i><sub>mix</sub> lies about 2.5 m b.g.l. The model results show that the constantly alternating upward and downward flow at low velocities in the confining layer is the main mechanism of mixing between rainwater and saline seepage and determines the position and extent of the mixing zone (<i>D</i><sub>mix</sub> and <i>B</i><sub>mix</sub>). Recharge, seepage flux, and drainage depth are the controlling factors

Time-to-birth prediction models and the influence of expert opinions

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among children under five years old. The pathophysiology and etiology of preterm labor are not yet fully understood. This causes a large number of unnecessary hospitalizations due to high--sensitivity clinical policies, which has a significant psychological and economic impact. In this study, we present a predictive model, based on a new dataset containing information of 1,243 admissions, that predicts whether a patient will give birth within a given time after admission. Such a model could provide support in the clinical decision-making process. Predictions for birth within 48 h or 7 days after admission yield an Area Under the Curve of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC) of 0.72 for both tasks. Furthermore, we show that by incorporating predictions made by experts at admission, which introduces a potential bias, the prediction effectiveness increases to an AUC score of 0.83 and 0.81 for these respective tasks

Bend it like Beckham: embodying the motor skills of famous athletes.

Observing an action activates the same representations as does the actual performance of the action. Here we show for the first time that the action system can also be activated in the complete absence of action perception. When the participants had to identify the faces of famous athletes, the responses were influenced by their similarity to the motor skills of the athletes. Thus, the motor skills of the viewed athletes were retrieved automatically during person identification and had a direct influence on the action system of the observer. However, our results also indicated that motor behaviours that are implicit characteristics of other people are represented differently from when actions are directly observed. That is, unlike the facilitatory effects reported when actions were seen, the embodiment of the motor behaviour that is not concurrently perceived gave rise to contrast effects where responses similar to the behaviour of the athletes were inhibited

The bodily social self: a link between phenomenal and narrative selfhood

The Phenomenal Self (PS) is widely considered to be dependent on body representations, whereas the Narrative Self (NS) is generally thought to rely on abstract cognitive representations. The concept of the Bodily Social Self (BSS) might play an important role in explaining how the high level cognitive self-representations enabling the NS might emerge from the bodily basis of the PS. First, the phenomenal self (PS) and narrative self (NS), are briefly examined. Next, the BSS is defined and its potential for explaining aspects of social cognition is explored. The minimal requirements for a BSS are considered, before reviewing empirical evidence regarding the development of the BSS over the first year of life. Finally, evidence on the involvement of the body in social distinctions between self and other is reviewed to illustrate how the BSS is affected by both the bottom up effects of multisensory stimulation and the top down effects of social identification

Alignment to the Actions of a Robot

Alignment is a phenomenon observed in human conversation: Dialog partners’ behavior converges in many respects. Such alignment has been proposed to be automatic and the basis for communicating successfully. Recent research on human–computer dialog promotes a mediated communicative design account of alignment according to which the extent of alignment is influenced by interlocutors’ beliefs about each other. Our work aims at adding to these findings in two ways. (a) Our work investigates alignment of manual actions, instead of lexical choice. (b) Participants interact with the iCub humanoid robot, instead of an artificial computer dialog system. Our results confirm that alignment also takes place in the domain of actions. We were not able to replicate the results of the original study in general in this setting, but in accordance with its findings, participants with a high questionnaire score for emotional stability and participants who are familiar with robots align their actions more to a robot they believe to be basic than to one they believe to be advanced. Regarding alignment over the course of an interaction, the extent of alignment seems to remain constant, when participants believe the robot to be advanced, but it increases over time, when participants believe the robot to be a basic version

Opties voor een klimaatbestendige zoetwatervoorziening in Laag Nederland, tussentijds integratierapport

Dit rapport geeft een tussentijds overzicht van ‘state of the art’ kennis uit lopend onderzoek van het consortium ‘Climate Proof Fresh Water Supply’ (CPFWS) dat in het kader van het onderzoeksprogramma Kennis voor Klimaat wordt uitgevoerd. De focus van dit onderzoek naar een klimaatbestendige zoetwatervoorziening ligt op lokale en regionale oplossingen in Laag Nederland voor land- en tuinbouw en natuur. De zoetwatervoorziening van dit gebied wordt naast droogte vooral bedreigd door verzilting van grond- en oppervlaktewater. In zes samenhangende werkpakketten wordt geanalyseerd hoe dit gebied meer zelfvoorzienend kan worden én hoe aanpassingen in het (hoofd)watersysteem kunnen bijdragen aan de watervoorziening van het gebied. Centraal in de aanpak zijn een 3-tal casestudies in de Hotspots Haaglanden, Rotterdam Regio en Zuidwestelijke delta