1,720,965 research outputs found
Development of a serious game for British Sign Language education
Full text linkLearning the alphabet is a fundamental part of any language, especially British Sign Language (BSL). Without an understanding of the alphabet, learners may lack awareness of where signs outside the alphabet originate from, which leads to gaps in proficiency. Although the BSL Scotland Act 2015 promotes the use of BSL, many learners in Britain continue to face challenges that hinder language acquisition, such as limited access to learning materials, classes, and groups. Serious games have captured great interest and have been applied in a plethora of areas for education, training, or awareness through engaging gameplay. They offer a unique approach to overcoming these barriers, promoting deaf awareness and encouraging sign language learning through engaging material. This paper presents the development of a novel, hangman-inspired serious game prototype designed to facilitate learning the BSL alphabet and vocabulary. The game integrates spelling exercises with visual sign representations, aiming to connect the BSL letter recognition to the corresponding dynamic sign. This prototype serves as a step towards addressing resource gaps and accommodating the community by offering a potential model for sign language learning through a serious game. Immersive serious games can add a level of engagement and potential haptic interaction to BSL education. This paper will also provide a preliminary scoping literature review of the state of the art of the application of VR and serious games for sign language education
Social Inclusion of Vulnerable Youth Through Esports Education
Full text linkIn Denmark, there are increasing problems with school refusal and marginalization of vulnerable youth. At thesame time, joint gaming activities may have a positive influence on young people's social relationships and experience of being part of communities. In this article, we focus on how esports education with games such as Counter-Strike and League of Legends can contribute to engaging vulnerable and isolated young people (age 16-25) at Specially Planned Youth Education (STU). Specifically, we look at how esport teachers and municipal educational guidance counsellors experience the isolated young people's participation in gaming activities as a process of social inclusion that helps young people to cross boundaries between different domains - e.g. leisure, education and/or internship. Our analyses are based on interviews with teachers and guidance counsellors affiliated with three STUs, who are participating in the research project "Esports as a learning spaceand bridge builder for vulnerable young people at STU". We understand the young people's participation in esports education as a process of social inclusion, which involves bridging of experiences across different domains that have specific knowledge practices and social norms for what counts and does not count as legitimate participation. More precisely, we understandesports education at STU as social inclusion through an interplay of four domains: 1) the young people's gaming domain in their leisure time, 2) the STU as an educational domain, 3) the young people's adult domain, as well as a 4) guidance domain.Based on thematic analysis of the interview data, we identify three themes: 1. Esports education as an introduction to STU, 2. Esports education as a safe and structured framework, and 3. Esports education as a springboard to participation in new communities. Lastly, we discuss the potentials and challenges of social inclusion of vulnerable youth through esports education
Teacher Positions and Play Qualities in Esports at Specially Planned Youth Education Programmes
Full text linkThis paper examines how teacher roles influence gaming activities within esports programmes offered at Specially Planned Youth Education (STU) in Denmark. The STU programmes cater to young people with developmental, cognitive, and psychosocial challenges, who are unable to participate in mainstream education. This paper introduces play theory as a valuable framework for understanding how teachers facilitate gaming, especially in the context of structured esports programmes. Traditional approaches to game-based learning often focus on goals, achievement, and knowledge transfer. In contrast, this study emphasizes the affective and sensory dimensions of gameplay using concepts from play theory. Our study is based on two years of fieldwork at three different institutions. We collected data through observations, interviews, and video recordings. The empirical data is based on observations and presented in the form of three detailed narrative vignettes, each illustrating a specific teacher-student dynamic while playing either League of Legends or Counter-Strike. These narratives demonstrate how changes in teacher positioning influence the emotional flow of the gaming environment, with shifts between moods such as devotion, intensity, tension, and euphoria. In the context of STU institutions, we find that teacher presence plays a crucial role in helping students regulate emotions, stay engaged, and connect socially. A teacher can help calm a high-intensity situation or raise the energy and focus of a group through timely intervention. These dynamics are especially significant for students with special needs, who may rely more on adult cues and support to navigate social situations. Our findings highlight that successful facilitation of esports in special education settings depends on teachers’ ability to read and respond to the emotional and sensory dynamics of play. Teachers who can shift roles fluidly not only affect game-related performance but also contribute significantly to the social and affective experience of the students. This paper provides new insights into the potential of esports as an educational tool and proposes that play theory offers a valuable framework for understanding game-based learning beyond a narrow focus on learning outcomes
