Ioannis Paliokas

The Use of Serious Games in Museum Visits and Exhibitions: A Systematic Mapping Study

Serious Games (SGs) have been widely adopted in cultural settings and museums, especially the last five years. It is expected that SG can link directly the museum content with target user groups and can fulfill their educational needs. This paper aims to present a systematic mapping study on modern museum gaming technologies and applications. More specifically, focus is given on the use of Serious Games (SGs) by the visitors during exhibition navigation and exploration of museums cultural and educational content. Major analysis criteria and review findings include game goals, purpose of use, scope, user acceptance and educational effectiveness. A pool of 48 quality literature publications were set under examination. It was found that most solutions were game-based than play-based and that both genres had educational benefits on offer. Also, the frequency of relevant publications per year was increasing from year 2009 up to 2015. Regarding scope, studied applications were split almost equally among education, culture and arts, while the overwhelming majority were targeted to the general public and not teachers, students or parents specifically. Those findings are of particular importance for museum curators, digital cultural content creators, pedagogical engineers and museum interface designers.

Exploring the educational impact of diverse technologies in online virtual museums

This research explores the learning outcomes of online virtual museums employing diverse technologies such as images, videos, 3D reconstructions, etc. It presents the selection criteria (imageability, interactivity, navigability, personalisation, communication) of the five online virtual museums (VMs) involved in the analysis, each of which brings forward a prominent visualisation technology. Then, it describes the methodology of the evaluation process, in which a group of 164 (n = 164) participants, after exploration of the virtual museum websites, answered a self-administered questionnaire including 12 questions based on the concept of generic learning outcomes: a) knowledge and understanding; b) skills; c) change in attitude and values; d) enjoyment, inspiration and creativity; e) action, behaviour and progression. The results of a statistical analysis investigating the educational impact of each VM are analysed. The potential educational advantage of incorporating complex 3D reconstructions in a VM is questioned. A new methodology for analysing VMs is required. This paper contributes to the understanding of the educational impact of VMs in relation to their underlying technology and human computer interaction (HCI) features. Therefore, conclusions have a wider impact and can be generalised to be relevant even after design changes of the VMs selected for the evaluation.

Sense of Presence and Metacognition Enhancement in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy in the Treatment of Social Phobias and the Fear of Flying

The aim of this research effort is to identify feeling-of-presence and metacognitive amplifiers over existing well-established VRET treatment methods. Patient real time projection in virtual environments during stimuli exposure and electroencephalographyi¾?EEG report sharing are among the techniques, which have been used to achieve the desired result. Initialized from theoretical inferences, is moving towards a proof-of-concept prototype, which has been developed as a realization of the proposed method. The evaluation of the prototype made possible with an expert team of 28 therapists testing the fear of public speaking and fear of flying case studies.

A Gamification Engine Architecture for Enhancing Behavioral Change Support Systems

This paper presents a gamified framework designed to offer behavioural change support and treatment adherence services to people living with Dementia (PLWD), their caregivers and medical/social professionals. A flexible and scalable ICT solution architecture was proposed to support highly personalized and gamified services for all groups involved: cognitive skills training and independent living for PLWD, training and support for caregivers and high clinical and social services for professionals. The outcomes of this approach are delivered through a set of gamification concepts running in parallel to create motivation for user commitment and for achieving the desired behavioral change. After projecting all user group expectations on a social game canvas, the impact evaluation will assess the intended effects of the proposed gamification approach on the welfare on PLWD and their caregivers.

Two examples of online eHealth platforms for supporting people living with cognitive impairments and their caregivers

This paper compares two methodological approaches derived from the EU Horizon 2020 funded projects CAREGIVERSPROMMD (C-MMD)1 and ICT4LIFE2. Both approaches were initiated in 2016 with the ambition to provide new integrated care services to people living with cognitive impairments, including Dementia, Alzheimer and Parkinson disease, as well as to their home caregivers towards a long-term increase in quality of life and autonomy at home. An outline of the disparities and similarities related to non-pharmacological interventions introduced by the two projects to foster treatment adherence was made. Both approaches have developed software solutions, including social platforms, notifications, Serious Games, user monitoring and support services aimed at developing the concepts of self-care, active patients and integrated care. Besides their differences, both projects can be benefited by knowledge and technology exchange, pilot results sharing and possible users exchange if possible in the near future.

Designing a gamified social platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers

In the current paper, a social gamified platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers, integrating a broader diagnostic approach and interactive interventions is presented. The CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD (C-MMD) platform constitutes a support tool for the patient and the informal caregiver - also referred to as the dyad - that strengthens self-care, and builds community capacity and engagement at the point of care. The platform is implemented to improve social collaboration, adherence to treatment guidelines through gamification, recognition of progress indicators and measures to guide management of patients with dementia, and strategies and tools to improve treatment interventions and medication adherence. Moreover, particular attention was provided on guidelines, considerations and user requirements for the design of a User-Centered Design (UCD) platform. The design of the platform has been based on a deep understanding of users, tasks and contexts in order to improve platform usability, and provide adaptive and intuitive User Interfaces with high accessibility. In this paper, the architecture and services of the C-MMD platform are presented, and specifically the gamification aspects.

Health Recommender System design in the context of CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD Project

CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD an EU H2020 funded project aims to build a digital platform focusing on people living with dementia and their caregivers, offering a selection of advanced, individually tailored services enabling them to live well in the community for as long as possible. This paper provides an outline of a health recommender system designed in the context of the project to provide tailored interventions to caregivers and people living with dementia.

Design of novel screening environments for mild cognitive impairment: giving priority to elicited speech and language abilities

Recent cognitive decline screening batteries have highlighted the importance of language deficits related to semantic knowledge breakdown to reveal the incipient dementia. This paper proposes the introduction of novel enriched linguistic tests and examines the hypothesis that language can be a sensitive cognitive measure for Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). A group of MCI and healthy elderly were administered a set of proposed linguistic tests. Performance measures were made on both groups to indicate that concrete verbal production deficits such as impaired verb fluency can distinguish the MCI from normal aging. In addition, it was found that even in cases where the MCI subjects preserved scores, language tests took significantly more time compared to healthy controls. These findings indicate that language could be a sensitive cognitive marker in preclinical stages of MCI.

Study of EEG Power Fluctuations Enhanced by Linguistic Stimulus for Cognitive Decline Screening

Relative Electroencephalography (EEG) power can reflect cognitive decline and play a critical diagnostic role for dementia onset. The current paper investigates power changes in EEG channels on elderly people having Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) during a linguistic test. The main objective was to identify patterns in EEG power changes during a linguistically enriched cognitive assessment test which involved working memory abilities, selective attention and perception. Groups of MCI, demented and healthy controls were recruited to take part in an experiment. It was found that MCI and demented patients showed significantly different patterns in delta and theta frequency bands during the linguistic tasks. Results are valuable in the study of the way brain processes linguistic information in people with cognitive impairment and in screening assessment procedures.