Search

This paper discusses how integrating digital technologies such as cell phones and digital cameras with face-to-face participatory methodologies can help enhance community engagement and cultural preservation in ICT for Development (ICTD) initiatives in remote regions with limited connectivity and digital literacy. This view from practice presents participatory methods in the ‘Leadership, Communication, and Climate Change’ program in the context of environmental conservation and indigenous community development in the Vaupés region of the Colombian Amazon. The primary goal of the program is to contribute to the formulation of indigenous community development projects that enhance environmental protection and improve the quality of life for participating communities, while respecting and promoting the cultural identity of indigenous peoples. The ‘Leadership, Communication, and Climate Change’ program aims to foster an exchange of knowledge between academics, environmental practitioners, and indigenous leaders from the region of Vaupes, in the eastern boundaries of the Colombian Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose of Review: Gamification has emerged as a novel technique for improving mental health and enhancing treatment effectiveness. This paper provides an overview of gamification approaches to mental health intervention, identifies factors that may be related to variations in treatment effectiveness, and discusses possible strategies for tailoring gamified interventions to clients' needs. Recent Findings: Recent research has documented the potential of gamified mental health interventions for bolstering mental wellness and mitigating psychological symptoms. However, their effectiveness may vary depending on study design-related factors and gender-specific considerations. Literature reviews have also identified yet-to-be resolved issues surrounding the possible strengths and weaknesses of the personalization versus standardization of gamification, as well as the potential benefits of gamification for increasing engagement versus the potential risks of over-engagement and behavioral addiction to gamified components. Summary: This review highlights the need for careful planning and execution of gamified mental health interventions to optimize their effectiveness and suitability for meeting clients' individual needs and preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To prepare their students for the increasingly demanding workplace of the 21st century, business schools resort to using experiential learning techniques to make explicit connections between knowledge and experiences students already have, encouraging them to make their own interpretations. In this case study, 50 multilingual students participated in a Lego Serious Play (LSP) intervention for one academic semester. Due to the continuous rise of the numbers of international students in management schools in the UK in the post-COVID-19 era, researchers and lecturers indicate that additional support is often deemed necessary to promote social justice for multilingual and multicultural students and support their well-being. These students used LSP to make better sense of the assessment criteria and the theories they had to use to respond to the instructions and prepare a group paper and a group oral presentation in terms of a module on intercultural management. Findings revealed that these English as a Second Language (ESL) students were inspired by the use of LSP as it allowed them to reflect on the theories and apply them in creative ways fostering collaboration and creative problem-solving. Students initially felt uneasy to engage in this new approach but then enhanced their performance in their group oral presentations by 35% as they were able to improve their second language competence and intercultural awareness. The article concludes by discussing implications for using LSP with multilingual ESL students to help them overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, offering suggestions for the effective use of game-based techniques in Higher Education.

