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The world is becoming increasingly complex, and as a result, the demand for individuals with strong employability skills is growing rapidly. It is essential for engineering education to adapt to this reality and provide opportunities for students to develop critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, teamwork, adaptability, and leadership skills. By doing so, engineering graduates will be well-equipped to navigate the complex challenges of the modern world and make meaningful contributions to society. Engineering education needs to adapt to this reality by incorporating more opportunities for students to develop their employability skills. This can be done through a variety of methods, such as experience- or projectbased learning, internships, co-op programs, and industry partnerships. Game-based learning offers an engaging and immersive experience that can promote the development of these skills in a fun and interactive way. Within the Game-based learning approach implemented in our lecture the students play two subsequent game modules in which they first plan and build a factory building together and then put it into operation in the second part. The players are confronted with problems and situations that can only be overcome through communication and cooperation. This paper presents the self-developed online platform that uses gamification aspects such as micro-achievements for each student to represent the progress with the learning materials as well as within the gaming parts. The platform aims to provide students with an engaging and interactive way of learning, while also assessing their performance through collected data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious games, including immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) experiences, can be challenging for players due to their unfamiliar control systems and mechanics. This study focuses on designing a gamified tutorial for iVR serious games that not only teaches iVR interactions but also enhances user enjoyment and engagement. The tutorial consists of progressively challenging mini-games that adapt to the user's performance. Tips and recommendations are provided through a robot avatar if users struggle or make mistakes. An optional narrative is included to enhance user engagement, but it is not mandatory for the iVR experience. Gamification elements, such as point collection and progress updates, are incorporated into the tutorial. It can be played independently or as an introduction to iVR serious games. The goal is to use gamification principles to maintain user engagement and flow while enhancing the learning experience in the virtual world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boardroom challenge is a custom developed board game used as a formative assessment in an undergraduate business management course. The course forms part of an Accountancy degree which culminates in the professional designation of members to the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). Students are required to develop skills and competencies towards future membership of their professions professional body. To this end an industry employer and training company partnered with the University to develop students' business acumen utilizing gamified learning in the form of a custom developed board game. The boardroom challenge has taken place annually from 2015-2019 and commenced again in 2022 when Covid-19 regulations permitted. On game day students compete in randomly assigned groups of six with an industry game master at each table as a facilitator. Students and facilitators complete questionnaires after the boardroom challenge providing feedback and suggestions. Open ended feedback from 2015-2019 has been thematically analysed to evaluate perceptions on game mechanics. Game mechanics include rolling the dice to determine which scenario students need to address. During the game students have to answer theory questions or address scenarios, depending on what the dice causes their game piece to land on. Correct answers earn currency in the game and students display their new rank in the organisation with each correct answer. Moving up the salary scale tops out at CEO after which students can begin to earn shares. Turn taking is regulated by a timer, to ensure everyone has sufficient turns while industry based game masters make the final call on the appropriateness of answers to open ended scenario type questions. The board game generates great excitement and engagement from students with several preparatory activities scaffolded into tutorials before game day. Students' perception of the various game elements and mechanics indicate their evaluation is dependent on how they have conceptualized the impact of specific mechanics on their marks. As a mitigating factor, the data was gathered and analysed over many years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increased interest in serious games about programming, particularly for younger ages. The ability to evoke motivation and retain engagement leads to better learning efficiency and a positive educational impact. Serious games usually include support systems to assist novice users. In recent years there have been attempts to enhance support with intelligent tutoring systems. These systems adapt and provide personalized learning by analyzing user behaviour. Although this is a positive evolution, support still remains in the form of hints, images and videos. The paper describes an alternative adaptive method for support with working examples. An expert solution to a similar problem is displayed to the students allowing them to address the problem and start the solving process by analogy. Our previous research showed that working examples can reduce cognitive load during problem-solving and increase the student's educational results in comparison to traditional techniques. This paper presents the design of NanoDoc, a serious game for teaching the programming concepts of sequence and iteration to elementary school students. It features adaptive support with editable and executable working examples. Each example can be examined, edited and executed freely by the user until the required knowledge level is sufficient to solve the similar problem at hand. The adaptation method is based on a Fuzzy Logic algorithm and the dynamic modelling of user knowledge level. The paper also provides some preliminary results on student usage in the classroom and a questionnaire about the game experience. Plans for future research include investigating if adaptive support with working examples can reduce cognitive load even further and how learning is affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate adaptation and learning support organizations in dealing with the current and projected consequences of climate change by recognizing challenges as opportunities, ensuring business continuity and increasing their economic efficiency. Here it applies that those actors who deal with their existing