Dario La Guardia

An Agent Based Methodology to Design Serious Game in Social Field

Training and simulation games are a type of serious game that allow learners to deal with realistic scenarios, to test their behavior under controlled conditions and to increase their understanding of the simulated system/process. In these games, the educational goal changes the issues related to the simulation design. In particular, achieving right balance between realism and teaching effectiveness is an essential design criterion. The difficulties in designing this type of serious games are particularly evident in the social field. In fact, this area is characterized by a complexity that is hard to design in formal terms. Starting from recent evolutions in the field of social simulation, this paper proposes the agent paradigm as a methodological tool to guide the design of serious games in the social field. The PNPV game, designed within the framework of the European project “I can … I cannot … I go!” Rev. 2 (PNPV project), which aims to introduce and foster an entrepreneurial mindset among young people, is described as a case study of a serious game developed by means of the agent based approach.

Move Your Mind: Creative Dancing Humanoids as Support to STEAM Activities

Educational activities based on dance can support interest in comprehension of concepts from maths, geometry, physics, bio-mechanics and computational thinking. In this work, we discuss a possible use of a dancing humanoid robot as an innovative technology to support and enhance STEAM learning activities.

Improving Spatial Reasoning by Interacting with a Humanoid Robot

This paper analyzes the connection between spatial reasoning and STEM education from the point of view of embodied theories of cognition. A new learning model based on the use of a humanoid robot is presented with the aim of teaching and learning basic STEM concepts in a fruitful and engaging fashion.

Real: educational resources for astromomy laboratories

Un ambiente online per la didattica dell’astronomia e per avvicinare la cittadinanza alle tematiche della ricerca scientifica

A Semantic Frame Approach to Support Serious Game Design

This paper proposes a methodological framework to support the design of educational games based on a semantic frame analysis. Starting from a Frame Semantics point of view, the authors provide a deepen analysis of game mechanics definitions using the key concept of verb. To demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model an example is reported to illustrate how we can explicit the game mechanics used in a management/construction game by means of FrameNet and WordNet ontologies.

FOSTERING AN ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

Entrepreneurship Education (EE) represents a challenge for education systems across Europe and in particular for Italy, where EE is largely confined to technical and vocational studies. Introducing EE in the general secondary school curriculum means focusing on the development of skills and abilities now deemed an essential part of what is termed the “entrepreneurial mindset”. This in turn requires the adoption of teaching methodologies suitable for fostering those essential capabilities. Indeed, EE stretches beyond the acquisition of specific knowledge, encompassing efforts to make students active participants in their own learning, career path and life in general. This paper describes an EE training model defined within the European project “I can...I cannot...I go! Rev. 2”, funded by the Leonardo da Vinci Programme - Transfer of Innovation. It reports initial qualitative evaluation of the trial phase conducted with fourth-year students attending a technical school for tourism in Palermo.