Andreea Molnar

On Effective Integration of Educational Content in Serious Games: Text vs. Game Mechanics

As serious games are emerging as a new educational paradigm, it is increasingly important to understand how to integrate educational content into the games, and what elements of the game make learning more effective. This research proposes to add to the work in the area by examining whether learning objectives delivered through the game narratives as text, or learning objectives delivered through game mechanics provide a more effective way of integrating educational content in a game. In order to investigate this question, we designed a study to evaluate two types of participants that were divided into two groups to take part in complementary versions of the game. Participants are asked to play a game in which learning objectives are delivered either through text or game mechanics. An evaluation was performed with 60 participants. The results show that for one of the learning objectives, the participants learn more when the educational content was integrated through the game mechanics and that the difference between the group that learns through text and the one that learned through the game mechanics is statistically significant. For the rest of the learning objectives covered, no statistically significant difference was obtained between the two ways of integrating the learning objectives.

Defining Key Performance Indicators for Evaluating the Use of High Definition Video-to-Video Services in eHealth

This paper examines the process of developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluating the use of high definition video (HD) to video (V2V) communication for tele-monitoring patients in a healthcare setting. The research is performed in the context of the European Commission funded LiveCity project and uses as a case study the monitoring of glaucoma patients using V2V technology. Initially, a set of KPIs are defined for V2V use in eHealth services based on literature and secondary research and these KPIs are then refined based on interviews with medical staff involved in the treatment of glaucoma patients. The obtained KPIs are used to analyse the potential of using V2V services in the context of tele-monitoring glaucoma patients.

A framework of reference for evaluating user experience when using high definition video to video to facilitate public services

This paper proposes the use of high definition video to video as a means to facilitate the adoption of public services. High definition video can be delivered over the public Internet infrastructure by using a Right of Way platform that guarantees no interference from unwanted traffic. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of using high definition video to video communication in the public sector to facilitate services such as health, education and city experience/administration. Drawing from the dominant theories on Information Communication Technology we then propose a framework of reference to evaluate user experience of such services based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (Venkatesh et al., 2012), the Information Systems success model (DeLone & McLean, 1992) and inclusion of the perception on information privacy.