Margherita Brondino

Children's emotions and quality of products in participatory game design

The paper presents an empirical study centred on a participatory game design activity with 810 years old primary-school children, split in different sessions. The study assesses how children perform in game design and whether they are engaged in design tasks. To this end, the study gathers data concerning the quality of childrens game design products, regarded as indicators of childrens performance in game design. It collects data concerning childrens emotions, which are taken as indicators of their engagement in game design. The paper statistically analyses and discusses how emotions and quality of products evolve across the game design experience, and how emotions are related to childrens quality of products. Results of this work can help researchers, educators and practitioners manage a complex design experience with and for children, and identify key emotions for promoting quality of design work. The paper discusses childrens performance and engagement in participatory game design.It presents a participatory game design study with 810 year olds.The study assesses childrens emotions, for engagement, and product- quality, for performance.The study analyses their correlations, and interpret results with observation data.The paper concludes with implications of the study for participatory game design.

Emotions and Inclusion in Co-design at School: Let’s Measure Them!

Co-design with children comes with methods and techniques for creating technological products with children, such as video-game prototypes. When co-design takes place in schools, learners’ involvement and enjoyment of co-design become crucial concerns for researchers. But how to measure emotions, more in general, and involvement in a co-design study with children? This paper presents a co-design study, run with a novel co-design method at school, for involving children in co-design groups and emotionally engaging them in producing game prototypes. It explains how emotional engagement and inclusion can be and were operationalized and measured in the co-design study, thereby providing feedback to co-design researchers interested in measuring the same constructs.

Achievement Goals as Antecedents of Achievement Emotions: The 3 X 2 Achievement Goal Model as a Framework for Learning Environments Design

Achievement goals and achievement emotions, given their important role in learning processes, could affect the effectiveness of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) programs. In this study, the links between achievement goals and achievement emotions are explored. The participants were 466 Italian university students who completed a 48-item questionnaire about learning exam-relevant material. Confirmatory factor analyses showed the goodness of the hypothesized models for goals (task-approach, task-avoidance, self-approach, self-avoidance, other-approach, other-avoidance) and emotions (including enjoyment, relaxation, hope, pride, relief, anger, boredom, anxiety, shame, hopelessness). A path analyses indicated that task goals predicted activity- and outcome-related emotions, matched by valence; self-approach goals positively predicted one positive activity-related emotion; other-avoidance goals positively predicted activity- and outcome-related emotions. The results are discussed considering the utilities of the instruments for the design of TEL products, to assess motivation and affect involved in learning environments.

The Validity of the Short UK Health and Safety Executive Stress Indicator Tool For the Assessment of the Psychosocial Work Environment in Italy

The Health and Safety Executive Stress Indicator Tool (SIT) is a 35-item questionnaire to assess exposure to seven common psychosocial factors involved in the genesis of work-related stress. Recent work conducted in the UK has provided evidence that the SIT may be reduced to a 25-item questionnaire (the SIT-25) showing the same seven-factor model and criterion-related validity of the SIT. The SIT is the most widely used tool to assess work-related stress factors in Italy, with benchmark (normative) data managed by the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority. Thus, we conducted two studies to further test whether in Italy the SIT may be reduced to the SIT-25. In Study 1 a heterogeneous sample of workers (N = 588, 39.5% females) was used to further test the seven-factor model of the SIT-25 and its criterion-related validity with mental well-being. In Study 2 two new samples of workers (N = 625, 69.8% females; and N = 344, 3.2% females) from health and metal-mechanical sectors were used to assess the degree of measurement invariance of the SIT-25 and further test its criterion-related validity. Overall the results showed that the SIT-25 data fit the postulated seven-factor solution and that the reduced subscales (i.e., Demands, Control, Relationships, and Role) have the same criterion-related validity as their longer version. Additionally, the SIT-25 showed strong measurement invariance in the two different samples of workers of Study 2. These results provide further encouraging evidence that the SIT-25 may be effectively used in place of its longer version.

