The purpose of this qualitative interview study is to understand junior high school students' perception of the use of historical video games for learning and from this identify and analyze how the students perceives story-driven historical games in relation to developing historical empathy and a sense of history. The study also seeks to understand student’s perception of potential challenges with using historical digital games for learning purposes. The theoretical basis of the study is grounded in a history didactic perspective on game-based learning and a genealogical approach to history. The study uses semi-structured interviews with five junior high school students aged fourteen to fifteen years. The study found that all of the students who participated in the study had a perception that historical games may increase students’ understanding of history and that the increased sense of understanding takes place above all through the games ability to let students immerse themselves in the games story. Furthermore, the study shows that most students had a perception that the games allowed them to be virtually present in history, which can help students view the world and the people in it from different perspectives, to reflect on history, see connections between different historical events and to form their own thoughts about history. Perceptions of several potential challenges with using the games as teaching aids were also found. The most distinctive challenges according to the students were an increased distractibility, requirements for prior knowledge and interest in the games, structural challenges, and a perceived lack of historical accuracy in the games.

Interest in the use of digital games in education has been increasing over the past few decades. Advocates argue that digital games are powerful learning tools with the potential to support increased motivational, cognitive, behavioural, affective, physiological and social outcomes. However, empirical evidence for their effectiveness is mixed. Research has focused primarily on measuring the effect of games on learning in researcher-controlled experiments, whilst relatively less attention has been paid to the role of teachers. The thesis addresses the research gap by investigating how teachers in Swedish compulsory and upper secondary schools use digital games on their own initiative and how they develop their competencies. It also considers the challenges they face. Data from in-depth qualitative interviews and a mixed method survey are used to investigate the research questions. Both the data collection and analysis have been informed by activity theory. This is also used to problematise the adaptation of digital games as teaching and learning tools. In addition, the analysis explores teachers´ self-reported activities in relation to their disposition towards digital games. The findings show that a diversity of digital games and gamification tools have found a foothold in Swedish classrooms. The participating teachers are interested in introducing and further developing digital game-based approaches, though there are limitations in their use of gaming resources and the extent to which they can leverage these to achieve educational outcomes. The research identifies and discusses four general categories of teachers: non-game users, sceptics, curious adopters and advanced adopters. Results indicate that the more positive disposition of game-using teachers tends to be related to a higher level of pedagogical integration, a greater variety of game use, and a wider range of educational outcomes, as well as an interest in professional development. Digital game-based learning is often understood as the use of gamification tools in the form of quizzes, whereas complex games and longer gameplay are less typical. Whilst most teachers agree on the motivational benefits of digital games, not as many perceive them as effective in teaching new knowledge and cognitive skills. The introduction of digital games is hampered by the lack of access to relevant and good-quality products, financial resources, preparation time and adequate technology, as well as contextualised and flexible forms of professional development. These challenges hint at deeper issues with preexisting education structures. Future research should have a twofold focus: the development of adequate game resources that can support collaborative forms of learning and higher-level skills, and flexible and contextualised competence-development solutions for teachers which are relevant to their needs. The thesis contributes to the current literature by mapping the landscape of digital game-based learning in Swedish compulsory and upper secondary schools. It provides a nuanced understanding of the perspectives of teachers on digital game use and the opportunities and challenges presented by digital game-based learning.

Common pool resource management systems are complex to manage due to the absence of a clear understanding of the effects of users’ behavioral characteristics. Non-cooperative decision making based on individual rationality (as opposed to group rationality) and a tendency to free ride due to lack of trust and information about other users’ behavior creates externalities and can lead to tragedy of the commons without intervention by a regulator. Nevertheless, even regulatory institutions often fail to sustain natural common pool resources in the absence of clear understanding of the responses of multiple heterogeneous decision makers to different regulation schemes. While modeling can help with our understanding of complex coupled human-natural systems, past research has not been able to realistically simulate these systems for two major limitations: 1) lack of computational capacity and proper mathematical models for solving distributed systems with self-optimizing agents; and 2) lack of enough information about users’ characteristics in common pool resource systems due to absence of reliable monitoring information. Recently, different studies have tried to address the first limitation by developing agent-based models, which can be appropriately handled with today’s computational capacity. While these models are more realistic than the social planner’s models which have been traditionally used in the field, they normally rely on different heuristics for characterizing users’ behavior and incorporating heterogeneity. This work is a step-forward in addressing the second limitation, suggesting an efficient method for collecting information on diverse behavioral characteristics of real agents for incorporation in distributed agent-based models. Gaming in interactive virtual environments is suggested as a reliable method for understanding different variables that promote sustainable resource use through observation of decision making and iii behavior of the resource system beneficiaries under various institutional frameworks and policies. A review of educational or "serious" games for environmental management was undertaken to determine an appropriate game for collecting information on real-agents and also to investigate the state of environmental management games and their potential as an educational tool. A web-based groundwater sharing simulation game—Irrigania—was selected to analyze the behavior of real agents under different common pool resource management institutions. Participants included graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Central Florida and Lund University. Information was collected on participants’ resource use, behavior and mindset under different institutional settings through observation and discussion with participants. Preliminary use of water resources gaming suggests communication, cooperation, information disclosure, trust, credibility and social learning between beneficiaries as factors promoting a shift towards sustainable resource use. Additionally, Irrigania was determined to be an effective tool for complementing traditional lecture-based teaching of complex concepts related to sustainable natural resource management. The different behavioral groups identified in the study can be used for improved simulation of multi-agent groundwater management systems.