framework conditions, opportunities and risks at an early stage, and also have structures or capacities for strategic learning processes, increase their climate resilience and reduce their vulnerability to negative impacts. A cumulative doctoral thesis analyze to what extent companies already have climate-related structures conducive to learning, to what extent they take responsibility in terms of the learning object (climate change), and which elements prove to be limiting here. The results illustrate that intangible resources such as a sense of responsibility, executives positive attitude and common values have a significant influence on the way companies deal with climate change. Based on these findings, a serious game will be developed and its didactic effectiveness reflected critically to raise the climate-related awareness of decision-makers and to enable them to derive their own adaptation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial literacy for managers and owners of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) is defined as the combination of awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours that a potential entrepreneur or business owner should have to make effective financial decisions to start a business, run a business, and ensure its sustainability and growth (OECD, 2020). To ensure this combination of financial knowledge and skills, different educational perspectives may emerge as the solution. The use of gamification and digital game-based learning (DGBL) are educational methodologies largely used in formal and informal environments, for different target audiences and different fields of knowledge, including finance. However, it is largely used by children and younger people in the same contexts described above. We find a gap that justifies further research on the formal use of DGBL in the adult population, namely for the development of financial literacy. For the use of gamification in this context to be effective is essential to identify which knowledge, skills and attitudes are required for MSMEs managers. The OECD (2020) questionnaire is an example of an instrument used to measure adult financial knowledge namely in managers, owners and future entrepreneurs of MSMEs. The financial literacy content for managers includes questions on basic concepts of asset management, inflation, investments, cash flows and risk analysis. However, at the top of our knowledge, we find little research to support how can we actively develop this awareness and knowledge through games. In this study, through exploratory analysis of government documents and literature, we sought to understand the three scales for measuring financial literacy, namely, financial knowledge, financial attitudes, and financial behaviour, which are the main contents that should be included in the pre-game's assessment and on the learning objectives. The second concern is how to include these scales in the game to positively impact the behaviour, attitudes and knowledge of the managers of MSMEs. Thus, the contribution of the study is to create through the metrics used to measure financial literacy and the game mechanisms used a proposal for a model for designing digital games for financial literacy. Policymakers, private associations connected to MSMEs, and other players may take, for sure, lessons to be learned to prepare better the managers to guarantee stable and sustainable enterprise support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals who willingly come together because they have common interests in a specific area and want to develop their skills and competences by collaborating with other members and sharing their experience. CoPs have been applied to diverse environments, including organizations, education, associations and the social sector, as well as the governmental institutions and international development. A community of practice may emerge from both bottom‐up or top‐down initiatives and it will exist as long as the members believe they have something to contribute to it, or gain from it. The widespread access to personal computers and to the internet made the virtual environment very interesting for communities of practice, providing collaboration tools and both synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. However, some differences and drawbacks in the interaction between individuals are also registered in the translation to the virtual environment. Keeping these communities alive depends a lot on the motivation of members, on their commitment and will to participate. Those are not easy to attain and maintain, especially on the online environment. Different approaches have been implemented to animate a community (be it real or virtual) and ensure a high level of communication and experience sharing. Of course, providing a rich and valuable knowledge repository is crucial, but the question is, how to turn passive community members into active participants? In this paper we present three communities of practice with completely different domains and communities (footwear industry professionals, trainers and trainees; innovation and marketing students, teachers and experts; and serious games practitioners and researchers). We compare the approaches that were used to animate the individuals to participate and to be involved in those communities. In particular, we present the results of using gamification as a form of motivating participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the sudden outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus, countless academic institutions around the world were driven to shift entirely from teaching in physical classrooms to online teaching overnight. One of the biggest challenges faced by educators is how to sustain student engagement in online delivery. Gamification, the approach of engaging users by employing game design elements and mechanics is one such solution. Nevertheless, in most cases the practice of gamification is more on being results oriented and less experience-centric, while the success of video games is usually more focused on its overall player experience. For the purpose of this paper, the term ‘vertical gamification’ is used to describe the lower-tier levels of gamification which utilizes game elements such as leader-boards, points and badges as its purpose is to attain higher points for rewards. The utilization of social gameplay elements such as the challenge, opposition, and competition aspects of game design within gamification is termed as ‘horizontal gamification’. The horizontal reference refers to a more social-centric aspect of game experience. This paper aims to examine learners and their perceived experience in the gamification of online classes and to gauge the level of engagement and challenges faced by these learners. The research also aims to investigate if a vertical gamification procedure provides a similar level of engagement as the horizontal gamification procedure. Through a series of surveys involving 108 participants within a normal online class environment, online classes