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Sustainable natural resource management is a high priority in the 21st century as it plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change and preventing some of its consequences like loss of biodiversity, land degradation, desertification, and the exhaustion of natural resources. This concern is reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which emphasize, among other factors, sustainable cities and communities, responsible production and consumption, and climate action. Achieving sustainable natural resource management begins with raising awareness and educating the next generation. Therefore, it is essential to develop educational initiatives that prepare young people to become responsible and proactive adults in promoting environmental sustainability across industries and communities. Additionally, these initiatives should develop critical and analytical thinking skills, nurture innovative mindsets for creating environmentally sound solutions, and enhance the ability to collaborate within multidisciplinary teams. The NATURE project addressed these needs by designing and developing a serious educational game that fosters this set of skills. The results of the pilot testing show that the game is an effective tool and contributes to the education and awareness of the younger generation.

The global rise in cybercrime is fueled by the pervasive digitization of work and personal life, compounded by the shift to online formats during the COVID-19 pandemic. As digital channels flourish, so too do the opportunities for cyberattacks, particularly those exposing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to potential economic devastation. These businesses often lack comprehensive defense strategies and/or the necessary resources to implement effective cybersecurity measures. The authors have addressed this issue by developing an Educational Escape Room (EER) that supports scenario-based learning to enhance cybersecurity awareness among SME employees, enabling them to handle cyber threats more effectively. By integrating hands-on scenarios based on real-life examples, the authors aimed to improve the knowledge retention and the operational performance of SME staff in terms of cybersafe practices. The results achieved during pilot testing with more than 200 participants suggest that the EER approach engaged the trainees and boosted their cybersecurity awareness, marking a step forward in cybersecurity education.

The potential of digital games, when transformed into Serious Games (SGs), Games for Learning (GLs), or game-based learning (GBL), is truly inspiring. These forms of games hold immense potential as effective learning tools as they have a unique ability to provide challenges that align with learning objectives and adapt to the learner’s level. This adaptability empowers educators to create a flexible and customizable learning experience, crucial in acquiring knowledge, experience, and professional skills. However, the lack of a standardised design methodology for challenges that promote skill acquisition often hampers the effectiveness of games-based training. The four-step Triadic Certification Method directly responds to this challenge, although implementing it may require significant resources and expertise and adapting it to different training contexts may be challenging. This method, built on a triadic of components: competencies, mechanics, and training levels, offers a new approach for game designers to create games with embedded in-game assessment towards the certification of competencies. The model combines the competencies defined for each training plan with the challenges designed for the game on a matrix that aligns needs and levels, ensuring a comprehensive and practical learning experience. The practicality of the model is evident in its ability to balance the various components of a certification process. To validate this method, a case study was developed in the context of learning how to drive, supported by a game coupled with a realistic driving simulator. The real time collection of game and training data and its processing, based on predefined settings, learning metrics (performance) and game elements (mechanics and parameterisations), defined by both experts and game designers, makes it possible to visualise the progression of learning and to give visual and auditory feedback to the student on their behaviour. The results demonstrate that it is possible use the data generated by the player and his/her interaction with the game to certify the competencies acquired.

Active learning approaches, incorporating student engagement through experimentation and problem solving, effectively foster higher-level thinking abilities and enhance academic performance. Interactive tools like simulators align with these methodologies, but commercially available simulators have limitations; particularly, their high cost and lack of customization features pose significant challenges for many educational institutions. This article presents CORES, a web-based educational application designed to simulate controlled rectifier circuits. CORES eliminates the need for intricate circuit assembly and software installation by providing pre-built circuits so that users can concentrate on analyzing circuit behavior by manipulating the thyristor firing angle and load characteristics, while the application generates output voltage and current waveforms under steady-state conditions, minimizing computation time. CORES has proven to be a valuable pedagogical tool, surpassing commercial simulators in terms of accessibility, ease of use, and enriched learning experiences for power electronics students and educators.

