<p dir="ltr">This dissertation investigates game design elements and their impact on player experience, intrinsic motivation, and learning outcomes. The research encompasses three projects, each delving into essential aspects of educational game design and their impact on student learning. The first project addresses a design gap by creating an educational game, exam- ining its effect on motivation and learning outcomes. The second project investigates player agency’s role in games and its influence on experience and outcomes. Two prototypes are designed that differ in the level of player agency afforded to the students. The study analyzes how this experimental manipulation affects player experience, intrinsic motivation, and learning outcomes. The third project analyzes the relationship between the learning inventory and the puzzle environment. More specifically, I will evaluate why students faced challenges when answering questions that focused on predicting the output and it’s connection with the learning environment. The overall focus of my dissertation is player experience, intrinsic motivation (to learn), and learning outcomes, which are examined through qualitative and quantitative research methods.</p>

Auditing, as a subset of the accounting discipline, is an inherently difficult subject to learn and teach. There have been various challenges, problems and criticisms regarding traditional auditing and accounting education. Auditing lecturers therefore have a responsibility to investigate methods or aids that can assist lecturers in addressing these challenges, problems and criticisms in order to educate future auditors who have the knowledge, understanding and skills to function effectively in the workplace. The primary objective of this study was therefore to evaluate whether the learning and lecturing difficulties experienced may be addressed effectively through the use of an educational auditing information technology-based game, which was developed during the course and as a result of this study. The perceptions of third-year auditing students at North-West University regarding the use of this game as an educational aid in auditing education were tested through a questionnaire that was also developed as part of this study. The study involved dividing the participants into an experimental and control group. The experimental group played the educational computer game, while the control group completed the case question from which the educational game was developed. The students then completed the same questionnaire. The main findings of the study were that the educational computer game was equal in educational value to the case method, while factors such as joy, engagement and motivation were rated higher for the computer game than for the case method. / MCom (Accountancy), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Auditing, as a subset of the accounting discipline, is an inherently difficult subject to learn and teach. There have been various challenges, problems and criticisms regarding traditional auditing and accounting education. Auditing lecturers therefore have a responsibility to investigate methods or aids that can assist lecturers in addressing these challenges, problems and criticisms in order to educate future auditors who have the knowledge, understanding and skills to function effectively in the workplace. The primary objective of this study was therefore to evaluate whether the learning and lecturing difficulties experienced may be addressed effectively through the use of an educational auditing information technology-based game, which was developed during the course and as a result of this study. The perceptions of third-year auditing students at North-West University regarding the use of this game as an educational aid in auditing education were tested through a questionnaire that was also developed as part of this study. The study involved dividing the participants into an experimental and control group. The experimental group played the educational computer game, while the control group completed the case question from which the educational game was developed. The students then completed the same questionnaire. The main findings of the study were that the educational computer game was equal in educational value to the case method, while factors such as joy, engagement and motivation were rated higher for the computer game than for the case method. / MCom (Accountancy), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Despite equal educational opportunities, a gender gap develops in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics field amongst American adults. This is caused by various societal factors including pressure for females to pursue more “feminine� careers, biased grading systems, and a vicious cycle of mathematics teaching. Even though females score as well as males on standardized tests, during their middle school years there is a steep drop off in females interested in pursuing STEM careers. This project attempts to close this gap by creating interest in mathematics during these students’ most formidable years through the use of computer games. Parallel Hearts, a 2D puzzle game designed to teach mathematics to 7th grade students, is examined and successfully tested in a classroom setting to show that female players of this age can be targeted and interest can be created in the STEM field.