utilizing vertical gamification and online classes utilizing horizontal gamification; the research was able to determine at which point the learner’s level of engagement increases. The research will apply the GAMEFULQUEST instrument to assess the perceived gamefulness between the various online classes to ascertain the success of using a more distinctive experienced-based gamification approach to enhance engagement for online teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undergraduate University students training to be future accountants have a clear career path ahead of them in South Africa as members of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). Their future employers have recognized a knowledge gap in terms of their insights into the world of business. A key industry employer and training company partnered with the University to develop a bespoke board game to develop their business acumen using a gamified learning experience. On game day 350-550 students (depending on the year) simultaneously compete in groups of 6 with a game master at each table. After the conclusion, students receive questionnaires soliciting their feedback and suggestions for improvement. The researcher and other organisers’ also have an annual reflection and brainstorming meeting where feedback is discussed, consolidated and incorporated. The open-ended student feedback from 2015-2019 were thematically analysed and mapped to iterative improvements. The study reveals that the concerns of students and game masters are vested in their own experiences and perspectives. Themes revolve around students concern for procedural justice related to time allocations and the influence of luck and potential variations between game masters on their final results. The findings from the researcher and organisers’ reflexive standpoint relate to improving the flow of the game and building in mechanisms to support student preparation and mastery of game play. Questionnaires soliciting feedback from students are influenced by self-reporting bias. However, this feedback stretches across years and therefor data triangulation plays a mitigating role. The research offers an overview of the evolution of a board game designed to facilitate student mastery of business concepts. In the emerging market context of South Africa the board game is a novel approach to teaching and assessment and creates both excitement and anxiety amongst students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital game-based learning has been suggested as a potentially useful method to help improve literacy skills. Games have been shown to draw attention to and engage in processing of specific linguistic features and may allow personalization (Holmes et al. 2018). Yet little is known about how games may contribute to improving bottom-up development of specific linguistic features and how this may impact reading accuracy and fluency. iRead is an EU-funded innovation project promoting reading skills in different languages among 6000 primary school students. Curriculumembedded lessons combined gameplay with reading from an e-reader. An adaptivity algorithm integrated in the system was used that generates individual trajectories that may vary in amount of practice of each feature. The system covers phonology, morphology, morphosyntax and syntax. In this study the overall goal is to measure the amount and quality of practice through both gameplay and e-reader use and measure their impact on reading accuracy and fluency. 72 EFL learners attending 6th grade participated in the study and they used two iRead apps 1-hour per week for 4-5 months. Pre-tests and post-tests were administered, measuring word and non-word reading accuracy and fluency (words per minute). Outcome measures include the number of games played with each feature, time on task, number of correct answers, errors and recovery from errors. Results are discussed in the light of both reading and overall language acquisition theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the important role of universities in urban development of the cities of the future. The new promising live gaming practices, business communications, and strategy games can help with it. During a few years we have been actively using promising new technologies in a playful way. The purpose of the games is to identify the leaders of future changes, to involve the public organizations, business communities and city administrations in joint venture. The proposed project activity in a team game combines lightness, creativity, game, logic, expert knowledge and communication. On the basis of real city cases, a space is created for open and trusting cross-social communication between representatives of government, business, public associations, and active citizens. Through solving the cases, the participants analyze the role of various communities in the economy, law, politics and social sphere. They also exchange methods of studying the communities’ functioning and how to assess these community’s impact on the development processes of institutions and territories. Game practices are accessible to everyone through the disciplines of educational programs, additional training and socially significant events of urban communities. Thus, forming an active civic life position, games involve active citizens and young people in resolving issues of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamification is a learning technique that transfers game mechanics to the educational environment in order to achieve better learning results, change participants' attitudes towards the learning process, develop knowledge and student skills. One of the advantages of using gamification is that motivates students to investigate and design strategies in order to achieve a better performance in the game. There are many studies that highlight the different benefits of using gamification in the classroom, among some of these benefits gamification improves student participation, motivation and commitment, encourages more collaboration between students, increases content understanding, among others. On the other hand, it is necessary to understand that the paradigm of employers has changed. Companies today need more flexible people, with different skills, with the ability to "learn to learn". This skill is essential to cope with the complexity of interactions that people frequently face. This is why many companies prefer to have employees who manage their time and achieve results independently (without the direction of supervisors, trainers, or educators). Day by day it is more important that people develop the ability to acquire new skills, new knowledge and self-management. For the past two years, with other colleagues in the logistics area at our university, we have worked on designing a course based on an online game called Logistic Simulator (or LOST, for short). The intention of the game is that students can acquire knowledge in an easy and fun way. To improve their performance in the game, they must investigate and learn different topics