Copyright of ESSACHESS is the property of ESSACHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Creativity and innovative decision-making are among the most desired traits for leaders today. How does one develop these traits to meet the challenges facing the workplace? One answer is through building a mindset of creative confidence. This study explores the use of Lego® Serious Play® (LSP) to inspire the mindset of creative confidence in individuals. Findings affirm the need for the "other" in the creative process, expose increased levels of perspective-taking among participants, and suggests that divergent thinking can be taught. All positioning LSP as a tool for exercising the mental muscle known as creative confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the dominant logic, the first thing that comes to mind about play is entertainment rather than work. In a workplace context, we generally consider playing as a resource or a tool that can be used to reach organizational goals; however, from a different perspective, play is an open-ended transformative process the outcome (and sometimes the starting point) of which cannot be defined. It is thus of utmost importance to study what other approaches and understandings exist about play that could extend the halo of a phenomenon that is constantly shaping organizational life. The current research explored the complex phenomenon of organizational play by synthesizing and re-organizing the scholarly literature about the topic. The present paper highlights definitional questions and introduces the emerged theoretical streams as well as the integral model of organizational play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates three storytelling arts as spaces of narrative play: theatre, film and narrative-based gaming. It traces the lineage from Oedipus Rex and early tragic theatre to Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope, followed by The Walking Dead Telltale Games series, relating how each text presents protagonists who are marked as criminal from the opening of the narrative. Rope and The Walking Dead both work from the prophetic prototype developed in the Oedipus myth and use reflexive engagement with their own storytelling practices to ask open questions of stigma, sexuality, ethnicity and problems in the ongoing negotiation of play as both a coping strategy for social and legal marginalisation, and a safe space for interrogating our precognitive moral intuitions and biases. All play is fragile, and serious consequence always threatens the boundaries of Huizinga's 'magic circle' of play; this means that play statuses must be consistently negotiated and updated by those participating, a concept I refer to as 'the invitation to play'. This article explores how storytellers navigate such distinctions in asking participants to reflexively consider the boundaries of consequence in the narrative arts and in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we sketch up an action research process designed to give voice to those who traditionally have not had a voice in organizations. In particular, the research process was structured around “serious play” and designed as a talk show, where researchers played parts, including a talk show host, and where questions pertaining to organizational life were discussed in depth. The structure of the discussion was construed based on reflective teams, i.e., two actors performing a dialogue (talk show host and guest) and a silent group (audience) as listeners. The key research question concerns in what ways such an action research process is replicable? Applying a critical lens, we argue that even if strong claims of replicability are not met, as in being able to reproduce results and/or generalize them, this is outside the point. Rather, as we set out to apply a qualitative research design to achieve cogenerative learning effects, we advance an understanding of replicability-as-recoverability. This entails giving explicit grounds for our epistemic anchoring in critical realism and sketching out a research design which is sufficiently clear and transparent to undergo critical scrutiny.

The authors discuss Mind the Five, a participatory card game to help increase awareness of privacy protections of undocumented migrants and other vulnerable populations. Mind the Five and other participatory games can be used in public libraries and small humanitarian organizations to promote safe and engaging information spaces for migrants and refugees. Participatory games provide a supportive and unique approach to building safe spaces that allow participants to discuss and engage with issues on a personal level in a fun and creative way. Combined with other active learning experiences, such as participatory photography and co-design activities, Mind the Five is an educational tool to help bring stronger awareness of the vulnerabilities of undocumented migrants, and to encourage information practices that better protect the privacy of migrants and other vulnerable populations.

