Formal learning contexts often present information to learners in an inert and highly abstract form, making it unlikely that learners would ever use this information in their every-da y lives. Learners do, however, show a greater propensity for retaining information that is seen as having relevance in their lives . Constructivism is an educational paradigm that has gained popularity amongst educationists. The core tenet of this paradigm is that learners learn through interaction with their environment and that all knowledge construction is based on previous life experience. Information that is presented to learners in a contextualised form not only has a better chance of being retained in long-term memory, but also has a greater likelihood of being applied in relevant life situations. This publication deals with the research, design and delivery of important information concerning diseases that have a major impact in Southern Africa. Firstly, learners at the University of Natal, Durban were polled for their existing knowledge concerning four widespread diseases, namely HIV/AIDS , tuberculosis, malaria and cancer. Aspects of these diseases where learners demonstrated a low level of awareness were defined as the primary learning object ives for an educational 3D- immersive microworld. Areas of knowledge concerning the transmission, symptomatic expression, biology and prevention of these diseases were generally not well represented in the learner sample. Hence, information regarding these aspects is presented to learners in a contextualised form within the microworld. Motivation for learners to play in this microworld is provided by a storyline that was researched and written for the portal. In addition, the model used in the storyline design was evaluated for its effectiveness as a tool to be used in the planning of future educational games. A model, the Puzzle Process model, was proposed to inform the design of puzzle interfaces for these types of interactive learning environments, and puzzle interfaces were designed for the virtual environment according to the model guidelines. The learning environment was tested as part of the formative evaluation with a small sample of learners . The testing process made use of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of the learning environment as a possible learning tool. Comparison of pre- and post-gameplay questionnaires showed that learners gained a more indepth and richer understanding of the topics being dealt with in the portal. In particular, the puzzle objects situated in the environment stimulated learners to negotiate meanings for the puzzle interfaces and, in the process, encouraged learners to discuss the topic being dealt with. Results from this study also show that the longer learners discussed and negotiated a certain knowledge domain, the greater their increase in richness of information was for that knowledge domain after gameplay. These results highlight the importance of social dialogue in the knowledge construction process and suggest that environments like these have great potential based on their ability to encourage learners to talk to one another and their facilitators while negotiating mutually acceptable knowledge. The original Puzzle Process model, as well as the Game Achievement model and the Game Object model were modified to account for the need for social dialogue and content. These more comprehensive models are instrumental for use in future virtual world environment design. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban, 2004

The problem of this study was a comparison of two methods of teaching life career planning to junior high school students. In this study, the experimental group was taught by means of the Life Career game, and the control group was taught by a teacher-directed technique using more traditional methods and materials.

The research objective is to demonstrate that a game-implementation process can serve as a means of solving some key implementation problems and for integrating the components associated with developing a quantitative based system. Thus, the study has the following objectives: 1. To demonstrate by means of a case study example that gaming can be successfully employed as a systems implementation tool. 2. To identify a game-implementation approach which would be useful in developing and implementing a quantitative based system.

The aim of the present study is to examine two pupils’ interaction when playing the language learning game Sweet City together on tablet. The game is used for teaching Swedish as a second language and it is designed as an adventure game. Special interest is focused on how the pupils use the opportunities for translating labels into other languages, a function built into the game. Translanguaging, that is, how the pupils’ assembled linguistic resources benefit them in the game, is another focus of the study. The method used was observation, with filming of the pupils´ playing. The material was then analysed with the aid of the Exchange Structure Model. The result showed that playing video games leads to a context-linked conversation with many short exchanges. The pupils are engaged in the game and the cooperation that is required to make progress in it. The pupils take advantage of the potential to translate the game dialogue, but the concrete consequences of that are not clearly detectable.

Gamification as an educational tool has been explored extensively in traditional academic contexts such as universities and schools. There is however a lack of research on the usage of games for educational purposes in organizations, and even less research has evaluated games’ potential in creating organizational awareness. To understand if companies could benefit from gamification, this study looked at how employees’ professional backgrounds, social interaction and context during a game experience can influence employees’ awareness of the organization. In order to do that, a digital game that portrayed the supply chain process of an industrial company and focused on specific key aspects was built and tested with 17 employees in a large international organization. The results show that digital games can further both awareness of the organization by letting employees play and experience key aspects of the delivery process. The most noticeable increase in awareness were with the participants whose work is not directly involved in the supply chain.