of the course on their own, and even investigate content that is not found within the syllabus. This study aims to point out how gamification influences the student's perception of self-directed learning. The study shows that students significantly change their perception of some of the areas related to their participation and the degree of responsibility they have for their own learning, in particular, students improve their abilities in the search for information, autonomy and self management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating Serious Games (SG) involves the challenge of balancing a domain-goal with a game-goal while maintaining an engaging experience. Although several serious game-design frameworks exist, the potentials of dialogical interaction during the game-design process for exploring and matching motivations and requirements of stakeholders is widely overlooked. In this paper, we present an affordance-oriented game-design activity for co-creating engaging serious gamechallenges. Displayed in a user study with 29 Norwegian computer-science students we outline the research of a novel cardbased toolset – the Challenge Game Frame (CGF) – that creates dialogical interaction through the roles of players, teachers, designers, and scientists for balancing domain- and game-goals. Using the provided board and card set for ideating, the groups created game-challenges addressing awareness in privacy decision-making. For guiding further development of the CGF toolset, we assessed the qualities of the game ideation activity by questionnaire on effectivity/applicability of the tools and interviewing groups while additionally analysing the resulting privacy decision game-concepts. Outcomes indicate that the affordance-based game frame helped students balancing domain and game-goals. Utilising the affordance-cards helped students ideating privacy decision games as the board aided structuring and visualising the balance of the game-concept. The students' envisioned game-concepts were interestingly favouring unofficial play over official play in classroom settings. Conclusively, game-challenges for raising privacy awareness are suggested to be played independently of strict educational context. Implicated design development of the CGF is finally outlined and should include settings where researchers and teachers are part of the dialogical interaction during applied game creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often hoped that gamification will bring new ways to engage students to learn better, and it may be that the benefits would be more significant for younger learners, like school pupils. To gamify an activity is to structure it so that it is more like a game, which might increase motivation and make the activity more pleasant or enjoyable. In some ways, gamification might also improve performance. Most educational activities in schools are still traditional however, because gamification is not quick or easy to do, and teachers need confidence in their gamification skills, and in its benefits. In this study high school pupils were taught a part of their subject, which was information technology, by means of a specially gamified activity. As an experimental control, a similar class of pupils were taught the same material by more traditional methods. All the students sat a test afterwards, which showed that the gamified class had learned the material significantly better. Questionnaires from all the students, about their experiences, opinions, and feelings of their activity (gamified or traditional) indicated that the reason for their improved performance was that they were more motivated by the gamification. While it remains a challenge to gamify education, and it depends on the talent and effort of the teacher, results like this can encourage further interest and development. When GBL researchers explore more ways to do gamification, and begin to build a repertoire of techniques, we shall gain a better idea of what works well, and thus help to bring gamification into the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamification focuses on the integration of elements and mechanics, e.g., points, quests and leaderboards, from the field of gaming and game design into a nongaming environment to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Learner’s motivation difficulties are known as a problem in educational settings. Hence, we followed the idea of gamification to raise the motivation of learners in the field of knowledge acquisition and business process modelling. We developed a non-digital game, based on 14 typical game mechanics. The BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) wheel as the chosen form of implementation is based on wheels of fortune, which are known to most people from television or trade fairs. The core of the board game is the BPMN wheel and another wheel for the collection of notation elements needed for process modelling. Additionally, the game includes game elements such as learning and control question cards. The basic idea of the BPMN wheel is that players learn basics about BPMN and these can apply practically. The game is played in teams. The teams develop a graphical process model based on a textual process description. The winner is the team with the best model quality. The prototype was tested and evaluated in the course ‘Business Process Management’ of the bachelor’s program ‘Digital Business’ at the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt. In order to be able to analyze the effects of the gamified solution on several aspects, we carried out knowledge tests (pre and post), modelling tests (pre and post) and further evaluations. This contribution should be considered as work in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last few decades have witnessed the rapid expansion of entrepreneurship education programs due to the critical impact of entrepreneurship on economic development, innovation and employment in both developed and developing countries. Despite applying technological advances in teaching different subjects in higher education, the majority of entrepreneurship education programs still use the traditional teaching methods. Game-based learning, simulation and gamification have recently been suggested as influential methods to improve students’ engagement in and motivation for learning and consequently education programs’ effectiveness. Yet, few studies have been conducted on such methods and entrepreneurship education. This paper aims to highlight these methods as to be effective in entrepreneurship education through a systematic review of the peer-reviewed published articles. We highlight the implications of the findings to improve higher education entrepreneurship programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using interactive elements in the mix of didactic elements is becoming more and more important for successful teaching. Successful teaching methods also presupposes the sufficient motivation of students to learn a content and participate in a course. As games