In this article, we sketch up an action research process designed to give voice to those who traditionally have not had a voice in organizations. In particular, the research process was structured around "serious play" and designed as a talk show, where researchers played parts, including a talk show host, and where questions pertaining to organizational life were discussed in depth. The structure of the discussion was construed based on reflective teams, i.e., two actors performing a dialogue (talk show host and guest) and a silent group (audience) as listeners. The key research question concerns in what ways such an action research process is replicable? Applying a critical lens, we argue that even if strong claims of replicability are not met, as in being able to reproduce results and/or generalize them, this is outside the point. Rather, as we set out to apply a qualitative research design to achieve cogenerative learning effects, we advance an understanding of replicability-as-recoverability. This entails giving explicit grounds for our epistemic anchoring in critical realism and sketching out a research design which is sufficiently clear and transparent to undergo critical scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although innovation laboratories offer creative and distinct physical spaces for mediating and directing innovation processes, research on their applicability for co-creative learning during serious play, particularly through Lego Serious Play (LSP) workshops remains limited. Previous studies suggest that serious play workshops tend to focus on scenarios, problem solving and reflective processes, with limited considerations for joint co-creation and learning potentials within innovation laboratories. Motivated by the creative prospects of metaphoric representations and shared stories, this study explores the possibilities of harnessing LSP for co-creative learning in innovation laboratories. This case study draws theoretical insights and practical relevance from a co-creative learning workshop involving three learning scenarios within a Middle Eastern and emerging economy context. Findings from the workshop show variability in representations, interactions and reflections, shaping possibilities for co-creative learning in innovation laboratories. Representations focus on systems, solutions and problems during fragmented, model-supported, model-mediated and integrated interactions that underpin a range of instance-based, variance-based, convergence-based and divergence-based reflections. These insights contribute to co-creation literature that views value creation as an amalgamation of open, collaborative and user innovation. The study concludes by discussing its theoretical implications, practical applications, and methodological limitations, which serve as the basis for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the term gamification has its origin in unforgettable times, when people achieved goals through games, currently this technique has become one of the most used in this global and digital society. From a deterministic perspective, gamification allows users to obtain results based on the objectives set, thanks to three fundamental factors: (i) the creation of a consistent user experience; (ii) the achievement of challenges; and (iii) reward and growth. Gamification is a creative and multidisciplinary technique, which also presents a series of substantial advantages for today's society, such as, for example, the possibility of acquiring skills demanded by a society increasingly aware of fundamental issues such as gender equality, environmental conservation or community development. Through the review of the scientific literature on gamification in the social sciences and the technique of correlational study, this article develops a theoretical framework so that, through the elements of gamification, any subject can acquire and develop the social skills necessary and demanded in today's society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair Battles is a 12-week Swiss education for social justice program with the goal of sensitizing high school students about the impact of their consumer habits on society. The pedagogical concept of Fair Battles is to employ the tool of serious play to enhance students’ social empathy, which then leads to service learning projects. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the impact of the program by using pre- and post-program student surveys (n=16) and post program semi-structured qualitative student interviews (n=10). The survey data were analyzed using SPSS and the interview data were analyzed using template analysis. The results were organized according to Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation model. The quantitative results show a statistically significant increase in the post-program survey scores for the learning and behavior level. The qualitative results suggest that the program had a positive impact on students on all four of Kirkpatrick’s levels. The conclusions are that the Fair Battels program is impactful, that social justice education needs to be holistic and that the combination of serious play and service learning elements seems to be effective for social justice education. Further research in the area of social justice education and serious play is recommended

Escape-SG is a simulator project inspired by serious games. It will immerse the trainees in realistic situations of potentially major crises requiring the evacuation of populations. Developed for and with crisis management actors, these scenarios will aim to assess their knowledge of procedures, improve their interaction and communication skills within crisis cells and prepare them to manage major events that may involve massive population displacement. Developed to operate on a touch table, this simulator will be integrated into crisis management simulation rooms where it will make an important contribution considering complex social dynamics in the scenarios proposed.

