Lachlan MacKinnon

Learning Programming at the Computational Thinking Level via Digital Game-Play

This paper outlines an innovative game model for learning computational thinking (CT) skills through digital game-play. We have designed a game framework where students can practice and develop their skills in CT with little or no programming knowledge. We analyze how this game supports various CT concepts and how these concepts can be mapped to programming constructs to facilitate learning introductory computer programming. Moreover, we discuss the potential benefits of our approach as a support tool to foster student motivation and abilities in problem solving. As initial evaluation, we provide some analysis of feedback from a survey response group of 25 students who have played our game as a voluntary exercise. Structured empirical evaluation will follow, and the plan for that is briefly described.

Understanding Computational Thinking before Programming: Developing Guidelines for the Design of Games to Learn Introductory Programming through Game-Play

This paper outlines an innovative game-based approach to learning introductory programming that is grounded in the development of computational thinking at an abstract conceptual level, but also provides a direct contextual relationship between game-play and learning traditional introductory programming. The paper proposes a possible model for, and guidelines in support of, this games-based approach contextualized by an analysis of existing research into the issues of learning programming and game based learning approaches. Furthermore, the proposed game-based learning model focuses not only on procedural and applied knowledge and associated skills acquisition in computational thinking, but also provides contextualised theoretical knowledge on Computer Science concepts. By way of illustration, the authors introduce a game prototype currently being developed to combine a puzzle solving game-play that uses Computer Science concepts as the game elements.

Exploitation of games and virtual environments for e-learning

There has been a significant body of work in recent years in the development of e-learning tools and products. The main focus has been on models that are developed from the constructivist tradition, based on the notion that learners actively construct their own understanding and knowledge from their experiences. The topic of this paper is the possible future use of computer games technologies and games based narrative to support e-learning and as a tool for lifelong learning. Computer games metaphors and underpinning models are inherently constructivist, the gaming format is also chosen for its ability to engage. The gaming format also lends itself to support the known advantages of narrative from oral traditions and fits with the younger generations interest in current trends in the entertainment industry. The decision to adopt a game-based approach to the development of e-learning follows on from a survey of current state-of-the art support for lifelong learning that was carried out by the authors, a key element of that investigation being the different techniques to improve learning and retention through engagement of the student. The increased availability of high bandwidth connections to support multi-user, graphics-rich environments such as gaming environments supports the use of these gaming technologies for virtual learning environments. The use of storytelling in education provides us with a mechanism to establish a relationship between games and virtual learning environments, there have been numerous trials of the use of on-line games setups suitable for this purpose in the form of simulations, MUDs and adventure games. During the last few years multiple virtual worlds have been developed for general communication between users from different parts of the world, and these can be used to support all the important social aspects of learning. From the perspective of our research we are interested in designing a model for an online games-based leaning environment using narrative models, witch will then be developed as an exemplar of this particular approach

Developing a smart environment for crisis management training

Despite the growth of advanced communication technologies, smart devices etc. the main approach to training strategic planners for crisis management (Gold Commanders) continues to be a paper-based, collective group dynamic exercise. The Pandora project has developed an advanced smart environment for the training of Gold Commanders which uses AI planning techniques to provide a crisis scenario modelled as an event network. This includes points of decision for trainees managed by automated rules from a knowledge base, behavioural modelling of the trainees, and ambient management of the environment to provide affective inputs to control and manage trainee stress. In this context, the system controls and reacts to trainee performance in relation to the events and decision points and can dynamically remodel and reconfigure the event network to respond appropriately to trainee decisions. Trainees can also be pressurised through compression of the timelines or ambient management of the multimedia information presented within the environment, causing them to make decisions under stress or with inadequate information. The environment can also represent any missing trainees within the scenario, which provides the potential to offer a completely autonomous facility for scenario design and test, and potentially a decision support facility, based on a build-up of empirical evidence from real world and training situations. In summary, the Pandora system integrates its computational intelligence, with the intelligence of the trainer and the trainees, to provide an emotionally engaging, augmented reality/virtual reality training environment for crisis managers.

A Consideration of the Use of Plagiarism Tools for Automated Student Assessment

In this paper, the authors evaluate the flexibility and richness of two well-established text analysis plagiarism tools, through a consideration of the use of plagiarism detection software as a mechanism for the automated assessment of student-created narrative in a virtual learning environment (VLE). The authors are currently engaged in a project creating a prototype VLE, using technologies for multilevel and multiplayer games, based on the inherent support such an environment would provide for constructivist learning, engagement, and contextual socialization. Progress between levels in the VLE will be based on the creation, by the student, of a narrative linking together a number of conceptual elements obtained through game-play at that level. Support for the narrative creation process will help the student to contextualize the conceptual elements, providing the necessary linking elements or themes to enable the student to produce a coherent description of their understanding of the concepts. A particular challenge in such environments is the need for fast, real-time feedback to students to maintain the level of engagement and to support the game-play metaphor. Additionally, the student must be able to make as many attempts to progress as they need and it will be their decision when and how often to submit for assessment. Since the student narrative will be in a textual form and can therefore be related to a sample solution narrative, generated by the author of the level within the learning environment, the idea of using plagiarism detection software as the mechanism for automated comparison and assessment was considered appropriate for investigation. While the limitation of such tools would appear to be that they are seeking direct copies of text elements, the authors wanted to investigate whether they offered sufficient richness and fuzziness to detect common conceptually-linked texts. The initial decision was to experiment with text-analytic tools, since they are both widely used and readily available. The tools chosen were TurnItIn, a commercial tool provided to the U.K. higher education community by the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and VALT/VAST, a set of tools created at the Centre for Interactive Systems Engineering at London South Bank University, London, U.K., the workings of which are based on recognized and well-published research. An experiment using a small group of students in a traditional assessment situation was carried out, and is described in detail. The rationale for this approach was that there is not yet a fully working prototype of the VLE in which to carry out such an experiment, but that the conditions necessary to test the hypothesis that plagiarism tools could be utilized for such a purpose could be replicated sufficiently to make such an experiment viable. The results of the experiment demonstrated neither a correlation between the sample solution and student solutions, nor any correlation between the individual student solutions, proving the null hypothesis. This result demonstrates that these tools are not useful for the development of automated assessment within the VLE, and the authors are now giving consideration to the use of lexical analysis/tokenizer and other tools. However, it also suggests that these text-analytic plagiarism tools are too firmly focused on direct copy, which does raise the question of whether or not they offer enough richness and fuzziness to detect a sophisticated plagiarism attempt using, for example, text replacement tools. An ongoing close relationship between research in automated assessment and plagiarism detection is also proposed, to achieve mutual benefit.