Two neglected moral emotions in university settings: some data on pride and shame

Pride and shame, two moral emotions partially neglected by the literature, can also be categorised as achievement emotions, because of their salience within everyday school and academic life. Our aims were to explore whether they are organised in a setting-specific manner and whether they differ in two settings, learning exam-relevant material and taking exams. Five hundred and forty university students evaluated pride and shame related to the two settings. A confirmatory multitrait-multimethod analysis (MTMM) indicated higher salience of type of emotion rather than type of setting; however, the structure of pride and shame was best explained when also type of setting was accounted for. A repeated-measure analysis of variance revealed higher levels of the positive emotion compared to the negative emotion, with the latter higher for the evaluative setting. Findings are discussed in light of their theoretical and applied relevance.

On-line assessment of pride and shame: Relationships with cognitive dimensions in university students

We investigated some psychometric properties of an instrument developed to evaluate achievement emotions, focusing on pride and shame, with an on-line assessment. These emotions, as two moral emotions partially neglected by the literature, can also be categorized as achievement emotions, because of their salience within everyday academic life. The participants were 83 Italian university students. During their first year of university, we measured text comprehension; during their third year, we measured pride and shame (with the on-line version of the Brief-Achievement Emotions Questionnaire) and academic performance. Path analyses indicated the partial mediating role of the two emotions between text comprehension and academic performance, differing in study and test settings. A repeated-measure analysis of variance revealed higher levels of pride compared to shame, and of emotions associated with the evaluative setting. Such findings support the relevance of assessing emotions related to learning, for example monitoring them continuously through technological instruments.

The Use of Different Multiple Devices for an Ecological Assessment in Psychological Research: An Experience with a Daily Affect Assessment

Data gathering in psychological research is changing given the technological evolution and the availability of many different devices. However, very little research has been done to verify the validity of this kind of psychological measurements, even if a valid measure is the starting point for a valid research. Our study presents the results of a daily measurement of affect connected with the amount of time a person spends in a natural setting, considering the paradigm of restorative environments. High level of compliance was found from respondents, and also a good quality of the used measurements, in term of construct validity (using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis), invariance of the measure across days, and criterion related validity.

Use of Internet and Wellbeing: A Mixed-Device Survey

The debate on the effects of Internet for people’s wellbeing is nowadays being paid more attention by the researchers in line with the worldwide constant increasing rates of Internet use. However, current data are contradictory and support opposite positions. We focused on the relation between Internet use and wellbeing for a sample of university Italian students (n = 101) involved in a mixed-device survey. They completed weekly, for five weeks, an on-line questionnaire measuring the amount of time spent virtually and non-virtually for different purposes (social, learning, and leisure Internet use, and social non-virtual use) and wellbeing in terms of emotions and life satisfaction. We analyzed the data with Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM). The results indicated that the amount of time for virtual and non-virtual activities influenced differently emotions, but it was not related to life satisfaction. The findings are discussed taking into account their theoretical and applied relevance.

Psychology of Programming: The Role of Creativity, Empathy and Systemizing

In this paper, we started to analyse the impact of individual cognitive processes on early programming learning and performances. In particular, we focused our attention on divergent thinking, creative personality and brain type, analysed within the theoretical framework of the Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory. We involved a sample of students in the first year of a bachelor curriculum in Applied Mathematics at the University of Verona. We used this sample to analyse the relations between cognitive styles and programming attitudes and performances. We also explored sex differences, concerning both the level of each measure and these relations.

Early training in programming: from high school to college

Informatics is recognized as a fundamental discipline in education at all levels. It is also an indispensable subject for scientific and technical studies. Some abilities connected to informatics learning (computational thinking) has being considered to provide “fundamental skills for everyone”. Programming or, more generally, the ability of solving problems by algorithmic methods is one of these skills. In Italy, many scientific degree courses offer, at the first year, at least an introductory course in programming. Digital expertize and a basic attitude to computational thinking are in general expected. The present study, has been conducted at the University of Verona, in the context of the course Programming with laboratory of Applied Mathematics curriculum. We focus on first period of lessons, when the fundamentals of programming are introduced. Most of the students come from secondary schools, in particular Liceo, a secondary school with emphasis science or humanities, and where the role of informatics is in general not central. So, an academic course in programming can be a difficult task for students. In this paper, we analyze how the “cultural” background influences the learning of programming and the performance of students.