Vassiliki Bouki

Mobile Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage

This paper introduces an approach of using mobile Augmented Reality (mobile-AR) in cultural organisations, such as museums and archaeological sites, for information provision and enhancing the visiting experience. We demonstrate our approach by presenting a mobile-AR educational game for iPhones that has been developed for the archaeological site and the exhibition area at Sutton Hoo. This pilot aids visitors’ understanding of the site and its history via an engaging and playful game that connects the site with the British Museum where the objects that have been excavated from the site are exhibited. The paper discusses stakeholders’ requirements, the system architecture and concludes with lessons learned and future work.

Engaging Immersive Video Consumers: Challenges Regarding 360-Degree Gamified Video Applications

360-degree videos is a new medium that has gained the attention of the research community imposing challenges for creating more interactive and engaging immersive experiences. The purpose of this study is to introduce a set of technical and design challenges for interactive, gamified 360-degree mixed reality applications that immerse and engage users. The development of gamified applications refers to the merely incorporation of game elements in the interaction design process to attract and engage the user through playful interaction with the virtual world. The study presents experiments with the incorporation of series of game elements such as time pressure challenges, badges and user levels, storytelling narrative and immediate visual feedback to the interaction design logic of a mixed reality mobile gaming application that runs in an environment composed of 360-degree video and 3D computer generated objects. In the present study, the architecture and overall process for creating such an application is being presented along with a list of design implications and constraints. The paper concludes with future directions and conclusions on improving the level of immersion and engagement of 360-degree video consumers.

Treasure hunt pervasive games in cultural organisations

This paper introduces an approach of connecting cultural organizations, such as Museums and archaeological sites and enhancing visiting experience in both sites with the use of a treasure hunt game. The paper shows how the treasure hunt game utilizes pervasive technology and connects remotely located groups of users (in a Museum and in an archaeological site) by involving them in a live collaborative activity where one group assists the other to find hidden treasures and discover related information. The paper articulates the educational value of pervasive treasure hunt games. The paper put emphasis on the gamified elements of the system and their role in enhancing the visiting experience and concludes with directions of future work and development.

A dynamic role-playing platform for simulations in legal and political education

One big challenge in deploying games-based learning, is the high cost and specialised skills associated with customised development. In this paper we present a serious games platform that offers tools that allow educators without special programming or artistic skills to dynamically create three dimensional (3D) scenes and verbal and non-verbal interaction with fully embodied conversational agents (ECAs) that can be used to simulate numerous educational scenarios. We present evaluation results based on the use of the platform to create two educational scenarios for politics and law in higher education. We conclude with a discussion of directions for the further work.

Gender Patterns in Hypertext Reading

The effect of gender in learning has often been the focus of research because of its potential implications in academic achievement. However, the effect of gender in hypertext reading has not been thoroughly investigated. The Web in general and the hypertext in particular has modified the way people access and use information. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study into gender differences in hypertext reading. The study focuses on text-based electronic documents. The study is a mixed method design, with the use of the think-aloud protocols and a between subjects experiment. It examines some original variables not previously studied comprehensively, such as coherence of transactions, sum of selected hyperlinks, and hyperlink location. Forty two participants (30 males and 12 females) read a hierarchically structured hypertext and then, all answered the same set of questions. The data consisted of reading times, comprehension scores, reading strategies, coherent links, hyperlink location, sum of hyperlinks, and the sum of read nodes. The results show that gender did not significantly affect any of the measured variables.

The effects of reading goals in hypertext reading

The present study examined the influence of different reading goals on reading in a hypertext environment. The study focused on text based electronic documents. The study was an independent samples design experiment with three different conditions. Ninety participants read the hypertext allocated into three different conditions and then, all answered the same set of questions. The results show that reading goals did not influence reading times, comprehension scores, and amount of visited links. The data also revealed two factors that influence hyperlink selection: coherence, and location

Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) a tool for real-time authoring of roleplay simulations for learning

The use of serious games in education and their pedagogical benefit is being widely recognized. However, effective integration of serious games in education depends on addressing two big challenges: the successful incorporation of motivation and engagement that can lead to learning; and the highly specialised skills associated with customised development to meet the required pedagogical objectives. This paper presents the Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) an authoring tool that allows educators/domain experts without games design and development technical skills to create bespoke roleplay simulations in three dimensional scenes featuring fully embodied virtual humans capable of verbal and non-verbal interaction with users fit for specific educational objectives. The paper presents the wmin-SGP system architecture and it evaluates its effectiveness in fulfilling its purpose via the implementation of two roleplay simulations, one for Politics and one for Law. In addition, it presents the results of two types of evaluation that address how successfully the wmin-SGP combines usability principles and game core drives based on the Octalysis gamification framework that lead to motivating games experiences. The evaluation results shows that the wmin-SGP: provides an intuitive environment and tools that support users without advanced technical skills to create in real-time bespoke roleplay simulations in advanced graphical interfaces; satisfies most of the usability principles; and provides balanced simulations based on the Octalysis framework core drives. The paper concludes with a discussion of future extension of this real time authoring tool and directions for further development of the Octalysis framework to address learning.

Edu-simulation: A serious games platform designed to engage and motivate students

This paper introduces a serious games web platform designed to simulate a teaching environment where lecturers are able to replicate their teaching environment by creating courses, modules, adding content and managing students effectively. Using a variety of tools available, lecturers are able to create a range of game simulations for students and observe student behavior in a controlled environment. The paper provides a description of the platform architecture and the main features, it presents a user testing session that aimed to review the usability, the cognitive accessibility (CoA) of the educational tasks completed and the quality of the user experience with the platform and it discusses the users testing results. The paper put emphasis on the gamified elements of the platform and their role in enhancing the pedagogic experience and concludes with directions of future work and development.

WMIN-MOBILE: a mobile learning platform for information and service provision

Educational organisations hold lots of valuable information and material in different forms that needs to be communicated to people with different profiles anytime, anywhere. Mobile phones offer great opportunities of accessing such information and services by using hardware owned by Educational Organizations’ members. This paper studies the requirements for such mobile learning (m-learning) tools for information and services provision to support learning and teaching and enhance student experience and satisfaction. To demonstrate this it uses the WMIN-MOBILE project as a case study. The WMIN-MOBILE is a prototype that provides general information about the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Westminster (UoW) and services like announcements, timetable and lab facilities and availability. The paper justifies the educational value of such m-learning tools and reports requirements for developing such tools. It further describes the WMIN-MOBILE system design and architecture and concludes with lessons learned and further work.