Using a Distributed Approach to Retrieve and Integrate Information from Heterogeneous Distributed Databases

With the current explosion of information accessible through the Internet, there is increasing interest in the problem of retrieval and integration of information from heterogeneous data sources. Much work has been done in this area, although aspects of the problem remain. This paper describes a general approach, which uses an agent-based architecture to retrieve information from a set of heterogeneous distributed databases and consolidate it, taking account of the syntactic and semantic differences between data sources. The system has been implemented in Java and makes use of CORBA, XML and JDBC.

Cyber Security Countermeasures to Combat Cyber Terrorism

In this chapter we first consider what constitutes cyber terrorism, to distinguish such events from other forms of cybercrime, and to establish a rationale for that distinction. We discuss some of the characteristics of cyber terrorist events in comparison with cybercriminal events, and the changes that have occurred, socially and technologically, that make such events both more likely and more damaging. We then go on to consider three key aspects of cyber terrorist attacks, cyber attacks on physical systems, malware specifically developed for such attacks, and insider threats to enable or support such attacks. Next, we look at the countermeasures that can be adopted by organizations and individuals to address such threats, highlighting the significant human component of such systems through the need for standards-based policies and protocols, good security hygiene, and the training of system users at all levels. We also consider some issues of physical systems upgrade, and some software measures that can be used to identify and isolate cyber threats. Finally, we consider the future in terms of the likely further growth of cyber terrorist events, and the threat they pose to critical infrastructure and the systems on which, socially and technologically, we increasingly rely.

Using Emotional Intelligence in Training Crisis Managers: The Pandora Approach

Multi-agency crisis management represents one of the most complex of real-world situations, requiring rapid negotiation and decision-making under extreme pressure. However, the training offered to strategic planners, called Gold Commanders, does not place them under any such pressure. It takes the form of paper-based, table-top exercises, or expensive, real-world, limited-scope simulations. The Pandora project has developed a rich multimedia training environment for Gold Commanders, based on a crisis scenario, timeline-based, event network, with which the trainees and their trainer interact dynamically. Pandora uses the emotional intelligence of the trainees, through a behavioural modelling component, to support group dynamic and decision-making. It applies systemic emotional intelligence, based on inferred user state and rule-based affective inputs, to impact the stress levels of the trainees. Pandora can impose variable stress on trainees, to impact their decision-making, and model their behaviour and performance under stress, potentially resulting in more effective and realisable strategies.

An Alternative Data Warehouse Reference Architectural Configuration

In the last few years the amount of data stored on computer systems is growing at an accelerated rate. These data are frequently managed within data warehouses. However, the current data warehouse architectures based on n-ary-Relational DBMSs are overcoming their limits in order to efficiently manage such large amounts of data. Some DBMS are able to load huge amounts of data nevertheless; the response times become unacceptable for business users during information retrieval. In this paper we describe an alternative data warehouse reference architectural configuration (ADW) which addresses many issues that organisations are facing. The ADW approach considers a Binary-Relational DBMS as an underlying data repository. Therefore, a number of improvements have been achieved, such as data density increment, reduction of data sparsity, query response times dramatically decreased, and significant workload reduction with data loading, backup and restore tasks.

Supporting real-time decision-making under stress in an online training environment

Multi-agency crisis management represents one of the most complex real-world situations, requiring rapid negotiation and decision-making under extreme pressure. However, the training provided to Gold Commanders (strategic planners) typically lacks the stress of a real crisis, while research tells us that behavior and decision-making are significantly affected by stress. It is, therefore, vital that training puts trainees under the pressure of a real crisis situation as far as possible. The Pandora+ system, developed from an EU FP7 research project, provides a unique, original, realistic, immersive, and augmented reality training environment in which the stress of each individual trainee can be managed by the trainer, during a training event, with the support of system intelligence. The system uses AI planning techniques to model an unfolding crisis scenario, realized as an event network, which can be dynamically updated by the trainer during a training event. This modeling includes points of decision for trainees managed by automated rules from a knowledge base, behavioral modeling of the trainees, and dynamic management of the environment to provide affective inputs to control and manage trainee stress. In this context, the system controls and reacts to trainee performance in relation to the events and decision points and can dynamically remodel and reconfigure the event network to respond appropriately to trainee decisions. The environment can also represent any missing trainees within the scenario and has the potential to provide training in any domain where a timeline-based scenario of events is required for training. This entire approach is completely novel in crisis training and has been rigorously tested in several trials, the most recent involving close to 150 participants, and has the potential to transform online learning in many domains, not just crisis management.