always enjoy great popularity, we followed the idea of gamification using game mechanics in the field of knowledge acquisition to motivate learners. We developed a board game based on 16 typical game mechanics in order to give it a game-like feel. The content of the rallye game refers to the Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle, but due to the flexible design, the content can be easily adjusted to or replaced by other learning contents in universities or enterprise training settings. The prototype was tested and evaluated in the course 'BPM' of the bachelor's program 'Digital Business' at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt. In order to be able to analyze the effects of the rallye on several aspects, knowledge tests (pre and post) as well as further evaluations were included into the gaming session. The first results of the evaluation prove that gamification supports learners when learning a (new) content. Our long-term research aims on identifying and implementing gamification support for activities in the BPM context. This short paper reports on work in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful computer science educators learn and adapt to the abilities and needs of their students. The modern computer science student is comfortable with technology, prefers a graphical presentation of information, and favors learning through experience and exploration. Video games, a technology these students are familiar with, present problems visually and allow students to learn through experimentation. However, many existing programming video games are designed for elementary school students and use toy languages that are not useful for augmenting a college-level course. Other programming games are gamified programming exercises that do not use visuals and exploration to engage students. We present Hello Code, a video game for introductory computer science students that uses the traditional elements of a platform video game to visually present programming problems that are solved using a real-world programming language, Python. Hello Code is open source and we encourage educators to download it to use or modify for their classroom needs. We report on our experience of replacing traditional programming lab activities with playing levels of Hello Code and describe a comparison of student learning, using before and after quizzes, that shows playing Hello Code is comparable to traditional programming lab activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents adaptive e-learning to a map-based serious game in aerial image interpretation which trains both geographic knowledge as well as the identification of relevant objects. We attach an interoperable adaptivity framework, called "E-Learning A.I." (ELAI) which adjusts the game's difficulty and the provided amount of assistance to match the learners need. The underlying software architecture uses the Experience API (xAPI) to collect, store and analyze the captured usage data. The scientific research questions affect the possible usages of the collected interaction data and how to manifest adaptivity in serious games. A study has been conducted to answer questions regarding the acceptance and effects of adaptivity in map-based seek-and-find games for aerial image interpretation. The three main hypotheses cover the questions on the acceptance of adaptivity mechanisms, on the users' motivation and on the learning outcome effectivity. Although the adaptivity has been recognized, the dynamically inserted virtual agent was rather seen as a disturbance to the game flow. The study verifies the feasibility of the adaptivity framework and reveals issues on the study design of similar adaptive systems. The ELAI software architecture consists of generic and specific components. The most specific component is the so called ELAI-adapter which basically captures and adapts attached games or computer simulations. Obviously this adapter has to be specific to the actual game, genre, characters etc. In our application example we have implemented the ELAI-adapter for the Unity game engine. The xAPI protocol allows to easily connect other xAPI-compliant serious games or e-learning course software. The ELAI-controller interprets the collected usage data and computes influence strategies for the attached games or simulations, which in turn are then realized in the games itself by the ELAI-adapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demands for energy within public sector buildings, such as administrative offices, cultural heritage sites, and museums, represent a significant financial and environmental burden. With issues relating to climate change now more prominent than ever, energy efficiency is an important aspect for consideration at both organisational and occupant levels in public buildings. Occupant behaviour plays a key role in the process of saving energy, with the major areas of wastage being directly linked to the use of heating, lighting and electrical devices. Automating these devices can provide a partial, if costly, solution, however, the influence of personal preferences on comfort levels and productivity must also be considered. Strategies may thus seek to enhance organisational energy efficiency in the public sector by promoting positive behavioural changes amongst occupants or visitors. However, such strategies must be informed by knowledge of related behaviours, business processes and best practices for saving energy within specific workplace contexts. To encourage and support participants in adopting energy-conscious behaviours, the incorporation of serious games and gamification offers potential to bring about positive behavioural change. This paper presents the OrbEEt Behavioural Change Framework and its application through the development of a gamified ecosystem consisting of three interfaces, a smartphone game, an intranet portal, and an in-office display. This involves the incorporation of behavioural triggers through an infrastructure of high granularity sensor data, the identification of which are informed by the results of a questionnaire targeting 28 participants across four European pilot sites, representing a diverse range of cultural, climatic, and operational settings for public sector buildings. The work herein represents the pre-intervention stage of the ongoing 3-year OrbEEt research project, with the potential application of these behavioural triggers and interfaces extending to various organisations that are looking to improve overall energy efficiency, while maintaining business productivity and ensuring best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potential of Game Based learning is huge because people are already engaged in playing entertainment games and multiple intelligent tutors have been designed already for teaching various domains and topics. The Challenge is to develop a model to overcome and to fill the gap between serious game and ITS and through which learning activities would become more organized and meaning full. This research demonstrates a conceptual