Claudia Ribeiro

An update to the systematic literature review of empirical evidence of the impacts and outcomes of computer games and serious games

Continuing interest in digital games indicated that it would be useful to update Connolly et al.s (2012) systematic literature review of empirical evidence about the positive impacts and outcomes of games. Since a large number of papers was identified in the period from 2009 to 2014, the current review focused on 143 papers that provided higher quality evidence about the positive outcomes of games. Connolly et al.s multidimensional analysis of games and their outcomes provided a useful framework for organising the varied research in this area. The most frequently occurring outcome reported for games for learning was knowledge acquisition, while entertainment games addressed a broader range of affective, behaviour change, perceptual and cognitive and physiological outcomes. Games for learning were found across varied topics with STEM subjects and health the most popular. Future research on digital games would benefit from a systematic programme of experimental work, examining in detail which game features are most effective in promoting engagement and supporting learning. The current systematic literature review updates Author (date).The review looks at impacts and outcomes of playing digital games from 2009 to 2014.Multi-component coding of papers, games and learning outcomes was used.Many papers were found with 143 papers providing high quality evidence.Games for entertainment and learning addressed different outcomes.

iThink: A Game-Based Approach Towards Improving Collaboration and Participation in Requirement Elicitation☆

Abstract Requirements are the heart of Information Systems development because they determine how the system will operate. There- fore, requirements elicitation is a critical activity of the information systems development life cycle. Recognizing the im- portance of collaborative work and the huge difficulty of gathering stakeholders at the same time and place, researches have been proposing web collaborative tools to elicit requirements. In this article we present a game-based collaborative tool called iThink that aims at improving the participation in a requirement elicitation process. iThink takes advantage of the associa- tion between “gamification” concepts and the six hats of thinking method for collecting both new requirements and feedback about existing ones and for presenting the requirement elicitation process in a form of a collaborative game. Two case-studies, involving several stakeholders, are also presented with the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness and acceptance of this tool.

Gamifying requirement elicitation: Practical implications and outcomes in improving stakeholders collaboration ☆

Abstract The requirements engineering process is a key phase of the Information System development since it determines its functionalities and its operation. Before requirements can be analyzed, modeled, or specified they must be gathered through an elicitation process. Requirements elicitation is non-trivial because you can never be sure you get all requirements from the user or stakeholder by just asking them what the system should do. Requirements elicitation practices include interviews, questionnaires, user observation, workshops, brainstorming, use cases, role playing and prototyping. However, these common procedures are still prone to be ambiguous or incorrect which can lead the Information Systems to failure. It is consensual that one of the major problem of this activity relates to the communication and collaboration between different and distant stakeholders. Thus, recent studies have been proposing web collaborative tools to gather these stakeholders in order to elicit requirements. The paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness and acceptance of such a collaborative tool which was developed by using a gamification approach and the Six Thinking Hats method. The document also makes a discussion of the implication and outcomes of improving stakeholders collaboration.

Ancient document recognition Using Fuzzy Methods

This paper proposes an optical character recognition system based on fuzzy logic for ancient printed documents. The recognition process consists of two stages: training with collected character image examples and classification of new character images. The proposed OCR builds fuzzy membership functions from oriented features extracted using Gabor filter banks. Results on a significant test led to a character recognition success rate of 88%

Serious Games in Formal Medical Education: An Experimental Study

Medical knowledge has increased exponentially in the last decades. Healthcare professionals face a life- time challenge in medical education right from the beginning of medical school. They experience serious difficulties to keep updated. Traditional adult education, largely used in medical training, shows little effectiveness. Problem-based-learning has been proposed as a student-centred pedagogy to overcome failure of traditional medical instruction. A more recent trend is related to the use of serious games. Although, there are still few examples of serious games for medical education, the increased interest shown in the latest years shows that this is an important area and with a lot of potential to explore. In this paper we present the serious game Critical Transport, targeted at medical students with the aim to teach and train the recommendations for the transport of critically ill patients. This game was designed and validated with physicians of an academic hospital and tested during a formal class.

Old document recognition using fuzzy methods

This paper proposes an expert system based on fuzzy logic for optical character recognition of old printed documents. These documents can have some problems, such as distortion, poor printing quality, faded and misprinted characters, speckles and smudges. The recognition process consists of two stages: training with character image examples and classification of new character images. The proposed OCR builds fuzzy membership functions from oriented features extracted using Gabor filter banks. The proposed methodology is tested on three different books from the 17th century, written in Portuguese. The fuzzy recogniser presents a very high character recognition success rate, which confirms the advantage of using expert systems in image based decision systems.

3D Annotation in Contemporary Dance: Enhancing the Creation-Tool Video Annotator

Annotated videos have been used in the context of dance performance not only as a way to record and share compositions and knowledge between different choreographers, but also as a powerful learning tool. Restraining the viewpoint of the user to the recorded point of view can be an obstacle in several scenarios. Alternatives that introduce the concept of a three-dimensional space have been developed, but coming short either on the freedom of concepts that the user is able to introduce, or on resorting to a non-natural representation. This article describes a follow-up work on the previously developed Creation-Tool [2] extending the existing functionality to tackle this problem. The developed system places the 2D annotations onto a three-dimensional point cloud, captured by depth sensors coupled with cameras around the performance, thus enabling the user to freely visualize the annotated performance three-dimensionally at an arbitrary point of view.

Capturing and Documenting Creative Processes in Contemporary Dance

The performing arts, and dance in particular, have been considered as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO since 2003. This acknowledgement reflects the importance of preserving the knowledge generated within this art form for future generations. Nevertheless, what and how this sensible material should be preserved is still lacking clear methodological approaches. When considering creative processes, this seems an even more daunting task, as it goes beyond simply documenting the final product of a creation. Recent advancements in technology has allowed to consider other approaches of capturing data apart from video or photography, which are mostly static and have a single viewpoint. In this paper we describe how 3D data capture and point cloud visualization techniques have been used to capture and document João Fiadeiros choreographic and compositional processes. Together with Fiadeiro we have identified a sub-set of core concepts of his method which have then been used to conduct two improvisation sessions involving Fiadeiros dancers and himself. Those concepts have been used as the basis for the development of new visualization techniques that better illustrate, in an interactive system, the complexity of Fiadeiros creative process.

Creating Awareness of Emergency Departments Healthcare Values Using a Serious Game

The world in which medicine and healthcare institutions are managed is rapidly changing in complex and unpredictable ways. In periods of rapid change, highly adaptive organizations have competitive advantage. Therefore, training a modern, adaptive and high performing team is one of the keys to success. There is a growing body of evidence that Game-Based Learning can be highly successful in driving business results, and a variety of drivers are making it harder and harder to ignore as a candidate medium where deep and immersive learning needs to be delivered as is the case of healthcare management. In this paper we describe the Serious Game ImPROVE for training medical workers on the impacts of patient care quality and costs of different configurations of Emergency Department ED business processes.

Didactical Competence Modeller: Dynamic Story Creation for Serious Games

Traditionally, a driving goal of digital storytelling is the generation of dramatic stories with human significance, but for learning purposes, the need for drama is complemented by the requirement of achieving particular learning outcomes. This paper presents an interactive storytelling conceptual framework that supports the dynamic creation of stories based on predefined pedagogical goals. The approach is based on a hierarchical structure of plot pieces, denominated Narrative Building Blocks which, represent the elements that convey the story context as well as the roles and behaviours of each actor. In addition a case study is described where the concepts presented throughout the paper are applied and exemplified.