Denna studie undersöker huruvida narrativet har en motivationsökande effekt i spelifierade läroapplikationer. Studien genomförs med en deduktiv ansats, med vissa inslag av en induktiv analysmetod, med syftet om att redogöra för narrativets påverkan på studenters motivationsnivå i seriösa spel. Den kvantitativa data som ligger till grund för studien har samlats in genom ett kvasi-experiment med två spelifierade prototyper, där implementeringen av ett narrativ var den åtskiljande faktorn. Studiens kvalitativa data grundar sig på fokusgruppsintervjuer samt en semistrukturerad intervju. Urvalet av undersökningsobjekt är webbutvecklingsstudenter på universitetsnivå vilka är nya inom programmering. Studien visar inget tydligt positivt resultat, men pekar med små marginaler mot en ökad motivation hos de deltagare som har använt sig av prototypsversionen med ett narrativ, jämfört med de som har använt prototypsversionen utan narrativ. Narrativet har visat sig fungera som belöning för avklarade spelmoment samtidigt som att den för deltagaren genom spelet. Prototypsversionen med narrativet har motiverat deltagare att spendera mer tid med applikationen och har hjälpt inlärningsprocessen genom att ställa uppgifter i kontext. Andra spelelement som samspelar med narrativet, såsom milstolpar, progression, varierande svårighetsgrad på uppgifterna samt olika inmatningssätt för dessa, har också påvisats att ha en viss motivationsökande effekt. Ett implementeringsförsök av avatarer visade dock inte någon effekt, vilket förmodligen berodde på deras obetydliga roll i spelet. / This study explores whether the narrative has a motivating effect in gamified learning applications. The study is conducted with a deductive approach, with some elements of an inductive analysis method, with the purpose of exploring the narrative’s impact on students’ level of motivation in serious games. The study’s quantitative data was collected through a quasi-experiment using two gamified prototypes, with a narrative as the distinguishing factor. The qualitative data is based on a focus group interview and a semi-structured interview. The participants in this study were first-year web development students studying at university who are new to programming. The study does not show a clear positive result, but points by small margins towards an increased motivation among the participants who used the prototype with a narrative, compared to those who used the prototype without one. The narrative was proved to function as a reward for finishing challenges, while at the same time guiding the participant through the game. The prototype with the narrative has proved to not only motivate the participants to spend more time playing the game, but also helped their learning process by contextualizing the exercises. Other game elements that interplay with the narrative, such as milestones, progression, varying degrees of difficulty, and different input methods, have also shown a positive effect on the participants’ motivation. An attempt to implement avatars showed no effect, which was probably due to their insignificant role in the game.

Schools in general have been digitized to a large extent and the inclusion of digital tools is becoming more and more common. The purpose of this study is to find out what different studies say about the inclusion of digital games-based learning and the impact they have on students' vocabulary learning and motivation in English teaching. It’ll also mention where the different studies have been implemented and which methods have been used. The method used in this study is a literature review that has been collected from ERIC (EBSCO), JSROR, ERIC (ProQuest), and IEEE Explore. The results showed that the implementation of digital games-based learning focusing on vocabulary learning motivates students to learn and improves their English language more than analog learning. It has also been shown that digital games have been effective in developing students' English language skills. This is because the students experience learning as enjoyable, unlike analog teaching where they feel analog learning takes place within a strict framework. The conclusion of this study shows that the students gain increased motivation and interest in learning English as a foreign/second language through digital games.