In fashion design, pedagogy balancing a strong technical foundation with a more disruptive attitude during the ideation and development procedures provides the potential for diverse, emergent, aesthetically and critically poignant outputs. The ultimate goal in this is to offer a learning environment that is inclusive and accesses dormant design curiosity, also, as a teacher, to devise methods that will lead to discovering a personal and distinct aesthetic vocabulary. 'Ratio', 'resize', 'repeat', 'reduce', 'remix' and 'rearrange' are the 6Rs that can challenge the creative design process and reprogramme the design brain into unearthing radical new forms, concepts and aesthetics. This article will address the established literature on the ways of nurturing creative thinking as it supports the methodology of serious play directed by the 6R terms to exercise ideation generation in fashion education. This discussion will be evidenced with a case study to show that the 6Rs can successfully introduce and/or expand creative thinking in fashion design processes. The aim of this is to provide students with tools, habits and tasks that empower a creative mindset when approaching the early conceptual and compositional stages of garment development, while also addressing the tutor's role in establishing and exemplifying a creative ethos that is integral to initiating these methods and pedagogy. Most importantly, this approach is fundamentally driven by the need to invest in a more diverse student body to potentially reach unnoticed and less privileged fashion talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the idea of evaluating a Ludopedagogy sequence, it is necessary to have a systematic evaluative model taking into account different parameters: context, learner, useful dimensions, interactions, interactivities... It is in this dynamic that we proposed the CEPAJe model which proposes to cross five dimensions: the context, the teacher, the educational scenario, the learner and the game. In order to illustrate the use of the CEPAJe model, this article proposes to review three concrete examples of serious play activity. These reviews will also allow us to test the model in order to improve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current design practice is as much about understanding behaviour and culture as it is about material intelligence. Relevant, effective design is about working with people rather than for people. As we acknowledge this paradigm, we also recognize the need to better understand our individual selves to better understand others. This article details the affective pedagogy behind the Transforming Mindsets studio, which directly addresses explicit teaching of intrapersonal skills in learning to design with others in authentic inquiry-based assessment. This empirical educational study utilized observational data, self-reporting tools, interviews and a six-month followup interview with students to observe how risk plays a role in shifting learning mindsets. Students reported that the experimental studio changed their relationship with learning, strengthened their willingness to take risks and improved the quality of their collaborations. However, post-studio interviews revealed the challenge of integrating intrapersonal skills and practices into future learning contexts. This article proposes the importance of design education considering not just how the designer creates but also how the designer acts and becomes in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, I interrogate the phenomenological experience of enchantment as a playful sign process. Arguing against the Weberian notion that we are living in a "disenchanted world," I aim to reveal how the existing contours of enchantment's sign condition have significantly morphed in America, however, given our current distracting media-saturated environments. I begin by discussing enchantment as a form or habit of play, drawing specifically from the works of semiotician, Charles S. Peirce, and cultural historian, Johan Huizinga. We discover that enchantments take primarily two forms depending upon the interpretants we communicatively construct: one is indicative of what Peirce describes as a play of musement and the other is a result of what I call the play of amusement. The former is vital for human learning at higher orders of abstraction, growth, and positive ethical relations with others. The latter typically produces a bad ambiguity that eventually leads to an inability to discriminate or assess the relevance of perceived information and events. This form of play also often jeopardizes our relations with others given its primary focus on the self. Through this interrogation, we discover that our current enchantments or habits of play have serious epistemological consequences for cultural life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions educational practices that undermine 'being' musical. Where Western misconceptions about the nature of human musicality distance many individuals from meaningful engagement with an intrinsic part of their humanity, I challenge the status quo to argue for an inclusive educational practice which gives everyone an opportunity to 'be' musical. Despite evidence from neuroscience now supporting the understanding that humans are a musical species, the widespread neo-liberal oriented focus on vocational training fails to recognise music as an essential aspect of healthy human being. Where current polarised music education provision supports a discriminatory system that leads to widespread underdeveloped musicality, I draw on Gadamer and Dewey to explore how musicking integrates cultural development and to question the value of a practice that leaves many of us musically disabled. Including examples of teaching practices that engage and transform, I argue the case for an enriched, broader curriculum that no longer sees music as a 'frill'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies open new windows for ethnographic explorations of cultural experiences. In this paper, we examine text messaging among academically talented teenage girls of colour at three US urban high schools. Texting introduced a new communication modality into the girls’ lives and created a space for new discourses mediating their participation in school. We draw on the concept of ‘serious play’ to reveal the paradoxical nature of the girls’ texting. At each school, distinct text-messaged discourses emerged – with implications for ethnographic studies of discourse and young people’s commitments to schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the relationships between young punk and indie musicians and the merchandise that they produce. Three interlinking analytic distinctions are made in this article of the young musicians' motivations to make merchandise: building symbolic capital; building economic capital; and serious play. We propose that DIY merchandising entails the construction of an ethical and authentic self through the social gravity of a deeply invested illusio. The research takes place in the DIY music scene of Newcastle, a large regional town on the east coast of Australia. The participants play in punk and indie bands; however, there is a diversity of merchandising practices within the group, highlighting the fluid and complex boundaries of contemporary punk practices. The forms of experimentation, negotiation and strategy encountered illustrate how these meaningful forms of labour are important to struggles about identity and authenticity. Developing and honing merchandise-related skills as a form of 'serious play' has facilitated pathways towards self-employment for several of the participants. For this reason, this article draws attention to the diverse applications for expertise in merchandising, manifesting not only in the music scene but in various fields of social life. These circumstances illustrate interesting sociological developments in youth music scenes regarding music-related practices, employment transitions, labour and the transferring of capitals. The social relationships involved in merchandising are analytically explored using a Bourdieusian framework that considers punk as a social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulation, serious gaming, learning, learning cycle, games, play, education, serious play Keywords: simulation; serious gaming; games; learning; learning cycle; play; serious play; education EN simulation serious gaming games learning learning cycle play serious play education 3 4 2 02/03/23 20230201 NES 230201 Dear readers and authors of Simulation and Gaming, Belated greeting for a New Year of 2023 from your editors! She is the former president of the Dutch Society for Simulation in Healthcare (DSSH), longtime member of SSH (Society for Simulation in Healthcare) and SESAM (European Society for Simulation) and president of the WATCH society (wearable technology in healthcare). [Extracted from the article]

