Societal impact of a serious game on raising public awareness: the case of FloodSim

This paper presents an evaluation of the societal impact of a simulation-based Serious Game. FloodSim was developed with the aim of raising awareness of issues surrounding flooding policy and citizen engagement in the UK. The game was played by a large number of users (N=25,701) in a period of 4 weeks. Quantitative and qualitative analyses (on a reduced data set) were carried out in order to explore the impact of FloodSim play in raising the general public awareness around flooding in the UK. The results suggest FloodSim was hugely successful in generating general public interest and there was evidence that (a) FloodSim increased awareness at a basic level and (b) that despite the simplicity of the simulation, players perceived FloodSim to be an accurate source of information about flood risk and prevention. This suggests that serious games such as FloodSim have potential to engage the public and raise awareness of societal issues. However, FloodSim only raised awareness at a basic level. It is suggested that more needs to be done to endow serious games with pedagogical principles and more care should be given to the accuracy of the information they convey. The appropriateness of games as an educational medium for raising awareness of complex, real-life issues should also be carefully considered. This study throws some light on the potential of simulation-based Serious Games to offer experiential learning, engage users with serious topics while raising public awareness and understanding of social issues such as flooding and related policymaking. Future research is outlined consisting of identifying the problems and challenges in designing and developing serious games while considering pedagogical principles

A pervasive augmented reality serious game

This paper presents a pervasive augmented reality serious game that can be used to enhance entertainment using a multimodal tracking interface. The main objective of the research is to design and implement generic pervasive interfaces that are user-friendly and can be used by a wide range of users including people with disabilities. A pervasive AR racing game has been designed and implemented. The goal of the game is to start the car and move around the track without colliding with either the wall or the objects that exist in the gaming arena. Users can interact using a pinch glove, a Wiimote, through tangible ways as well as through I/O controls of the UMPC. Initial evaluation results showed that multimodal-based interaction games can be beneficial in serious games

An empirical examination of the relation between attention and motivation in computer-based education: a modeling approach

Attention is considered a pre-requisite to achieve greater motivation in the classroom. However, empirical evidence of this relationship in educational setting is scarce since the measurement of attention requires specialized equipment such as clinical electroencephalograms (EEG) or fMR1. With the advent of portable, consumer-oriented EEG it is now possible to estimate levels of attention and shed light onto this relationship in the context of a computer-based educational setting. To that end, students (N=40) interacted for an average of 9.48 minutes (SD = .0018) with an assessment exercise in a virtual world. Participants' attention levels were monitored via a portable EEG and incorporated into an attention model capable of deciding on strategies to correct low levels of attention. The participants' motivation was assessed using a self-reported motivation questionnaire at pre-test and post-test times. The results indicated that students with higher self-reported motivation and self-reported attention answered significantly more correct answers. However, no direct evidence was found of a relation between EEG readings and self-reported attention or self-reported motivation. This suggests student's own perceptions of motivation and attention influence performance. Future work consists of defining new models of attention considering self-perceived attention and motivation as baseline as well as improving the model of attention combining EEG reading with an indication of the students' gaze

Can serious games help to mitigate climate change? Exploring their influence on Spanish and American teenagers’ attitudes

Es urgente y necesario reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y mitigar el cambio climático, y esta lucha requiere un cambio en las actitudes de los adolescentes. En la búsqueda de nuevos enfoques dirigidos a los jóvenes, los serious games en formato online parecen una prometedora herramienta de comunicación y educación. Basándonos en el juego 2020 Energy como estudio de caso, el principal objetivo de este artículo es examinar la influencia de dicho juego sobre las actitudes de adolescentes españoles y estadounidenses (N = 108), empleando un diseño pretest-posttest con una condición experimental (jugar al juego) y una condición de control (no jugar al juego). Los resultados muestran que no había diferencias estadísticamente significativas después de jugar al juego, aunque una observación más detallada de cada factor ofrece algunas consecuencias positivas.There is an urgent need to curb emissions and mitigate climate change, and this fight requires a change in teenagers’ attitudes. In search of new approaches targeting youth, online games are seen as a promising tool for communication and education. Using the serious game 2020 Energy as a case study, the main objective of this paper is to examine the influence of the game on Spanish and American teenagers’ attitudes (N = 108), employing a pretest-posttest design with an experimental condition (playing the game) and a control condition (not playing the game). Results show that there have not been statistically significant differences after playing the game, although when looking closer at each factor, some positive consequences can be found.HUM466 Acceso y evaluación de la información científic

Psychophysiology in games

Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between psychology and its physiological manifestations. That relationship is of particular importance for both game design and ultimately gameplaying. Players’ psychophysiology offers a gateway towards a better understanding of playing behavior and experience. That knowledge can, in turn, be beneficial for the player as it allows designers to make better games for them; either explicitly by altering the game during play or implicitly during the game design process. This chapter argues for the importance of physiology for the investigation of player affect in games, reviews the current state of the art in sensor technology and outlines the key phases for the application of psychophysiology in games.The work is supported, in part, by the EU-funded FP7 ICT iLearnRWproject (project no: 318803).peer-reviewe

D6.2 Report on the user studies and evaluation of the use of Second Life for the MyPlan project

In D6.1 we reviewed different games applications that can be used to support lifelong learners and identified Second Life as a suitable environment for conducting exploratory user studies as part of the MyPlan project. This report presents the main findings of this study. It outlines the results from the Learning Day session held at two sites in London on 9th May 2008, a summary of the evaluation findings of the efficacy of using Second Life for supporting learners with career choices and educational decisions, and some suggested guidelines for tutors using Second Life to inform career support with their learners. In Section 2 of this report we explain how the session was structured and summarise our preliminary results. Section 3 reports on our findings while Section 4 discusses key issues identified. Section 5 presents a list of guidelines for tutors using Second Life that emerged from this study, and Section 6 highlights our conclusions. The appendices of this report include: supporting materials including: study invite (A), study details (B), informed consent form (C), images from the study (D), survey questions and responses (E-F)