model which describes how game mechanics used in serious games can be incorporated in intelligent tutoring systems to provide more effective learning. Multiple researches conclude that intelligent tutoring systems are effective but due to boredom factor students don’t find it interesting to stay engage with it for a long duration. The purpose of this model is to combine the features of serious games and learning engine of intelligent tutoring systems. A model with combine’s features of both fulfils the needs of students by engaging them in game long duration required and to achieve the learning purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of different stakeholder groups work at any given airport. To aim for a safety and an efficient and environmentally friendly mobility, the stakeholders must modify processes. In the area of airport management one possibility is to establish the collaboration of stakeholder groups. But challenges arise out of divergent interests. These differences can significantly influence decision-making. Special kinds of airport management processes (and in particular when focusing on decision-making) are difficult to analyse with conventional methods of real- or fast-time simulations, because in these cases there is no holistic focus on human decision-making. Serious games offer the possibility to validate complex operational concepts in airport management. Due to the high collaborative nature it is also possible to analyse human decision-making in teams with the help of serious games. To analyse these both aspects in airport management the serious game D-CITE (Decisions based on Collaborative Interactions in TEams) was developed. It is a round-based multiplayer game, which is playable for four players. The task is to manage an airport. Therefore it is necessary to share information due to limited knowledge about certain facts. Moreover, there are critical events, such as thunderstorms. The team earns a numerical score, which provides information about the success of the team. All in all, D-CITE is not only a research instrument, but also a training instrument. The game trains managers in the relevance of information-sharing and in the benefits of collaborative decision-making. The focus in this paper is on the game-based learning aspect. In a first study the quality of D-CITE was tested (N=8). It has been found that the game, the usability and the abstracted degree of reality was well suitable for this kind of analysis. During a second experimental session with airport managers (N=4) the training and game-based learning aspect was proved. After filling out questionnaires, the four experts played D-CITE. During a debriefing, the learning aspect (awareness about the relevance of collaboration) was evaluated. The results will be presented and discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appeal of Mixed Reality (MR) digital games arouses interest among researchers and education specialists who since their recent proliferation, they have been trying to introduce their motivating potential in learning contexts. Our main research question in this work focuses on whether MR digital games can, via novel Presence (feeling of ‘being and doing there’ in a virtual or augmented world) and MR gamification (dynamics, mechanics, components) support and foster future learning and teaching, to address a wide variety and variation of educational contexts. To accomplish the above, a consistent computational framework that supports new types of Mixed-Reality Serious Games and Gamification (MRSGs) is established in this work that features MR gesture-based and game-based learning. The introduced term Mixed Reality Serious Games (MRSGs), refers to digital mini game-shells that allow the learners and teachers to sense the feeling of ‘Presence’ experienced under a novel MR educational learning framework, in both Virtual Reality (VR) as well as Augmented Reality (AR) formal and informal learning. The former (VR) allows for the unique feeling of ‘being there’ and ‘doing there’ in the virtual world, that will be transforming the overall game-based learning experience, via latest innovations as well as recent progress in low-cost h/w Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). The latter (AR) blends real and virtual elements so that the 3D virtual element is registered accurately in the real world and interacted freely by the learner via various mobile displays, including smart glasses, natural, gesture-based interaction (mobile RGB and RGB-D), MR virtual characters and gamified learning processes. Game-based learning also involves the incorporation of games into lessons. The principal aim of applying games in education is to increase students’ engagement and motivation. In our case studies we provide two mini MRSGs in VR and AR that accompany the primary school history class and particular the period of the Minoan Civilization, as manifested by the archaeological site of Ancient Knossos in Heraklion, Greece. The AR MRSG implements a desktop-based holographic application using the Meta-AR glasses. This MRSG consist of three mini game shells in which the student has to complete various learning tasks by using gesture-based interaction. These tasks consist of puzzle-based and constructional games tasks. The VR MRSG implements a similar approach of a Virtual tour in Knossos with quests that student need to accomplish to collect rewards. The student has to fully explore the palace, interact with special characters and complete their quests.These MRSGs are a first attempt to formally study latest h/w and s/w advances in Mixed Reality technologies, applied in gesture-based and game-based learning in both formal and informal educational contexts. Moreover we compared the gamification elements for each enabling technology and define the gamification dynamics, mechanics and components that need to be utilized in each MR environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large upfront investments required for game development pose a severe barrier for the wider uptake of serious games in education and training. Also, there is a lack of well-established methods and tools that support game developers at preserving and enhancing the games’ pedagogical effectiveness. The RAGE project, which is a Horizon 2020 funded research project on serious games, addresses these issues by making available reusable software components that aim to support the pedagogical qualities of serious games. In order to easily deploy and integrate these game components in a multitude of game engines, platforms and programming languages, RAGE has developed and validated a hybrid component-based software architecture that preserves component portability and interoperability. While a first set of software components is being developed, this paper presents selected examples to explain the overall system’s concept and its practical benefits. First, the Emotion Detection component uses the learners’ webcams for capturing their emotional states from facial expressions. Second, the Performance Statistics