Francesca Maria Dagnino

Designing a Course for Stimulating Entrepreneurship in Higher Education through Serious Games

Enhancing the offer for entrepreneurship education is an important challenge for the nowadays knowledge societies. The eSG project is addressing this issue by analysing the added value that could be contributed by employing serious games (SGs) as a tool for allowing students – in particular technology students - to become familiar, mainly through practice, with basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company management. This paper presents the main requirements for the course and SGs obtained by surveying literature, entrepreneurs, students and teachers. We represented the requirements in a table template keeping into account usability, pedagogy, the entrepreneurship skills expressed by state of the art models and three major axes for entrepreneurship education at universities. These table descriptors were then used to assess validity of SGs and choose an appropriate mix for the courses. We have also defined a set of metrics to evaluate the advancement of students during the course. Based on these tools and knowledge, the next steps of the project will involve extensive user testing in the actual courses that are being performed in Genoa, Delft and Barcelona.

Intangible Cultural Heritage

In the i-Treasures project educational paths have been created collaboratively by a group of experts.The adoption of new technologies for education in the ICH field is a novelty.The i-Treasures project aims to integrate new technologies and tradition.Pedagogical planning allows to design, describe and re-use educational paths.Pedagogical plans are aimed at supporting ICH transmission. The paper discusses how to design innovative educational interventions in the field of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). This field is peculiar, as it is characterized by the urgency to preserve and disseminate some of the most peculiar intangible artistic expressions, especially those at risk of disappearing; so far these cultural expressions have been passed down mainly through imitation and oral tradition, so now technologies can play a role in fostering their preservation and documentation. Drawing on the discussion held in recent years in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), the paper describes a web-based tool aimed to support the collaborative design and planning of innovative ICT-based learning/teaching activities in ICH education. While providing an overview of the main functionalities of such a tool, the paper solicits some reflections on how TEL approaches, techniques and tools can fruitfully be employed to sustain ICH education.

Serious games and the development of an entrepreneurial mindset in higher education engineering students

Abstract The paper discusses adoption of Serious Games (SGs) for supporting development of an entrepreneurial mindset in university students of technical and scientific universities. The paper relies on the authors experience in the eSG project, which aims at introducing students, mainly through practice, to basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company management. In the framework of the project, courses have been designed and carried out in three different countries: Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. The paper discusses the main requirements for the courses and presents a table template, based on state of the art models for entrepreneurship education, that we have used for the scouting of the most suited SGs and defining the most appropriate mix for their use in the courses, keeping into account targeted competences and skills, usability and pedagogical effectiveness. Using the template, the paper draws a comprehensive overview of relevant SGs available on the market and identifies, through an expert analysis, key benefits and issues concerning their adoption in teaching entrepreneurship for the target students. Finally, the paper critically analyzes the state of the art, indicating directions for future research that should lead to development of more effective SGs for entrepreneurship education.

Innovative technologies for intangible cultural heritage education and preservation: the case of i-Treasures

The recent technological development has opened up innovative scenarios in the field of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) education and preservation. Main aim of this paper is to present a study, whose objective was to investigate whether and to what extent technologies can play a role in the ICH preservation and education. The study was conducted in the context of i-Treasures, a project funded by the European Community. During the project, a platform has been created, which provides different types of services that can meet the demands of different types of users in the ICH education domain. In the paper, the process followed for the implementation of such platform is described, starting from the analysis of the user needs, down to the development of the various innovative features. These encompass not only informative functionalities but—even more importantly—features allowing sensorimotor learning experiences for the user, who—by wearing innovative sensors—can practice rare forms of dancing or singing and get feedback about the correctness of the performance. The paper presents the methodology and findings of the user evaluation and then points out the main strong points and weaknesses of using innovative technologies in the ICH preservation and education.