Design Thinking (DT) is a design process originally used in the conception and validation of innovative and technologically efficient human-centered solutions for ill-formed problems. Being an iterative and collaborative process with a human point of view, DT allows adopters to improve several intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, like collaboration, creative thinking, leadership, presentation, project management, ethics, storytelling, negotiation, empathy, willingness to learn, etc. As such, DT has been adopted in several other areas and has also become highly relevant in educational contexts to develop the aforementioned skills in students. It has also been shown to contribute to minimizing the school dropout problem by keeping students motivated and integrated in the school context. Nevertheless, to be successfully implemented, DT requires that the overall educational context is adapted and that teachers are trained to be able to guide, support, and give feedback to students. With that objective in mind and following an analysis of the current situation in secondary education schools in four European countries, a teacher training model was designed to organize and systematize the process of developing teachers’ abilities to manage an educational DT approach. This article presents the analysis of the current situation from the point of view of teachers and students and gives some hints on the resulting teacher training model for integrating Design Thinking skills within secondary education.

Higher Education engineering students need to be prepared to address sustainable solutions to the complex problems faced in this century. They should become proficient problem solvers, able to work in multidisciplinary teams, ready to adapt to new technologies, and able to acquire new knowledge and skills when needed. Usually known as soft skills, these competences play a key role in Engineering and have being taught in the last two decades, to a greater or lesser extent, using different methodologies and tools. This study reviews the promotion and teaching of soft skills in Higher Education across 5 European countries: Greece, Estonia, Denmark, Portugal and Spain. It provides an overview of best practices on these countries, focusing also on technological solutions to actually enable the development of soft skills. The purpose of this research is to shed some light about how soft skills are being taught presently and the difficulties involved in that process.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the sustainability of higher education as millions of students were forced out of school, shifting to online learning instead of in-class education. In the Erasmus+ project, Virtual Presence in Higher Education Hybrid Learning Delivery (VIE), we were concerned with the level of readiness and the ability of higher-education students and teachers to face this changing situation. This paper reports the results of a survey which assessed the experiences that students and teachers had during the pandemic and, in particular, the development of soft skills through active learning methodologies. The project results show that there are still some unmet needs, but existing digital technologies, tools, and platforms already provide valuable solutions both for students and teachers that ensure a continuation of high-quality learning experiences.

This article presents an initiative that addresses the problem of the digital literacy generational gap, targeting older adults that struggle to integrate the digital world and are unaware of the dangers of the online environment. The article has a European scope but with a special attention to the Portuguese context. The methodological approach started with a theoretical research on digital and online literacy of adults, followed by the design of an innovative training program specifically designed for this target group and finished with the results of the evaluation of the impact of the training. The overall conclusion, based on the achieved results, leads us to think that it is possible to improve the digital literacy of older adults so that they become effective online users while being alert to the dangers of the online world. Therefore, the work conducted is expected to contribute to a greater awareness of the importance and socio-economic possibilities that arise from the digital and technological investment for stimulating the integration of the older generation in the digital context.

Video games have become one of the predominant forms of entertainment in our society, but they have also impacted many other of its social and cultural aspects [...]

Being able to understand, express, and communicate emotions is widely recognized as a fundamental competence. For the younger generation entering the professional market, this is particularly relevant as, in this context, emotions are managed and communicated in ways (and channels) that are different from what they are used to and that can easily lead to misunderstandings. Therefore, it is important to analyze how young people deal with, understand, and interpret emotions, particularly in the context of a professional career where the ability to dialogue with different people and how to get around problems in a healthy and resilient way is essential. This analysis will allow one to design and create tools that allow the younger generation to improve their emotional intelligence and competence. This article introduces the League of Emotions Learners (LoEL) project, an innovative initiative that, through a game app, develops the emotional competence and intelligence of young people. The article then presents the results obtained in the initial validation that led to the positive understanding of its impact.

Competition is a basic element of our society. It drives us to rise above previously perceived limitations, increases our engagement and makes the world more interesting. Competition rewards our existing skills and prompts us to identify and improve our weaker skills. In games, player engagement is achieved, at least in part, by providing him/her with competition at the right amount of difficulty. Achieving and maintaining this exact level of challenge is one of the most difficult tasks for a game designer. The use of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment techniques allows the game to dynamically adjust the challenge according to player performance, therefore keeping him/her always on edge, immersed and fully active. New information can then be more easily acquired, which is especially important in Serious Games. This paper describes how DDA techniques were used to create two strategic, goal-oriented computer-controlled (CC) players in order to deliver a higher level of competitiveness for the user in Transform@, a Serious Game aimed at developing entrepreneurship skills. As a result, the strength of the computer controlled player increased by more than 100%. By developing a good strategy for the AI and using DDA the game includes now a powerful opponent which has increased the engagement level of the player.

