Adelina Aleksieva-Petrova

Playing styles based on experiential learning theory

Abstract In recent years, researchers have reported positive outcomes and effects from applying computer games to the educational process. The preconditions for an effective game-based learning process include the presence of high learning interest and the desire to study hard. Therefore, educational video game design has to tailor gameplay to the style of the playing learner, i.e. to the psycho-cognitive abilities, attitudes, and skills of the individual player, in order to foster the players motivation and creativity. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to draw a parallel between learning styles and styles of playing video games, and to investigate the correlations between these types of constructs. The article presents a new family of playing styles based on Kolbs experiential learning theory that is appropriate to be used for educational video games. This family is composed of four playing styles: Competitor, Dreamer, Logician, and Strategist, and corresponds to Honey and Mumfords learning styles based also on the theory of experiential learning, namely Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist. To measure the four playing styles, a 40-item questionnaire was designed. In order to verify the consistency, validity, and reliability of that questionnaire as an accurate tool for recognizing the four suggested player styles, a pilot study was conducted. The article reports the results obtained from the study, along with their analysis and applicability.

Agent-Based Grid Resource Management

Grid technology and grid computing appear to be potentially the next generation platforms for solving large problems in science and engineering. Grid resource management is a main activity, which largely affects the productivity of the Grid environment. The main problem is how to manage millions of heterogeneous resources that are distributed across multiple organizations and administrative areas. In order to solve this problem and increase the efficiency of the available resources, a method is proposed for scheduling resources in a Grid. The method combines metaheuristics iterative local search forward algorithm for timetable and uses auction for conflicting resources.

Grid resource management using lottery scheduling

The GRID infrastructure provides an aggregation of a wide variety of distributed resources for solving large-scale data intensive problems in various fields. The aim of this paper is to propose a method for grid resource management based on lottery scheduling. The lottery scheduling algorithm is implemented as an extension of GridSim simulator that integrates an additional strategy for planning and resource management.

ADOPTA model of learmer and educational game structure

Beside commercial games there are so-called educational games. When the main purpose of the game is to educate - then it is called educational game. In that kind of games the main focus of modelling is on design of learning elements around given educational course or around existing real-world educational curriculum. Educational games employed large variety of genres and it is difficult to be classified purely in one style, and often game is combination of different styles. For successful adaptive learning with game elements is necessary to research and specify different gaming styles, mapped to learning styles. This paper proposes a model of so called learmer (learner mapped with gamer style) and model of the educational game structures using and identifying the objects which are relevant for the domain of study and describing connecting relationships among these objects.