component is an add-on for learning analytics data processing, which allows instructors to track and inspect learners’ progress without bothering about the required statistics computations. Third, a set of language processing components accommodate the analysis of textual inputs of learners, facilitating comprehension assessment and prediction. Fourth, the Shared Data Storage component provides a technical solution for data storage - e.g. for player data or game world data - across multiple software components. The presented components are exemplary for the anticipated RAGE library, which will include up to forty reusable software components for serious gaming, addressing diverse pedagogical dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of game elements in non-game contexts (often labelled as gamification) _offers great possibilities in formal, non-formal and informal education. However, despite several academic efforts, there is no consensus on what a game element is. This makes it difficult to decide what parts of games could be used in gamified experiences. In this work, document analysis is carried out in order to identify, extend and adjust the terminology used by different authors to study video games. It reviews some of the academic approaches that describe those elements that can be identified by the players, focusing on dynamics and mechanics, comparing them in order to build a new model (CCAE). The article concludes by mentioning the emergence of interfaces and game forms (particularly pervasive games) that challenge these classifications. With this work we hope to consolidate a common vocabulary for video games that also works as a starting point for building qualitative and quantitative instruments that help to gather designers’ and players’ perceptions on game experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The highly theoretical methodology, in which software engineering is frequently taught, causes that learners usually lose their interest in learning software engineering. This study introduce SmartProject, a learning environment based on serious games and social networks to teach and motivate learners in software engineering, and evaluates its educational effectiveness. Computer Science undergraduate students at the University of Cadiz in Spain participated in a pilot study based on case of study to assess the educational effectiveness of SmartProject, in terms of motivation, user experience and learning outcomes. The results of the pilot study give a preliminary feedback about the educational effectiveness of SmartProject as a learning environment, and show that participants enjoyed with the experience and felt well motivate using it. Moreover, the participants’ opinions allow us to conclude that participants think that learning approaches such as using serious games, gamification and social networks are useful and effective to help and motivate learners in their knowledge acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the game mechanics which promote learning be catalogued? To address this question, a framework is designed to investigate both the learning aspect whilst integrating the ludic dimension. In an effort to validate the hypotheses, Bloom's revised taxonomy provides the learning criteria, whilst the game mechanics are provided through the filter of commercial games and gamification systems. Finally, for the purposes of testing, a playable prototype game example is designed and created specifically for the task, containing specific measurable learning objectives, and tested with students, aiming at recording how they perceive the connection between the game mechanics of the prototype and the provided learning elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews regarding serious games show that the effect on learning can be qualified as moderately positive. Despite the active involvement of players it seems that they sometimes refrain from relevant cognitive processes during game play. This study addresses a technique involving the generation of manageable cognitive conflicts to stimulate these cognitive processes. Surprise comprises events that undermine an expectation which trigger players to evaluate the new situation more extensively. Participants (N = 94) played a game in which they practiced proportional reasoning skills. The pretestposttest design involved two factors: Surprise (surprise vs. no surprise) and Expectancy (strong vs. weak). Surprise was implemented as an appearing game character that modified some parameters of a problem while the player was solving that problem. We expected that this would prompt players to evaluate their solution strategy and decide whether another strategy was more appropriate. Expectancy pertains to the type of problems that players expect. In the strong expectancy version players received a series of problems with the same structure as before. In the weak expectancy version problems with different structures are randomly presented to the players and each problem may involve a different solution strategy. We hypothesized an interaction between Surprise and Expectancy, next to a main effect of Surprise. The results show that participants learned from the game. We also did find a weak positive effect of Surprise, but no effect of Expectancy nor interaction effect on learning. The facilitating effect of Surprise was stronger when existing proportional reasoning skill was included as factor. These results indicate that surprise as implemented in the game has effect on learning regardless whether expectancy was weak or strong. We discuss some suggestions for finding stronger effects of surprise such as the fact that the repetitive nature may have weakened the 'surprisingness' of the surprises and the observation that our sample may not have possessed a sufficient level of metacognitive skills to interpret the changes caused by the surprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The leisure game industry is one dominated by large international hardware vendors (e.g. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo), major publishers and supported by a network of development studios, distributors and retailers. New modes of digital distribution and practice are challenging this model and the games industry landscape is one undergoing rapid change. The established industry appears reluctant to participate actively in the applied games sector (Stewart et al., 2013). This could be because of the concentration on consolidation of their platforms, content, protected brand and credibility which could be weakened by association with the conflicting notion of purposefulness in applied games in market niches without established return on investment. In contrast, the applied industry exhibits the characteristics of emergence and immaturity ; weak interconnectedness, limited knowledge exchange, an absence of harmonising standards, limited specialisations, limited division of labour and arguably insufficient evidence of the products efficacies (Stewart et al., 2013; Garcia Sanchez, 2013) and characterised as a dysfunctional market. To test these assertions the Realising an Applied Gaming Ecosystem (RAGE) project will develop a number of self contained gaming assets to be actively employed in the creation of a number of applied games to be implemented and evaluated as regional pilots across a variety of European educational, training and vocational contexts. The project brings together twenty European partners from industry, research and education with the aim of developing, transforming and enriching advanced technologies into self-contained gaming assets that could support a variety of stakeholders most significantly, game studios interested in developing applied games. RAGE will provide these assets together with supplementary knowledge resources through a self-sustainable Ecosystem, a social space that connects research, industry, intermediaries, education providers, policy makers and end-users in order to stimulate the development and application of applied games. The authors identify barriers and opportunities in engaging, exploring new emergent business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "gamification" is generally used to denote the application of game mechanisms in non-gaming environments with the aim of enhancing the processes enacted and the experience of those involved. In recent years, gamification has become a catchword throughout the fields of education and training, thanks to its perceived potential to make learning more motivating and engaging. This paper is an attempt to shed light on the emergence and consolidation of gamification in education/training. It reports the results of a literature review that collected and analysed around 120 papers on the topic published between 2011 and 2014. These originate from different countries and deal with gamification both in training contexts and in formal educational, from primary school to higher education. The collected papers were analysed and classified according to various criteria, including target population, type of research (theoretical vs experimental), kind of educational contents delivered, and the tools deployed. The results that emerge from this study point to the increasing popularity of gamification techniques applied in a wide range of educational settings. At the same time, it appears that over the last few years the concept of gamification has become more clearly defined in the minds of researchers and practitioners. Indeed, until fairly recently the term was used by many to denote the adoption of game artefacts (especially digital ones) as educational tools for learning a specific subject such as algebra. In other words, it was used as a synonym of Game Based Learning (GBL) rather than to identify an educational strategy informing the overall learning process, which is treated globally as a game or competition. However, this terminological confusion appears only in a few isolated cases in this literature review, suggesting that a certain level of taxonomic and epistemological convergence is underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals who willingly come together because they have common interests in a specific area and want to develop their skills and competences by collaborating with other members and sharing their experience. CoPs have been applied to diverse environments, including organizations, education, associations and the social sector, as well as the governmental institutions and international development. A community of practice may emerge from both bottom‐up or top‐down initiatives and it will exist as long as the members believe they have something to contribute to it, or gain from it. The widespread access to personal computers and to the internet made the virtual environment very interesting for communities of practice, providing collaboration tools and both synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. However, some differences and drawbacks in the interaction between individuals are also registered in the translation to the virtual environment. Keeping these communities alive depends a lot on the motivation of members, on their commitment and will to participate. Those are not easy to attain and maintain, especially on the online environment. Different approaches have been implemented to animate a community (be it real or virtual) and ensure a high level of communication and experience sharing. Of course, providing a rich and valuable knowledge repository is crucial, but the question is, how to turn passive community members into active participants? In this paper we present three communities of practice with completely different domains and communities (footwear industry professionals, trainers and trainees; innovation and marketing students, teachers and experts; and serious games practitioners and researchers). We compare the approaches that were used to animate the individuals to participate and to be involved in those communities. In particular, we present the results of using gamification as a form of motivating participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals who willingly come together because they have common interests in a specific area and want to develop their skills and competences by collaborating with other members and sharing their experience. CoPs have been applied to diverse environments, including organizations, education, associations and the social sector, as well as the governmental institutions and international development. A community of practice may emerge from both bottom-up or top-down initiatives and it will exist as long as the members believe they have something to contribute to it, or gain from it. The widespread access to personal computers and to the internet made the virtual environment very interesting for communities of practice, providing collaboration tools and both synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. However, some differences and drawbacks in the interaction between individuals are also registered in the translation to the virtual environment. Keeping these communities alive depends a lot on the motivation of members, on their commitment and will to participate. Those are not easy to attain and maintain, especially on the online environment. Different approaches have been implemented to animate a community (be it real or virtual) and ensure a high level of communication and experience sharing. Of course, providing a rich and valuable knowledge repository is crucial, but the question is, how to turn passive community members into active participants? In this paper we present three communities of practice with completely different domains and communities (footwear industry professionals, trainers and trainees; innovation and marketing students, teachers and experts; and serious games practitioners and researchers). We compare the approaches that were used to animate the individuals to participate and to be involved in those communities. In particular, we present the results of using gamification as a form of motivating participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]