Game Lab : A Practical Learning Approach for Game Development
Full text linkAuthor's accepted version (postprint)This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Academic Publishing, Reading in Proceedings of the European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL) in october 2017.acceptedVersio
Dialogic Teacher Facilitation of Esports Activities for Vulnerable Youth
Full text linkThe study is part of an on-going research project entitled “Esports as learning space and gateway for vulnerable youth” (2023-2026) funded by the Velux Foundation. In the project, researchers explore the esports programmes at three Specially Planned Youth Education schools (Særligt Tilrettelagt Ungdomsuddannelse or STU). STU is an offer to vulnerable youth unable to attend regular forms of youth education in Denmark. More than 30% of the STU students are diagnosed with disorders such as ADHD and autism and many have experienced school refusal and suffer from low well-being and/or stress, isolation and anxiety. The project explores the pedagogical approaches used by teachers in three esports programmes, where students (aged 16-25) play competitive multiplayer games, primarily Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) and League of Legends. This study analyses video observations from an esports class through the theoretical perspective of dialogic space to examine how a teacher facilitates dialogue in the classroom. We uncover how a dialogical approach to facilitating the esport programme is valuable for the teachers, especially because some students' gaming expertise exceeds the teachers’ expertise, both in terms of game sense and understanding of game mechanics. The analysis shows how the students' dialogic participation is part of a teacher facilitated dialogic space, which is used as a starting point to create common goals for the programme and foci of students' collaboration. In this dialogical space students are invited to share game knowledge, strategic considerations, and analytical expertise about their gameplay. Further, the analysis will show how the teacher position himself differently in the classroom to facilitate students’ reflections on taking different perspectives in the dialogic space. Finally, the study discusses how the aim of perspective taking, and communication for successful gameplay in CS2 aligns with the pedagogical aim for the vulnerable students in the esports programme
Game Lab Innovations in Education: Insights from a Board Game Design Project
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Learning through construction in IT courses
Full text linkIn the Norwegian Center for Excellence in IT education (Excited), there are 19 IT study programs across two universities with six campuses. One of the goals of Excited is to gain more knowledge about “learning through construction”(LtC) in IT studies. The paper presents preliminary findings on characteristics of courses with “learning through construction” in bachelor and master courses with project-based learning in the spring semester of 2017. The LtC courses are characterized through a number of variables from a categorization model of project courses: teaching context, range of implementation, learning context, institutional context, personnel composition, grading, project variety, degrees of freedom of the process and in the deliverables. Our findings show that “learning through construction” is often used as a learning method in higher IT education because constructive skills are a highly valued learning outcome, and to develop such skills, it is necessary to practice. At the same time, the teachers conclude that the learning method is motivating for students and is stimulating creative thinking, and that project work is useful because the students will be better prepared for project work also after their studies. Our findings also shows that there are “learning through construction” courses on all study years of the bachelor and master study programs, and that some study programs have a maker focus in each semester. Some projects are individual work, but the majority of the projects are group work, often in small (2-4) or medium-sized (5-10) teams. Most of the time, the students organize the teams themselves, but in some cases the teams are set up by the faculty. When it comes to student autonomy, the students experience more freedom further into their education, as there are more flexible project processes in the later study years. The products of the student projects are typically software prototypes and product documentation/software design, more specifically the main product types are games and web applications. Some courses with learning through construction use external stakeholders in the student projects. The study also shows that the implementation of learning through construction projects varies across study years and study programs.publishedVersio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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