Tecnologie, formazione e didattica

Review of the book L. Messina & M. De Rossi (2015). Tecnologie, formazione e didattica. Roma, IT: Carocci

A gamified collaborative course in entrepreneurship

The paper deals with three gamified collaborative courses for entrepreneurship education (EE).A theoretical model for EE, developed on purpose, guided the identification of the objectives.The Serious Games (SGs) to be adopted during the courses have been selected based on the model.Courses outcomes and knowledge acquired could lead to developing of more effective SGs for (EE). The paper deals with the hot issue of entrepreneurship education and describes the rationale behind the gamified and collaborative courses for university students conceived, developed and deployed in the framework of the eSG (stimulating entrepreneurship through Serious Games) project, funded under the EU lifelong learning (LLP) Programme. The project aims to help students becoming familiar, mainly through practice, with basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company management and to stimulate the emergence of their entrepreneurial attitudes. In the framework of the project specific courses mainly grounded on the concepts of gamification and collaboration were designed and carried out in three different partner countries: Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. The main objectives of the courses are presented in this paper and a theoretical model supporting the choice of Serious Games is shown which keeps into account usability, pedagogy and the entrepreneurship skills expressed by state of the art models.

Designing Serious Games for ICH education.

The paper presents the experience matured in the i-Treasures project, in which 3D game-like applications were designed and developed with the aim of providing innovative tools for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) education. The decision to develop Serious Games grounded on the specific learning needs linked to the nature of the ICH considered (dances, craftsmanship, singing expressions, etc.) and to the benefits that the research in Games Based Learning has pointed out regarding the use of games with educational purposes. In the paper, the i-Treasures game-like applications are described, with particular attention to the design and developmental process that was carried out with the involvement of a multidisciplinary team. In the game development, a huge effort was put into making the most of the benefits of games; these aspects will be discussed and highlighted. The difficulties met will be discussed as well, so as to provide a clear idea about the process and the issues encountered.

Immersion’s Impact on Performance in a Spatial Reasoning Task

The present paper presents the results of a first experiment aimed at assessing if different levels of immersion can affect performance in a Spatial Perspective Taking (SPT) task. Since SPT is an embodied skill, the hypothesis was that the more immersive a tool is, the better the performance should be. Ninety-eight students from a local primary school have played with three different versions of a game: immersive using a Head Mounted Display, semi immersive played on a computer screen and non-immersive in which no movement was possible for the player. Results do not support the initial hypothesis: no significant impact from the immersion level has been found on performance.

Widening Access to Intangible Cultural Heritage: towards the Development of an Innovative Platform

The paper discusses around Human Computer Interaction aspects of advanced learning systems. It underlines the added value (in terms of widening the learning possibilities and enhancing the learning experience) of designing the system itself only after having carefully taken into account the users’ requirements regulating the interactions between the learners and the technological environments. In doing so, it offers the view of what has been done in the EU project i-Treasures, which focuses on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHs) and investigates whether and to what extent new technology can play a role in widening the access to the underpinning rare know-how, and possibly sustaining its transmission / passing down to next generations. The project can be regarded as exemplar since it instantiates a very peculiar situation where HCI aspects are deeply affected by the fact that the i-Treasures technological system foresees the massive use of cutting edge sensors.

Going Beyond Preservation: How to Support Technology-Enhanced Learning in ICH Education

The issue of protection and promotion of cultural heritage has become a central topic of European and international cultural policy, especially in recent decades. Beside more ‘tangible’ cultural manifestations (like archaeological sites, natural parks or museum collections) there is a huge heritage, made up of intangible live expressions like performing arts, social practices, oral traditions, etc. which is threatened by the globalization process. The i-Treasures project looks at some of these intangible cultural expressions with the aim not only of preserving them, but also of providing innovative solutions to education in this field. In order to do this, the project explores the potential of cutting edge technologies for capturing the specificities of the considered Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) expressions, analyzing and modeling data and making these resources available for preservation, research and educational purposes. With this aim an open and extendable platform is developed in the project f...