The purpose of this study was to explore the variables that might affect the learning outcomes of a serious game for disaster preparedness. Literature review in the field has revealed a number of variables that might have effects on the learning outcome with serious games, including: prior knowledge, in game guidance, gaming frequency, and playing skills. However, there has been no study on the relationships and effects between the types of knowledge (i.e., declarative, or procedural) used in serious games and the intended learning outcomes. Using disaster preparedness as a learning context, this study examines the two types of knowledge: (1) declarative (i.e., learners’ ability to retain facts and information), and (2) procedural knowledge (learners’ ability to perform actions and procedures), and their relationships with the learning outcomes of a serious game. The research question was: “To what extent do: prior knowledge, in-game guidance, and gaming frequency, predict the learning outcomes, in the forms of declarative and procedural knowledge of a disaster preparedness serious game?”

Effektiv rekrytering är en viktig faktor för att ett företag ska bli framgångsrikt. För att hamna i framkant inom rekrytering har företag börjat använda alternativa tillvägagångssätt. En metod som blir allt mer vanligt förekommande inom rekrytering är spelifiering. Spelifiering definieras som användandet av spelbaserade element, estetik och speltänkande för att engagera människor, motivera handlingar, främja lärande och problemlösning, i en icke spelrelaterad kontext. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur spelifiering används inom rekrytering samt vad för konsekvenser det medför. En kvalitativ fallstudie har genomförts och undersökt game-based assessmentverktyget Skyrise City, utvecklat av Arctic Shores. Fallstudien har realiserats på ITföretaget EVRYs rekryteringsprocess och deras användning av Skyrise City. Studien bygger på ett antal semistrukturerade intervjuer, där sakkunniga personer inom rekrytering och spelifiering vid företagen har intervjuats. Resultatet analyserades utifrån ett teoretiskt ramverk sammansatt av fem traditionella rekryteringsmoment. De slutsatser som kan dras av studien är att spelifiering i rekryteringsprocessen används inom games, gamified assessments och gamebased assessments. De konsekvenser som spelifiering medför till en rekryteringsprocess är bland annat: game-based assessments mäter vad du gör snarare än vad du säger, det kan stärka ett företags arbetsgivarvarumärke, det kan leda till ökade kandidatansökningar, det kan vara mer tidseffektivt, det är svårare att fuska till sig bra resultat, samt ger bättre möjligheter för kundanpassning.

Studies have shown that digital media and digital games can enhance students' learning experience. However, few teachers appear to use digital game-based learning (DGBL) regularly. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how middle school teachers use DGBL in the classroom and the factors that positively and negatively influenced their choices to use DGBL. Rogers's diffusion of innovations theory framed the study. Research questions examined how middle school teachers use DGBL in the classroom, what they view as positively and negatively influencing decisions to integrate DGBL, and differences based upon the point in their teaching career when they began using DGBL. Eight purposively selected middle school teachers who have integrated DGBL were interviewed. In vivo and pattern coding were used in analysis. Findings indicated that teachers use DGBL to engage students in content, support skill building, promote teamwork, individualize learning, and for feedback and classroom management. Factors that positively influenced adoption included teachers' own gaming experiences and perceptions of positive influence on lesson planning, classroom management, and students. Negative influences included technical difficulties, lack of self-efficacy, perceptions of students being distracted, time constraints, and the need for back up plans. There were some differences between number of years participants had been using DGBL. By better understanding how and why teachers use DGBL, policy makers, administrators, and preservice and professional development providers can develop strategies to better support DGBL use, which will benefit students' learning.

Rapid technological advances have created major societal changes, transformed business sectors, and revolutionized enterprises. In contrast, the curricular structure of medical education has remained unchanged for the last 100 years, and, for the most part, medical education has been reluctant to embrace the use of technology. The prevalent pedagogical model is reliant on rote memorization. The conceptual framework that informed this study was the user-centered framework for meaningful gamification. This framework's components are organismic integration theory, situational relevance, situated motivational affordance, and the universal design for learning. This quantitative study focused on key research questions related to identifying whether significant increases occurred over time in cooperative learning, cognitive level, and personal skills 'the dependent variables' when using a gamified learning method-the independent variable. The validated Student Engagement Survey was used to collect data from second-year medical students in a Southern California medical school, with N = 64. A repeated measures MANOVA with follow-up univariate ANOVAs was used, and statistical results indicated that there were significant differences over time in cooperative learning, cognitive level, and personal skills when using gamified learning methods. This research was conducted over a period of 3 months, divided into 3 Time Periods (TP). For all three variables, significant increases were noticed between TP 1 and TP 2, followed by significant decreases between TP 2 and TP 3. These findings pointed to the fact that more studies are needed to better understand whether certain types of gamification implementations are detrimental to student engagement in medical education, or whether more sound design principles ought to be explored to produce effective gamified learning components that could positively impact student engagement in medical education.

