Lester Gilbert

A Conceptual Framework for Serious Games

A considerable number of serious games have been developed over the last ten years, with varying degrees of success. Due to a lack of clear standards and guidelines for game developers, it is difficult to justify claims that a specific game meets the learner’s requirements and/or expectations. This paper defines a conceptual model for serious games that will contribute to their design and the measurement of achievement in meeting their learning outcomes.

Validation of Serious Games Attributes Using the Technology Acceptance Model

The paper introduces a conceptual model for the design of serious games and uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for its validation. A specially developed game introduced international students to public transport in Southampton. After completing the game, participants completed a short questionnaire and the data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results identified the attributes and combinations of attributes that led the learner to accept and to use the serious game for learning. These findings are relevant in helping game designers and educational practitioners design serious games for effective learning.

Principles of E-Learning Systems Engineering

Summary: The book integrates the principles of software engineering with the principles of educational theory, and applies them to the problems of e-learning development, thus establishing the discipline of E-learning systems engineering. For the first time, these principles are collected and organised into the coherent framework that this book provides. Both newcomers to and established practitioners in the field are provided with integrated and grounded advice on theory and practice. The book presents strong practical and theoretical frameworks for the design and development of technology-based materials and environments which have teaching, training or educational value. It brings together a complete range of the specific theories and detailed techniques involved in the design, development and delivery of materials such as business presentations, web-based presentations, training courses and academic lessons. Although the methods and theories discussed are generally appropriate to all forms and levels of learning and teaching, the book illustrates their use in and focuses its approach upon e-learning with adults. Key Features: 1.Integrates the principles of software engineering with the principles of educational theory 2. Provides a coherent process for developing e-learning activities 3.Provides a coherent framework for the content and structure of e-learning activities 4.Overviews current research in e-learning technologies The Authors: Lester has developed and applied teaching and learning materials and environments in the higher education sector, having taught courses in cognitive psychology, research methods and computer systems analysis and design. As one of the senior members of the Learning Technologies Research Group at the University of Southampton, he is currently working on a number of funded research projects in the area of e-learning. Veronica works as a freelance training consultant, developing and applying instructional systems design, mainly in the financial services sector, where she has been engaged by many banks and insurers. Readership: Developers of e-learning who are new to or inexperienced in the use of learning technologies. Students enrolled on any college or university course concerned with the use of learning technologies.Experienced instructional developers seeking a reference source for the major techniques of e-learning systems development. Contents: Introduction General systems theory Project development framework E-learning systems structure and content Feasibility Front-end analysis Project plan Initial design Detailed design: e-learning transactions Detailed design: lesson plans Detailed design: remaining steps Production Pilot, distribution, use and evaluation Quality management Project management References Index

An E-Learning Framework for Assessment (FREMA)

This article reports on the e‐Framework Reference Model for Assessment (FREMA) project that aimed at creating a reference model for the assessment domain: a guide to what resources (standards, projects, people, organisations, software, services and use cases) exist for the domain, aimed at helping strategists understand the state of e‐learning assessment, and helping developers to place their work in context and thus the community to build coherent systems. This article describes the rationale and method of developing the FREMA model and how it may be used. We delivered FREMA via a heavily interlinked website. Because the resulting network of resources was so complex, we required a method of providing users with a structured navigational method that helped them explore and identify resources useful to them. This led us to look at how overviews of e‐learning domains have been handled previously, and to work towards our own concept maps that ploted the topology of the domain. FREMA represents an evolving view of the domain and therefore we developed the website into a Semantic Wiki, thereby allowing the assessment community to record their own projects and services and thus to grow the reference model over time.

Adapting health care competencies to a formal competency model

Health professions education has moved away from process-based curricula to competency-based curricula. Machine readable and processable health care competencies are still embryonic, pending the emergence of appropriate standards. The IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective specification and the HR-XML competency standard are introduced, compared, and their problems identified in the implementation of exemplar competencies from the UK Royal College of Nursing. An improved competency model is proposed.

Synote: development of a Web-based tool for synchronized annotations

This paper discusses the development of a Web-based media annotation application named Synote, which addresses the important issue that while the whole of a multimedia resource on the Web can be easily bookmarked, searched, linked to and tagged, it is still difficult to search or associate notes or other resources with a certain part of a resource. Synote supports the creation of synchronized notes, bookmarks, tags, links, images and text captions. It is a freely available application that enables any user to make annotations in and search annotations to any fragment of a continuous multimedia resource in the most used browsers and operating systems. In the implementation, Synote categorized different media resources and synchronized them via time line. The presentation of synchronized resources makes full use of Web 2.0 AJAX technology to enrich interoperability for the user experience. Positive evaluation results about the performance, efficiency and effectiveness of Synote were returned when using it with students and teachers for a number of undergraduate courses.

Managing Dynamic Enterprise and Urgent Workloads on Clouds Using Layered Queuing and Historical Performance Models

The automatic allocation of enterprise workload to resources can be enhanced by being able to make what–if response time predictions whilst different allocations are being considered. We experimentally investigate an historical and a layered queuing performance model and show how they can provide a good level of support for a dynamic-urgent cloud environment. Using this we define, implement and experimentally investigate the effectiveness of a prediction-based cloud workload and resource management algorithm. Based on these experimental analyses we: (i) comparatively evaluate the layered queuing and historical techniques; (ii) evaluate the effectiveness of the management algorithm in different operating scenarios; and (iii) provide guidance on using prediction-based workload and resource management.

Deriving E-Assessment from a Competency Model

Self-assessment is a crucial component of learning. Creating effective questions is time-consuming, however, because it may require considerable resources and the skill of critical thinking. Questions need careful construction to accurately represent the intended learning outcome and the subject matter involved. There are very few systems currently available which generate questions automatically, and these are confined to specific domains. This paper presents a system for automatically generating questions from a competency framework, based on question templates, criteria for effective questions, and the instructional content and ability matrix. This makes it possible to guide learners in developing questions for themselves, and to provide authoring templates which speed the creation of new questions for self-assessment.

Synchronised Annotation of Multimedia

Multimedia has become technically easier to create (e.g. recording lectures) but while users can easily bookmark, search, link to, or tag the WHOLE of a podcast or video recording available on the web they cannot easily find, or associate their notes or resources with, PART of that recording. This paper describes the development of a web based application that makes multimedia web resources (e.g. podcasts) easier to access, search, manage, and exploit for learners, teachers and other users through the creation of notes, bookmarks, tags, links, images and text captions synchronized to any part of the recording.

Delivery of QTIv2 question types

The IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standard identifies 16 different question types which may be used in online assessment. While some partial implementations exist, the R2Q2 project has developed a complete solution that renders and responds to all 16 question types as specified. In addition, care has been taken in the R2Q2 project to ensure that the solution produced will allow for future changes in the specification. The design of R2Q2 is described, the focus being on lessons learnt. We describe the architecture and the rationale of the internal web services and explain the approach taken in implementing the QTI specification, showing how the design allows for future tags to be added with the minimal of programming effort. The QTI standard has not had a great take‐up in part due to the lack of tools. In the 2006 Joint Information Systems Committee Capital, three assessment projects were commissioned: item authoring, item banking and QTI‐compliant test delivery. This article describes the ‘ASDEL’ test delivery engine, focusing upon its architecture, its relation to the item authoring and item banking services, and the integration of the R2Q2 web service.