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Advances in information technology are driving massive improvement to the education industry. The ubiquity of mobile devices has triggered a shift in the delivery of educational content. More lessons in a wide range of subjects are being disseminated by allowing students to access digital materials through mobile devices. One of the key materials is digital-based educational games. These games merge education with digital games to maximize engagement while somewhat obfuscating the learning process. The effectiveness is generally measured by assessments, either after or during gameplay, in the form of quizzes, data dumps, and/or manual analyses. Valuable gameplay information lost during the student's play sessions. This gameplay data provides educators and researchers with specific gameplay actions students perform in order to arrive at a solution, not just the correctness of the solution. This problem illustrates a need for a tool, enabling educators and players to quickly analyze gameplay data. in conjunction with correctness in an unobtrusive manner while the student is playing the game. This thesis describes a client-server software architecture that enables the collection of game-based data during gameplay. We created a collection of web services that enables games to transmit game-data for analysis. Additionally, the web application provides players with a portal to login and view various visualization of the captured data. Lastly, we created a game called "Taffy Town", a mathematics-based game that requires the player to manipulate taffy pieces in order to solve various fractions. Taffy Town transmits students' taffy transformations along with correctness to the web application. Students are able to view several dynamically created visualizations from the data sent by Taffy Town. Researchers are able to log in to the web application and see the same visualizations, however, aggregated across all Taffy Town players. This end-to-end mapping of problems, actions, and results will enable researchers, pedagogists, and teachers to improve the effectiveness of educational games. / Master of Science

The primary purpose in this case study was to explore the use of three-dimensional virtual spaces via the use of the game Minecraft as a teaching tool. The case study examined the effectiveness, self-efficacy, and social interaction of students when using such a tool in the teaching and learning process. The research analyzed knowledge acquisition through various deliverables such as benchmark pre and post exams, student discourse, and tangible objects created from the lessons by the students. Students were enrolled and participated in a summer camp offered from Arts and Technology Institute in North Texas. The camp utilized Minecraft to teach architecture types. Students learned about pyramids (Egyptian and Aztec), Roman/Greek architecture, Gothic architecture, and Post-Modern Architecture. Each day students were exposed to a different them of architecture and were tasked with building a world that was in the theme of an assigned type of architecture. Fifty-nine school age students ranging in ages from eight to twelve years old participated fully in the study. The students were not grouped by age, but instead self-selected partners with which to work during the course of their creations. Results show that students who participated in the Minecraft driven course were highly engaged and reported a positive experience during the course of learning. Participants worked cohesively to achieve common goals and problem solve during the course of project completion. Participants freely participated in discourse that was on the topic of the lesson, as well as, offered suggestions for improvement and solicited ideas from other participants. Pre and posttest results yielded an improvement in knowledge acquisition regarding general knowledge of architecture types. Many students frequently used the word “Fun” to describe their learning experience as cited in their daily blog entries. The research strived to show that using Minecraft as a teaching tool can create an environment in which students are highly engaged and are afforded an opportunity to learn material in a way that students can see as an applicable reason for learning. Results of this research evidence Minecraft as a tool in learning yields an atmosphere in which students take ownership of their learning and work in concert with other members of the classroom to yield positive learning outcomes.

This thesis examines the use of gamification principles in education, specifically where tablets are being used in the classroom. Individual chapters deal with explaining the concepts related to gamification, educational games and the specifics of implementing tablets into education. Their specific usage was examined through conversations with the teachers and students of Year 2 of a primary school, with the results being recorded in the research section. Research questions examined the theoretical concepts introduced in the first part of the thesis and centred around the theme of education via tablets. The types of tablet applications used were also investigated. When possible this thesis compares the views of teachers and students on the areas examined.

Over the history of interaction design, concepts and methods of prototyping have been significantly developed to address new challenges faced by the field and the ever-going advancement of new technologies. Some of the important developments are related to the notions of mixed-fidelity prototyping, experience prototyping, and prototypes as filters. Building upon these developments, this study explores a multiple-fidelity prototyping approach, that is, using progressively higher fidelity prototypes in iteration. The study focused particularly on the design of user engagement. It documented, and contributed to, an actual design process of Xplore, an augmented reality game-based learning application. Three participatory design-style workshops employing low-, mixed-, and high-fidelity prototypes were conducted respectively. Thematic analyses of participants’ interactions revealed sets of themes in the workshops, which reflected the changing focus and scope of the design space. The implications of the results obtained in the study highlighted the role of prototypes of each fidelity level in engaging users in a design process, as well as the potential benefits of combining multiple fidelity prototypes when designing for user engagement.