As new introductory block-based coding applications for young students to learn basic computer science concepts, such as, loops and conditionals, continue to increase in popularity, it is necessary to consider the best method of teaching students these skills. Many of these products continue to exhibit programmatic misconceptions of these concepts and many students struggle with how to apply what they learn to a text-based format due to the difficulties with learning the syntactic structure not present in block-based programming languages. If the goal of teaching young students how to program is meant to develop a set of skills they may apply when learning more complex programming languages, then discerning how they are introduced to those practices is imperative. However, few studies have examined how the specific modality in which students are taught to program effects how they learn and what skills they develop. More specifically, research has yet to effectively investigate modality in the context of an educational coding game where the modality feature is controlled, and content is consistent throughout game-play. This is mainly due to the lack of available games with this feature designed into the application. This dissertation explores whether programming modality effects how well students can learn and transfer computer science concepts and practices from an educational programming game. I proposed that by being guided from a blocks-based to text-based programming language would instill a deeper understanding of basic computer science concepts and would support learning and improve transfer and performance on new challenging tasks. Two experimental studies facilitated game-play sessions on the developed application for this project. The first study was a 2x2 between subjects design comparing educational module (game versus basic) and programming modality (guided versus free choice). The findings from Study 1 informed the final version design for the module used in the second study where only the game module was used in order to focus the comparison between programming modality. Findings showed that students who coded using the game module performed better on a learning test. Study 2 results showed that students who are transitioned from blocks-based to text-based programming language learn basic computer science concepts with greater success than those with the free choice modality. A comparative study was conducted using quantitative data from learning measures and qualitative video data from the interviews during the challenge task of the second study. This study examined how students at the extreme levels of performance utilized the toggle switch feature during game-play and how the absence of the feature impacted how they completed the challenge task. This analysis showed two different methods of toggle switch usage being implemented by a high and low performing student. The high performing student utilized the resources more often during the challenge tasks in lieu of leveraging the toggle switch and were still able to submit high level code. Results suggest that a free choice student who uses the feature as a tool to check their prewritten code rather than a as short cut for piecing code together as blocks and submitting the text upon the final attempt. This practice leads to a shallower understanding of the basic concepts and make it extremely difficult to expand and apply that knowledge to a more difficult task. This dissertation includes five chapters: an introduction and theoretical framework, a game design framework and implementation description, two experimental investigations, and a quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis. Chapter one provides the conceptual and theoretical framework for the two experimental investigations. Chapter two describes the theory and design structure for the game developed for this dissertation work. Chapter three and four will discuss the effects of programming modality on learning outcomes. Specifically, chapter 3 focuses on implications of programming modality when determining how to implement changes for the design of the game for Study 2. Chapter five discusses a comparative analysis that investigated differing work flow patterns within the free choice condition between high and low performing students. Results from these three chapters illustrate the importance of examining this component of the computer science education process in supplemental games for middle and high school students. Additionally, this work contributes in furthering the investigation of these educational games and discusses implications for design of similar applications.

This dissertation research focuses on investigating the incidence of student self-regulated learning behavior, and examines patterns in student affective states that accompany such self-regulated behavior. This dissertation leverages prediction models of student affective states in the Physics Playground educational game platform to identify common patterns in student affective states during use of self-regulated learning behavior. In Study 1, prediction models of student affective states are developed in the context of the educational game environment Physics Playground, using affective state observations and computer log data that had already been collected as part of a larger project. The performances of student affective state prediction models generated using a combination of the computer log and observational data are then compared against those of similar prediction models generated using video data collected at the same time. In Study 2, I apply these affective state prediction models to generate predictions of student affective states on a broader set of data collected from students participants playing Physics Playground. In parallel, I define aggregated behavioral features that represent the self-observation and strategic planning components of self-regulated learning. Affective state predictions are then mapped to playground level attempts that contain these self-regulated learning behavioral features, and sequential pattern mining is applied to the affective state predictions to identify the most common patterns in student emotions. Findings from Study 1 demonstrate that both video data and interaction log data can be used to predict student affective states with significant accuracy. Since the video data is a direct measure of student emotions, it shows better performance across most affective states. However, the interaction log data can be collected natively by Physics Playground and is able to be generalized more easily to other learning environments. Findings from Study 2 suggest that self-regulatory behavior is closely associated with sustained periods of engaged concentration and .self-regulated learning behaviors are associated with transitions from negative affective states (confusion, frustration, and boredom) to the positive engaged concentration state. The results of this dissertation project demonstrate the power of measuring student affective states in real time and examining the temporal relationship to self-regulated learning behavior within an unstructured educational game platform. These results thus provide a building block for future research on the real-time assessment of student emotions and its relationship with self-regulated learning behaviors, particularly within online student-centered and self-directed learning contexts.