Social digital gaming is an explosive phenomenon where youth and adults are engaged in inquiry for the sake of fun. The complexity of learning evidenced in social digital games is attracting the attention of educators. Martian Boneyards is a proof-of-concept game designed to study how a community of voluntary gamers can be enticed to engage in sustained, high-quality scientific inquiry. Science educators and game designers worked together to create an educational game with the polish and intrigue of a professional-level game, striving to attract a new audience to scientific inquiry. Martian Boneyards took place in the high-definition, massively multiplayer online environment, Blue Mars, where players spent an average of 30 hours in the game over the 4-month implementation period, with some exceeding 200 hours. Most of the players’ time was spent in scientific inquiry activities and about 30% of the players’ in-game interactions were in the analysis and theory-building phases of inquiry. Female players conducted most of the inquiry, in particular analysis and theory building. The quality of scientific inquiry processes, which included extensive information gathering by players, and the resulting content were judged to be very good by a team of independent scientists. This research suggests that a compelling storyline, a highly aesthetic environment, and the emergent social bonds among players and between players and the characters played by designers were all responsible for sustaining high quality inquiry among gamers in this free-choice experience. The gaming environment developed for Martian Boneyards is seen as an evolving ecosystem with interactions among design, players’ activity, and players’ progress.

Social digital gaming is an explosive phenomenon where youth and adults are engaged in inquiry for the sake of fun. The complexity of learning evidenced in social digital games is attracting the attention of educators. Martian Boneyards is a proof-of-concept game designed to study how a community of voluntary gamers can be enticed to engage in sustained, high-quality scientific inquiry. Science educators and game designers worked together to create an educational game with the polish and intrigue of a professional-level game, striving to attract a new audience to scientific inquiry. Martian Boneyards took place in the high-definition, massively multiplayer online environment, Blue Mars, where players spent an average of 30 hours in the game over the 4-month implementation period, with some exceeding 200 hours. Most of the players’ time was spent in scientific inquiry activities and about 30% of the players’ in-game interactions were in the analysis and theory-building phases of inquiry. Female players conducted most of the inquiry, in particular analysis and theory building. The quality of scientific inquiry processes, which included extensive information gathering by players, and the resulting content were judged to be very good by a team of independent scientists. This research suggests that a compelling storyline, a highly aesthetic environment, and the emergent social bonds among players and between players and the characters played by designers were all responsible for sustaining high quality inquiry among gamers in this free-choice experience. The gaming environment developed for Martian Boneyards is seen as an evolving ecosystem with interactions among design, players’ activity, and players’ progress.

With the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs), researchers have been engaging in exploring the potential of ICTs on educational settings. Game-based learning is an application of ICTs for improving learning performance. Simulation-based learning games are usually developed to create virtual worlds where learners can learn by solving the problems in relation to the real world. However, there are still many subjects which are difficult to be developed as simulation-based learning games; in order to provide the entertainment element for those kind of subjects, this study attempted to design non-simulation learning games instead. Two learning support mechanisms were proposed and examined in this study. One is game-feedback which provides useful information for learners to engage in further learning after the game stage. The other is peer-interaction which constructs an environment to facilitate learners interacting among each other. An experiment was conducted with a total of 80 students enrolled in Computer Networks course. The results show that the mechanism of peer-interaction has a significantly positive effect on learning performance, and the mechanism of game-feedback has a significantly positive effect on the intention toward using the developed system for their further learning. Based on the findings, implications on theoretical and practical aspects were discussed for further research directions and practical applications.

Feedback has been defined as “helpful information or criticism that is given to someone to say what can be done to improve a performance, product, etc.” (Merriam-Webster, 2014) Within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers have shown that language learners acquire languages best when they are provided with feedback (Gass & Selinker, 2008; Loewen, 2012). Because of the importance of feedback to the language learning process, there is an ongoing line of investigation that seeks to determine whether differences in how and when feedback is provided lead to different results in acquisition (Loewen, 2012). To date this research has primarily been focused on comparing the effectiveness of the different types of feedback that naturally occur within language classrooms, as identified by such classic studies as Lyster and Ranta (1997; Bargiela, 2003). However, there are other possible approaches to feedback than those that naturally occur within the language classroom. One of these alternatives is the approach to feedback used in digital games. Similar to what is found in the field of SLA, within the field of digital game research it has been established that feedback is important for successful learning (Schell, 2008). Nevertheless, to date no research has been conducted which compares the SLA approach to feedback and the digital game approach to feedback in order to determine which would lead to better language acquisition within a digital game. Answering this question is the goal of the present dissertation. In order to answer this question I created two versions of a digital game, called “Mundo de Comida” (MuCo) ‘World of Food’, which is designed to help novice Spanish learners acquire food vocabulary. One version of the game employs feedback strategies based on the most commonly employed feedback used in Spanish language classes, while the other uses feedback designed according to the most commonly used feedback mechanisms in commercial digital games. A comparison of the vocabulary gains according to feedback type allows us to see which type of feedback seems to help learners of Spanish acquire vocabulary within the context of MuCo. The findings indicate that MuCo does indeed help participants acquire food vocabulary. However, there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the two different feedback types, which is likely due to the fact that both feedback types have been refined within their respective environments. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that participants found the game that contained the digital game-style feedback to be more game-like than the other version. It was also found that, for several participants, MuCo did motivate them in the sense that they played more of the game than was required. Finally, there was no significant effect found for the participants’ self-reported gaming habits, personalities, or motivation. These findings suggest that well-designed digital games can help learners acquire Spanish vocabulary, and that the impact of differences among participants is negligible when the game is well designed. / text