There are many questions that must be addressed in the design of teaching-learning situations/scenarios. They include: how to adapt content/activities to learner´s specific needs; how to plan corrective feedback; how to fit teaching-learning-assessment techniques to a specific educational context; how to choose the educational tools more appropriate to a teaching-learning-assessment method; how to choose a language to express a pedagogical model; how to adequate the teaching-learning-assessment activities deployment to a specific educational format (distance, face-to-face or blending learning). Currently, educators, teachers included, are faced with those questions and therefore the development of teaching-learning systems is vital to help them in the design of learning situations in order to alleviate their burden in preparing lessons or teaching-learning activities. This paper presents an overview of a set of mechanisms that can help educators taking informed decisions when designing teaching-learning scenarios. To this end, a survey of the most relevant computer-based teaching-learning systems since 1960 along with developments in the learning and the instruction domains are presented. In addition, reflections on educational material design, teaching-learning activities more specifically, are also introduced. Those considerations aim at bridging the gap between relevant theoretical aspects and the teachers’ daily activities in the design of teaching-learning scenarios. Finally, this paper introduces our proposed model for automatic recommendation of teaching-learning techniques to support teachers in designing of teaching-learning activities.

The aim of this study was to describe the needs and expectations of support within everyday life among community-dwelling people living well with an early stage dementia and their informal carers. The study employed a qualitative design. Data were collected in 2018, via four focus group interviews with, in total, 17 people with dementia and 21 informal carers, transcribed and analyzed with manifest content analysis. Needs and expectations of support among persons with dementia were expressed as the importance of “Participation in my own care,” “Attitude of the informal carers,” and “Trusting relationships with informal carers.” Informal carers’ needs and expectations of support were expressed as the importance of “Formal care and services,” “Getting out of a carer mindset,” and “Family context.” The findings from this study highlighted that persons with dementia were well aware of their cognitive impairments and tried to maintain their independence, with both formal and informal care to help remain “being themselves.” Health professionals should acknowledge persons with dementia and informal carers’ well-being, and acknowledge the importance of their needs together with an understanding of the importance of continuity of frontline carers to building trusting relationships.

“Serious games” can be defined as (digital) games used for purposes other than mere entertainment. Serious Games can be applied to a broad spectrum of areas, e.g. educational, healthcare, training in hazardous environments or situations. Game-based Learning, one aspect of Serious Games, are also more and more explored for all levels of education in different subjects, such as Ancient History. The SEGAN (SErious GAmes Network) will create a Community of Practice on the Serious Games subject. The main objective is to create a stable (but expanding) consortium to exchange ideas and experiences related to Serious Games. The SEGAN Network invites the people of the community of Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Ancient History interested in Serious Games to join the net and to participate in their activities.

Serious games are games where the entertainment aspect is not the most relevant motivation or objective. TimeMesh is an online, multi-language, multiplayer, collaborative and social game platform for sharing and acquiring knowledge of the history of European regions. As such it is a serious game with educational characteristics. This article evaluates the use of TimeMesh with students of 13 and 14 years-old. It shows that this game is already a significant learning tool about European citizenship.

This number of the EAI Transactions on Serious Games is dedicated to a set of ongoing research and development projects in this area. The selected articles represent very well the diversity of approaches, contexts and objectives that foster and render highly dynamic this area of study. In Europe, several funding programmes like the 7th Framework Programme, the Lifelong Learning Programme and the most recent Horizon 2020 made specific provisions to support Serious Games projects. At the same time, enterprises are recognizing more and more the potential of SG to train and to motivate their workforce and are therefore joining forces with the academy and SG producers to design specific SG. Serious Games became one of the most interesting “places to be” due to its growing scientific and practitioner community. We can say that the motivating and addictive character of games has been successfully transmitted to the research and development of Serious Games.

Serious Games is an evolving subject for researchers and practitioners. More and more events take place with the focus or at least with some side attention given to this subject. We present some of these events as a support tool for potential authors in the selection of the best places to publish their work.

The first number of the second volume of the EAI Transactions on Serious Games focuses on the results presented on the European Conference on Game-Based Learning. This event, already on the 8th edition, has set standards in terms of presentation of research and practice and in the pointing out of new and future trends in the development of Game-Based Learning. As such, we are quite thrilled to be able to report them here.