Este trabalho se propõe a refletir historicamente sobre jogos de tabuleiro de percurso, mais especificamente, dois jogos denominados Jogo da Vida. O primeiro Jogo localizado no MEB/FEUSP, concebido pela Congregação das Missionárias Reparadoras do Sagrado Coração de Jesus, de 1945. O segundo, comercializado pela indústria nacional de brinquedos Estrela, de 1980. Tomando-se tais jogos como objetos da história, discutiu-se a concepção de jogo, de jogo educativo, de cultura lúdica e sua relação com a educação, a materialidade e a imaterialidade destes objetos, e a sua presença ao longo da história. O Jogo da Vida da Congregação Católica gerou a busca por informações sobre a sua origem, criação e usos junto aos acervos do LABRIMP/MEB FEUSP, Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, Arquivo Escolar Caetano de Campos, Instituto Teológico Pio XI. Outro caminho adotado para compor esta história foi a localização da doadora do Jogo da Vida Católica ao MEB, professora Heloisa Prestes Monzoni. Nesse percurso dois outros objetos, utilizados na educação protestante foram incorporados à pesquisa: o quadro dos Dois Caminhos e o livro O Peregrino. Estes objetos nos levaram ao acervo da Igreja Metodista de Guaratinguetá com o objetivo de recuperar brevemente a origem, a presença e o uso dos mesmos na educação de crianças, tendo como pano de fundo a discussão sobre a possibilidade de terem inspirado a criação de jogos educativos. Os objetos lúdicos estudados abriram o diálogo com a educação religiosa da primeira metade do século XX e a adoção do brincar, do brinquedo e do jogo como estratégias pedagógicas neste contexto. O jogo da Vida da Estrela se apresenta como um ramo secundário para contrapor as práticas e a produção que envolvem os jogos educativos no século XX.. Foram nossos companheiros no percurso deste jogo/pesquisa: Kishimoto, Brougère, Rabecq-Mallaird, Pennick, Bell, Mehl, Ginzburg, Hilsdorf, Callois, Huizinga, Manson, Baktin e outros. O percurso deste trabalho nos fez refletir sobre a relação do adulto, da criança com os jogos educativos, a cultura lúdica e a aprendizagem desta pelas crianças, o papel do adulto de inserir e implementar a ludicidade infantil. / This dissertation proposes a historical reflection on board games, more specifically two games named \"Game of Life\". The first game is located in the MEB/FEUSP (Museum of Education and Toys / College of Education at the University of São Paulo) and was conceived by the Congregação das Missionárias Reparadoras do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (Catholic Congregation of the Repairing Missionary Sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) in 1945. The second was commercialized by the national toy factory Estrela in 1980. Taking both games as objects of history, the conception of game, educational game, ludic culture and their relation with education, materiality and immateriality of these objects and their presence along the history were discussed. The Game of Life of the Catholic Congregation led to the search of its origin, creation and usage, by the heritage of LABRIMP/MEB FEUSP (Toy Laboratory at the University of São Paulo), the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, the School Archive Caetano de Campos and the Theological Institute Pio XI. Another way to compose this story was to find the donor of the Catholic Game of Life to MEB, the teacher Heloisa Prestes Monzonni. On this way, two further objects used in the protestant education were incorporated to the research: the picture The Broad and the Narrow Way and the book The Pilgrim. These objects led us to the heritage of the Methodist Church of Guaratinguetá with the purpose of recovering briefly their origin, presence and usage in the children education. The background is the discussion about the possibility that they inspired the creation of the educational games. The ludic objects studied opened the dialog with the religious education of the first half of the XX century and the adoption of playing, of toys and games as pedagogical strategies in this context. The Game of Life of Estrela is a secondary branch to contrapose the practices and production that involve the educational games in the XX century. Our partners on the way of this game/research were: Kishimoto, Brougère, Rabecq-Mallaird, Pennick, Bell, Mehl, Ginzburg, Hilsdorf, Callois, Huizinga, Manson, Bakhtin, among others. The journey through this work made us reflect about the relationship of adults and children with the educational games, the ludic culture, the learning of the referred culture by the children, and about the role of adults in inserting and implementing the children ludicity.

by Paulita S. Y. Man. / Bibliography: leaves 297-306 / Thesis (M.Phil.) -- Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983

Children are born with an intrinsic motivation to play games. Over the past decade, educational video games have invaded mainstream classroom instruction and researchers are “considering how games might be used in pursuit of engaging, effective learning experiences� (Squire and Jenkins, 2003). This research encompasses designing math games using a constructivist and embodied cognition pedagogy in an effort to answer the question: “Will overlapping wearable technology and mathematical objectives with traditional children’s games show improved efficacy in students’ math skills and increase students’ motivation to learn math in 4th thru 6th grade students?� Methods of research include a usability study and four subsequent iterative studies to improve the game and the technology, measuring students’ math self-efficacy and motivation to learn math. The final goal of this thesis is to design, test and document an engaging children’s math learning game using wearable technology that requires active physical experiences while involved in deep thinking and complex problem solving (Gee, 2003) within real world environments, beyond classrooms, pencil and paper, and even beyond traditional computer games in front of a computer screen.