In this research, a context-aware mobile role playing game is developed to provide users with a series of story decorated quests and allows them to interact with specific real and virtual objects in the real world. The game is designed based on multi-agent architecture, which allows reusable and modular agents and makes the game much more flexible and scalable. The usefulness of the CAM-RPG is evaluated with a comprehensive experiment. The interesting findings are: (1) generated story in CAM-RPG positively influences users' attitude toward game use and increases users' perceived game usefulness; (2) users' game-playing confidence, degree of liking computer games, and attitude toward computer games significantly influence attitudes toward CAM-RPG; and (3) there is no gender difference for users' game acceptance, but users' computer game attitude, time spent playing computer games, and voluntariness of use do significantly influence users' acceptance. / 2012-02

Der Tagungsband zum E-Learning Symposium 2014 an der Universität Potsdam beleuchtet die diversen Zielgruppen und Anwendungsbereiche, die aktuell in der E-Learning-Forschung angesprochen werden. Während im letzten Symposium 2012 der Dozierende mit den unterschiedlichen Möglichkeiten der Studierendenaktivierung und Lehrgestaltung im Fokus der Diskussionen stand, werden in diesem Jahr in einem großen Teil der Beiträge die Studierenden ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit gerückt. Dass nicht nur der Inhalt des Lernmediums für den Lernerfolg eine Rolle spielt, sondern auch dessen Unterhaltungswert und die Freude, die die Lernenden während des Prozesses der Wissensakquise empfinden, zeigt sehr anschaulich die Keynote von Linda Breitlauch zum Thema „Faites vos Jeux“ (Spielen Sie jetzt). Der Beitrag von Zoerner et al. verbindet den Gedanken des spiele-basierten Lernens mit dem nach wie vor aktuellen Thema des mobilen Lernens. Auch in diesem Forschungsbereich spielt die Fokussierung auf den Lernenden eine immer herausragendere Rolle. Einen Schritt weiter in Richtung Individualisierung geht in diesem Zusammenhang der eingeladene Vortrag von Christoph Rensing, der sich mit der Adaptivität von mobilen Lernanwendungen beschäftigt. Mit Hilfe zur Verfügung stehender Kontextinformationen sollen gezielt individuelle Lernprozesse unterstützt werden. Alle Beiträge, die sich auf mobile Applikationen und auf Spiele beziehen, sprechen auch die zwischenmenschliche Komponente am Lernen an. So wird neben der Mobilität insbesondere auch der Austausch von Lernobjekten zwischen Lernenden (vergleiche den Beitrag von Zoerner et al.) sowie die Kooperation zwischen Lernenden (siehe Beitrag von Kallookaran und Robra-Bissantz) diskutiert. Der interpersonelle Kontakt spielt allerdings ebenfalls in den Beiträgen ohne Spiel- oder App-Fokussierung eine Rolle. Tutoren werden beispielsweise zur Moderation von Lernprozessen eingesetzt und Lerngruppen gegründet um das problem-orientierte Lernen stärker in den Mittelpunkt zu rücken (siehe Beitrag von Mach und Dirwelis) bzw. näher am Bedarf der Studierenden zu arbeiten (wie in eingeladenen Vortrag von Tatiana N. Noskova sowie in dem Beitrag von Mach und Dirwelis beschrieben). In der Evaluation wird ebenfalls der Schritt weg von anonymen, akkumulierten statistischen Auswertungen hin zu individualisierten Nutzerprofilen im Bereich des Learning Analytics untersucht (vergleiche dazu den Beitrag von Ifenthaler). Neben der Schwerpunktsetzung auf die Lernenden und deren Mobilität rückt das Thema Transmedialität stärker ins Zentrum der Forschung. Während schon die Keynote mit ihrem Spielefokus darauf anspricht, geht es in weiteren Beiträgen darum Abläufe aus der analogen Welt bestmöglich in der digitalen Welt abzubilden. Lerninhalte, die bisher mittels Bildern und Texten für Lehrende und Lernende zugänglich gemacht wurden, werden nunmehr mit weiteren Medien, insbesondere Videos, angereichert um deren Verständnis zu erhöhen. Dies ist beispielsweise geeignet, um Bewegungsabläufe im Sport (vergleiche dazu den Beitrag von Owassapian und Hensinger) oder musikpraktische Übungen wie Bodyperkussion (beschrieben im Beitrag von Buschmann und Glasemann) zu erlernen Lernendenfokussierung, persönlicher Austausch, Mobilität und Transmedialität sind somit einige der Kernthemen, die Sie in diesem Sammelband erwarten. Auch zeigt die häufige Verknüpfung verschedener dieser Kernthemen, dass keines davon ein Randthema ist, sondern sich die Summe aus allen im E-Learning bündelt und damit eine neue Qualität für Lehre, Studium und Forschung erreicht werden kann.