Using Gamification to Motivate Students with Dyslexia

The concept of gamification is receiving increasing attention, particularly for its potential to motivate students. However, to date the majority of studies in the context of education have predominantly focused on University students. This paper explores how gamification could potentially benefit a specific student population, children with dyslexia who are transitioning from primary to secondary school. Two teachers from specialist dyslexia teaching centres used classDojo, a gamification platform, during their teaching sessions for one term. We detail how the teachers appropriated the platform in different ways and how the students discussed classDojo in terms of motivation. These findings have subsequently informed a set of provisional implications for gamification distilling opportunities for future pedagogical uses, gamification design for special education and methodological approaches to how gamification is studied

Culturally-Relevant Persuasive Technology

Persuasive technology (PT) has been defined by B. J. Fogg as "any interactive computing system designed to change peoples attitudes or behaviors". The kinds of attitudes people hold, and the behaviours they exhibit, are influenced by culture, so cultural beliefs play a large role in persuasion. The cross-cultural psychology literature has demonstrated the power of culture on attitude change. To date, however, there has been limited persuasive technology research outside of countries characterised as having individualist culture, where individualism describes cultures in which society members have a primarily individual identity. Little research has explicitly investigated the relationship between persuasive technology and culture. In this thesis, we investigated the hypothesis that persuasive technology is more effective when it reflects the culture of its intended target audience. Firstly, we established a set of effective, culturally-relevant persuasive technology strategies, almost all of which are targeted at use in tools for collectivist audiences. The strategies are based on a combination of findings from the cross-cultural psychology literature focused on the dimensions of individualism and collectivism, an analysis of existing PT strategies, and qualitative insights. Secondly, we developed a culturally-relevant PT prototype based on several of our strategies, in the form of two versions of a game titled Smoke? about smoking cessation. One version of Smoke? was designed to be more persuasive for a NZ European player audience, while the other was designed to be more persuasive for a Maori player audience. We conducted focus groups with potential players, the insights of which guided how we applied several of our culturally-relevant PT strategies in the design of the two game versions. Finally, we evaluated both game versions on individualist, and collectivist test players, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results of our evaluation support our hypothesis. Not only did both sets of players engage with, and use the culturally-relevant interface elements of the game designed for their culture, they also demonstrated that the culturally-relevant game versions had increased their anti-smoking beliefs

Understanding and fostering children’s storytelling during game narrative design

Children typically have extensive expertise and experiences of computer games, which can enable them to make valuable contributions when involved in the design of games. Within this paper we discuss our approach to the involvement of children in the game design process, specifically to inform a game narrative. We describe two design workshops with children, which focused on the design of the narrative within a literacy game based on the Day of the Dead festival. We describe how the knowledge that resulted from these workshops furthered our understanding of children’s storytelling schema and preferences for games as well as their approach to story creation and expression during the game design process. We also discuss how our findings informed an initial set of design principles for guiding narrative design within children’s games as well as recommendations for including storytelling design activities within the technology design process

Creating Bridges: The Role of Exploratory Design Research in an Intelligent Tutoring System Project

Designers of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) have long been interested in delivering personalised teaching to individual students, typically by ensuring that the student receives content appropriate to their skills and knowledge. Nonetheless, a more holistic view on what constitutes good teaching practice has challenged whether this approach to user modelling is sufficient. Teaching is not only defined by what is taught, but also by how it is taught. In this paper, we demonstrate that exploratory design research can support this view by generating a more inclusive set of user attributes for purposes of user modelling. Through a case study, we show that design research for user modelling can function as a boundary object serving three important roles, that underpin more specifically the design of user modelling and more broadly ITS design. First, design research can establish common ground by encapsulating domain knowledge in an accessible form. This can support diverse project stakeholders to make decisions on what is to be modelled. Second, design research can reveal a wide range of teaching and learning perspectives that in turn introduce transparency to the decision-making process of user modelling and provoke a sense of criticality and accountability amongst project stakeholders. Third, design research can build new bridges between the design of the technology and the user model that underpins it. To this end, user attributes deemed important, yet too complex or cumbersome to develop, can become design principles in the context of the overall ITS design

Diversity for design: a framework for involving neurodiverse children in the technology design process

The neurodiversity movement seeks to positively reframe certain neurological conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and dyslexia, by concentrating on their strengths. In recent years, neurodiverse children have increasingly been involved in the technology design process, but the design approaches adopted have focused mostly on overcoming difficulties of working with these children, leaving their strengths untapped. We present a new participatory design (PD) framework, Diversity for Design (D4D), which provides guidance for technology designers working with neurodiverse children in establishing PD methods that capitalize on children’s strengths and also support potential difficulties. We present two case studies of use of the D4D framework, involving children with ASD and dyslexia, showing how it informed the development and refinement of PD methods tailored to these populations. In addition, we show how to apply the D4D framework to other neurodiverse populations

The games for health prototype

In this paper we present a prototype developed to explore the application of game design and technology to the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We describe the design process that led to the development of the prototype and the included aspects of game design and game technology, how the approach and the prototype differ from previous work in using virtual environments in the treatment of PTSD, and we outline the first clinical trials of the prototype.peer-reviewe

Village voices : an adaptive game for conflict resolution

In this paper, we describe the design and technology of Vil lage Voices, an adaptive serious game designed to support children in learning about con ict resolution. Relying on experiential learning as an underlying learning philosophy, Village Voices puts players in the role of interdependent vil lagers who need to work through the various con icts that arise in the game world. To gradually earn guru status, play ers must successfully complete various personalised quests, which require cooperation between players. The personali sation technology behind Village Voices relies upon an accu rate player model that drives the adjustment and selection of quests for each player.The research is supported, in part, by the FP7 ICT project SIREN (project no: 258453).peer-reviewe

Gaming for Good: sustainable consumption and production in a data driven world

Even those of us who openly love games and gaming, and see ourselves as playful, tend to suffer from a hard-to-shake urge to dismiss those realms of experience and interaction as somehow frivolous, inessential, and tainted with the slight shame of childishness. This discussion will delve into various ways in which game, play, and fun, can not only be seen as means for ‘serious’ social progress and ethical causes, but as fundamental pillars of sustainable social cohesion. The panellists will talk about games as ways to hack and repurpose our public spaces, our everyday rituals, and the ways in which we relate to others digitally and physically. - How can the instruction and rule-systems of games be used as fields of experimentation for new ways of thinking about social structures? - What is the role of ‘fun’ within activism, and is there a vital link between play, transgression and the formation of new behaviour habits? - How can gamified design and technology be used to empower individuals to make ethical lifestyle choices and raise awareness of the customer’s Right To Know? - How can playful/game-based uses of technology be used to draw awareness to the centrality (and mistreatment) of the human body within a data-driven world

Modelling global pattern formations for collaborative learning environments

We present our research towards the design of a computational framework capable of modelling the formation and evolution of global patterns (i.e. group structures) in a population of social individuals. The framework is intended to be used in collaborative environments, e.g. social serious games and computer simulations of artificial societies. The theoretical basis of our research, together with current state of the art and future work, are briefly introduced.peer-reviewe