With the interactivity and immersion of players into video games, rising development costs, and heightened expectations from AAA developers video games need to make sure they hit their target market more than ever. This is something that is less extreme in the educational game development space; but ultimately true with limited grant funding, limited development time within a student developer’s schedule, and how rapidly a recently leased student content creator will need to learn the space and needs of the client. When a student is brought on late into a development cycle, it can become troublesome when they are required to meet new developing features on a changing project. This paper looks over how one team approached this issue, with a focus on meeting the needs of a group of American high school teachers. Within this paper, the focus is how they tackled the issue, and how the teachers reacted to the end prototype, with some insight into the older prototypes of the project. Throughout it they had reinforced the ideas that communication, data validity, and set contract goals are important identifiers for project success. Teachers looking at video games care more about the data being valid and clearly communicated more than if a game is fun or laden with features and mini-games.

The development of sensor-based technologies has opened up avenues for a dialogue between the body and digital spaces, uncovering new possibilities for cross-disciplinary projects and engagements that demand new methods compatible with the ethos of embodied practices, which, in turn, require new approaches and tools. This research seeks to address this need by examining the quantifiability and visual properties of embodied emotion through a multi-layered study of human movement and gesture. It is an elaboration of scientific and artistic research methods, intended to answer the following principal question and related sub-questions: How can emotions, expressed via whole-body movement be visually documented and archived as a reference framework to stimulate the use and studies of expressive gesture in digital environments? As a consequence the following sub-questions become relevant for this research: The first, ontological in its nature; what is expressed emotion? And the second, methodological; how can bodily expressed emotions be visualised and quantified? To answer these questions, the research is divided into three parts. Drawing on phenomenological interpretative inquiry and heuristic methodology, whole-body emotive expressions are documented and analysed from multiple perspectives: body, expressiveness, time, space volume and their correlations. The first part contains information related to video data collection and the database design. The second part describes silhouette extractions of whole body emotive expressions and an online survey where the visual perception of visual data is measured. The third part of the research contains visual and quantitative data analysis providing the basis for visualisation of the four archetypal emotions: anger, fear, joy and sadness and their relationships. In this process, a multi-method approach was adopted combining both qualitative and quantitative methods adopted from sociology and cognitive science. The contextual review, where virtual embodiment and interactivity are explored build on the aesthetics of performance within new technology, highlighting the adaptability of the methods used in performance art to the field of game design. The results of this research and contribution to knowledge reside within both the ontological and methodological approaches used within this study. The ontological resides within the development of two reference frameworks: a correlation table defined as the Periodic Table of Movements (PTM) and a PTM database. The PTM database is a synthesis of embodied emotion data derived from multiple visual representations such as colour, shape, space, volume, time and intensity, whereas the relationship between expressions is visualised in the PTM correlation table. Within the context of an educational framework, the database also provides visual concepts of emotion as epistemic objects for analysis and experimentation. It is a starting point for future cross-disciplinary studies and research on emotions in the context of embodiment and digital technology. The novel methodology of this research contributes to a number of fields with new methods and models of enquiry, grounded within a hermeneutical interpretation driven by artistic development. This exploration opens up a holistic approach to future studies and research grounded in a multimodal attitude to knowledge acquisition.