Fair Battles is a 12-week Swiss education for social justice program with the goal of sensitizing high school students about the impact of their consumer habits on society. The pedagogical concept of Fair Battles is to employ the tool of serious play to enhance students' social empathy, which then leads to service learning projects. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the impact of the program by using pre- and post-program student surveys (n=16) and post program semi-structured qualitative student interviews (n=10). The survey data were analyzed using SPSS and the interview data were analyzed using template analysis. The results were organized according to Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation model. The quantitative results show a statistically significant increase in the post-program survey scores for the learning and behavior level. The qualitative results suggest that the program had a positive impact on students on all four of Kirkpatrick's levels. The conclusions are that the Fair Battels program is impactful, that social justice education needs to be holistic and that the combination of serious play and service learning elements seems to be effective for social justice education. Further research in the area of social justice education and serious play is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se presentan los resultados obtenidos en el desarrollo de un proceso de solución de problemas, teniendo cono herramienta de trabajo el LEGO Serious Play (LSP). Esta actividad se realizó con estudiantes de primer semestre de la facultad de Administración de Empresas, de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Bucaramanga(UPB). Cada grupo se dividió en dos. Con uno de ellos de utilizó el LSP, con el otro se trabajó con una metodología tradicional. El análisis de los resultados, permitió dar cuenta que el trabajo con el LSP generó mayor cantidad de situaciones problemáticas y de solución, que los del modelo tradicional. Los resultados obtenidos representan un valor importante, pues hasta ahora se conocía acerca de la utilización de esta metodología en ámbitos académicos para la enseñanza.

n this study, we examine what and how intermediate age students learned from playing in a health-focused game-based digital learning environment, Epidemic. Epidemic is a playful interactive environment designed to deliver factual knowledge, invite critical understanding, and encourage effective self-care practices in dealing with viral contagious diseases, using a social networking interface to integrate both serious games and game-like multimodal design projects. Epidemic invites a playful approach to its deadly serious core concern – communicable disease – in order to see what happens when students are encouraged to critically approach information from multiple or contradictory perspectives. To identify what participants learned while interacting within Epidemic, we deployed two instructional and assessment models, noting the differences each instructional approach could potentially make, and what approach to assessment might help us evaluate game-based learning. We found that each approach provided importantly different perspectives on what and how students learned, and on the very meaning of student success. Recognizing that traditional assessment tools based in print-cultural literacy may prove increasingly ill-suited for assessing emergent multimodal literacies in game-based learning environments, this study seeks to contribute to a growing body of work on the development of novel assessments for learning.

Although the research on how to develop strategic preparedness, or resilience, has generated a great deal of interest among organizational theorists, many of the empirical studies conducted share important methodological limitations. When investigating how educational experiences boosting the participants’ capacities to learn, adapt, and apply can create sustainable value for organizations – be it non-profit-organizations or international enterprises – it becomes obvious that applied systematic creativity like playful construction, improvisation, and imagination, as well as making use of design thinking approaches, will benefit the organizations’ strategic preparedness for future scenarios.The first chapter will be on a relevant framework and the theories which fuel the value of playful and design-led approaches when it comes to corporate strategy, service development, and team identity. The framework will be illustrated in the second chapter with a proven approach designed for this very purpose. The third chapter will reflect on how to utilize this approach for teaching purposes and will elaborate on a draft for educators who want to move in this direction.