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T14:31:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jean Rafael Tomceac.pdf: 1599083 bytes, checksum: fbdbc3ae964615349ea40890d74b4ab9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-05-27 / This research refers to a case study that used as the object Interdisciplinary Open Digital Educational Games (Jogos Educacionais Digitais Abertos Interdisciplinares - JEDAI) to prove whether teachers, who are little exposed this technology, have the ability to analyze and predict the pedagogical learning dimensions created in the game environment. It therefore supports the theoretical reference of Maria Helena Soares de Souza, Fernando José de Almeida, Maria da Graça de Silva and Monica M. Gardelli Franco to define the characteristics of JEDAI. Questionnaires have been used as instrument to collect the data and were answered by 75 participants (public school teachers of the state of São Paulo and participants of a thematic workshop). Of these 75 completed questionnaires, 28 were selected for further analysis and interpretation of data. The partial result of the research indicates how participants identify the pedagogical characteristics of the types of games covered here / O presente trabalho refere-se a um estudo de caso que utilizou como objeto Jogos Educacionais Digitais Abertos Interdisciplinares JEDAI para provar se professores pouco expostos essa tecnologia, quando a experimentam - em ambientes controlados têm a capacidade de analisar e de antever as dimensões pedagógicas de aprendizagem geradas no ambiente do game. Para tanto, se apoia no referência teórico de Maria Helena Soares de Souza, Fernando José de Almeida, Maria da Graça Moreira da Silva e Monica M. Gardelli Franco, para definir as características dos JEDAI. Como instrumento de coleta de dados foram utilizados questionários, respondidos por 75 sujeitos, professores de escola pública da rede estadual de São Paulo, participantes de uma oficina temática. Destes, 28 questionários foram selecionados para análise e interpretação dos dados. O resultado parcial da pesquisa indica que os sujeitos identificam as características pedagógicas dos tipos de jogos aqui tratados

In contemporary world, there is a constant need for leadership development. Technological advancements, excessive uncertainty and severe hostility on one hand and high expectations from subordinates, pressure from stakeholders on another hand force leaders to develop more skills and competencies in order to succeed. Leadership competencies represent a set of behaviours that are seen to be crucial to deliver desired outcomes. Organisations design competencies models that are used for diverse reasons within human resources management, such as employee selection, career development, succession planning, performance management and employee development. The current most common practices in leadership competencies development applied by organisations include coaching and mentoring, 360‐degree feedback, specific job assignments, networking, action learning, corporate case studies, computer simulations, experiential learning and of course classroom‐type leadership training. However, the future generation of employees are the nowadays youngsters whose life is widely influenced by technology. A specific interest among them is in online and computer-based games, on which they spend a considerable amount of time per week. Games in general were proven to be an effective tool for education among children and young adults, and were discussed to be useful for adults as well. Presented research is performed with the goal to create an understanding of the game-based learning approach to leadership competencies development. Our first ambition for the research was to find out what leadership competencies are most likely to be developed though GBL approach. We came to the results that GBL approach can be effective in developing social interaction competencies such as motivation, facilitation, coaching, effective communication, collaborative negotiation, effective teamwork and such cognitive competencies as strategic thinking, decision making, problem solving and technical competency. Our second aim for the research was to draw on a conceptual framework in form of an experiment to answer to the question of how effective is game-based learning for development of leadership competencies. The experiment model proposed in this conceptual paper was designed by us by putting together elements in form of such games as "Spaghetti Tower"; "Strategic thinking game with 8 players" for measurement and "Acquire" board game for development of the "strategic thinking" leadership competency.

Η εξέλιξη της τεχνολογίας στον τομέα του κινητού και διάχυτου υπολογισμού έχει δημιουργήσει πολλές δυνατότητες για πρόσβαση μέσω φορητών συσκευών σε πληροφορίες που σχετίζονται με συγκεκριμένο χώρο και αντικείμενα. Οι τεχνολογίες αυτές είναι ιδιαίτερα ελκυστικές για χώρους πολιτισμού όπου μπορούν να αποτελέσουν το υπόβαθρο για μαθησιακές εμπειρίες με παιγνιώδη χαρακτηριστικά. Η διπλωματική αυτή εργασία, που εκπονήθηκε στο Εργαστήριο της Ερευνητικής Ομάδας Αλληλεπίδρασης Ανθρώπου Υπολογιστή, του Τμήματος Ηλεκτρολόγων Μηχανικών και Τεχνολογίας Υπολογιστών του Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών, υπό την επίβλεψη του καθηγητή Νικόλαου Αβούρη, περιγράφει τη μελέτη, ανάπτυξη και αξιολόγηση μίας κινητής εφαρμογής σε χώρο πολιτισμού. Συγκεκριμένα, αφορά το Benaki MuseumScrabble (BMS), ένα χώρο-ευαίσθητο παιχνίδι για φορητές συσκευές, το οποίο απευθύνεται σε επισκέπτες του Μουσείου Μπενάκη. Στόχος του παιχνιδιού είναι να εμπλέξει τους παίχτες σε μια διαδικασία παιγνιώδους εξερεύνησης της έκθεσης του μουσείου και να αναδείξει τα εκθέματα αλλά και υλικό που ανήκει στο τμήμα της συλλογής που δεν εκτίθεται. / Location sensitive mobile games, are usually ludic multiplayer activities where engaging the physical space in the game is of particular importance. They are designed to be played in specific physical spaces, using mobile devices, leading to a strong interplay between physical and virtual spaces. These games have features such as motion and action in physical space, awareness of the surroundings of the player, interaction between players, as well as interaction with objects of the real world in different ways. These characteristics make them particularly attractive for learning activities in real space and have been used in recent years in cultural spaces where social, experiential and situated learning can take place [de Souza, 06]. The basic idea is that such games motivate players to associate information with physical activity, and are attractive as learning tools because they help the integration of the physical and social space with the digital dimension. In this context, it is interesting to explore the design process of an activity of this type, the rules of the game and the development of the corresponding technology (software, appliances, etc.), as well as the involvement of a museum's collection and the related digital information. The objective of this thesis is to describe the design and development of Benaki MuseumScrabble (BMS), a location sensitive game for mobile devices, aimed for young visitor and designed for part of the collection of the Benaki Historical Museum, in Athens.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / There are frequent criticism of the traditional teaching of history, based only on facts and characters, treating the unfolding of historical events of linear and static manner. Thus, it is necessary to think and develop new tools for the educational process, with a view to the realization that there is no way to unlink the school of social reality in which it operates. In this sense, this research has the general objective to contribute to the practice of history teaching designing an analog game to be used in class. The specific objectives were: (a) prepare an educational game to support the teaching and learning of Brazilian agrarian history; (b) validate the game with elementary school students of a school of countryside; (c) investigating the educational potential of embedded games in the teaching practice of the discipline of history, realizing its possibilities and limitations. The research will be conducted through a qualitative approach, the case study type and for the development of the game, its development will be necessary, planning, execution, for their later evaluation. Since the validation of the research will be conducted with the students of the Municipal School of Basic Education Prevedello Antonio, located in the rural area of Cruz Alta / RS. Which positively identified the learning process enhanced by the game using arguments ranging from the playful and fun character of the game to notes on the effective involvement of the class with the proposed contents. / São frequentes as críticas ao ensino tradicional de História, baseado somente na memorização de fatos e personagens, percebendo o movimento histórico de de forma linear e estática. Dessa forma, faz-se necessário pensar e elaborar novas ferramentas para o processo educativo, tendo em vista a percepção de que não há como desvincular a escola da realidade social em que está inserida. Nesse sentido, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo geral contribuir para a prática de ensino de história elaborando um jogo analógico para ser utilizado em aula priorizando conteúdos de ensino de história agrária brasileira. Os objetivos específicos foram: (a) elaborar um jogo educativo para apoio ao ensino e aprendizagem de história agrária brasileira; (b) validar o jogo com alunos do ensino fundamental de uma escola de zona rural; (c) Averiguar o potencial educativo dos jogos incorporados na prática pedagógica da disciplina de História, percebendo suas possibilidades e limitações. A elaboração do jogo foi pautada pelos pressupostos da pesquisa bibliográfica e documental priorizando uma abordagem qualitativa, do tipo estudo de caso e, para o desenvolvimento do jogo, foi necessário a sua elaboração, planejamento, execução, para sua posterior, avaliação realizada com os alunos da Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental Antonio Prevedello, localizada na área rural do município de Cruz Alta/RS, que identificaram positivamente o processo de aprendizagem potencializado pelo jogo utilizando argumentos que vão desde o caráter lúdico e divertido do mesmo até apontamentos sobre o efetivo envolvimento da turma com os conteúdos propostos.