Collaborative Game Research Articles

El juego motor del marro: una indagación acerca de sus raíces pedagógicas

Desde muy antiguo el juego motor del marro ha permanecido en el depósito cultural de la civilización occidental. Sin embargo, las raíces antropológicas, sociológicas y pedagógicas de este juego han sido escasamente investigadas. A partir de la indagación cultural de sus orígenes nos adentramos en averiguar el por qué esta práctica físico-recreativa ha permanecido durante tantos siglos prácticamente inalterada. El estudio parte de un enfoque histórico-genealógico y fenomenológico interdisciplinar (antropología, sociología y pedagogía) sustentado por una variada revisión documental de fuentes primarias. Los resultados nos llevan a sostener que en la lógica interna del juego del marro subyacen los códigos socializantes de la pedagogía contemporánea, por lo que su duradera presencia viene a garantizar la teoría del «proceso de civilización» de Occidente. Esta interpretación contribuye también a valorar una comprensión fenomenológica en la historia de los juegos corporales y el rol que desempeñan en la sociedad.

Crowdsourcing Emotions in Music Domain

An important source of intelligence for music emotion recognition today comes from user-provided community tags about songs or artists. Recent crowdsourcing approaches such as harvesting social tags, design of collaborative games and web services or the use of Mechanical Turk, are becoming popular in the literature. They provide a cheap, quick and efficient method, contrary to professional labeling of songs which is expensive and does not scale for creating large datasets. In this paper we discuss the viability of various crowdsourcing instruments providing examples from research works. We also share our own experience, illustrating the steps we followed using tags collected from Last.fm for the creation of two music mood datasets which are rendered public. While processing affect tags of Last.fm, we observed that they tend to be biased towards positive emotions; the resulting dataset thus contain more positive songs than negative ones.

Situated learning through intergenerational play between older adults and undergraduates

This study is grounded in a social-cultural framework that embeds learning in social activities, mediated by cultural tools and occurring through guided participation in the social practice of a particular community. It uses conversation analysis as a tool to examine the structures of the talk-in-interaction of naturally occurring conversations between 11 pairs of older adult (aged between 65 and 92) and undergraduates (aged between 18 and 25) during a 6-week social practice of intergenerational digital gameplay. The purpose is to demonstrate how older adults adapt to and make sense of collaborative gaming activities through guided participation. The features of minimum gap and overlap, even conversational inputs, and orientation to one another’s turns indicate interactional connection between older adults and younger people. Adjacency pairs in the form of question-answer and self-initiated other-repairs are the situated use of social resources afforded by the intergenerational interaction. It is through these two main means of interaction that younger players offer immediate feedback and explanation to guide older adults to engage in the collaborative play and develop understanding of unfolding concepts and phenomena.

Tanzanian and Canadian children’s valued school experiences: a cross case comparison

ABSTRACTThis study investigates children’s multimodal perspectives on their school experiences in two diverse, international contexts. The research shares data from 45 Canadian and Tanzanian children, and focused on the children’s use of multimodal methods to share what mattered to them at school. The children’s significant interest in their outdoor school spaces was revealed, as well as culturally specific narratives linked to the participants’ local environments and families. In both settings, the majority of the children valued their outdoor experiences at school where they felt a strong sense of autonomy as they engaged in child-initiated play and collaborative games outdoors.

PROSODIC CHUNKING IN OUT-LOUD READING: A WINDOW INTO COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN MILD-TO-MODERATE ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

Recent psycholinguistic research on healthy individuals reported that speech production planning in reading is associated with cognitive functioning (CF). Speakers with smaller working memory (WM) spans tend to split their sentences into multiple speech units (prosodic chunking) as they may not gather as much advance planning information as high WM speakers prior to speaking (Swets et al, 2014; Petrone et al, 2011; Becic et al, 2003). We investigate herein prosodic chunking in out-loud reading as a function of cognitive capacity in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD), particularly in relation to difficulties with basic attention processes, processing speed and WM. Twenty adults with mild-to-moderate AD and twenty healthy volunteers matched in gender, age and education level (Table 1) were administered the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). They performed two speech tasks: reading isolated sentences varying in length and syntactic complexity, and engaging in a collaborative game with caregivers. Several speech features (Table 2) were extracted. Thirteen participants in each group also underwent MRI/fMRI scans. Mann-Whitney tests showed significant differences between the two groups in all the neuropsychological scores (Table 1) and most read speech measures (Table 2). AD read speech is marked by a higher number of speech units, pauses and dysfluences, along with shorter units, longer sentences and slower articulation rates. Preliminary analyses also showed significant correlations between the number of speech units, pauses and hesitations, and the RBANS and MOCA scores and some of the attention and WM scores (rSpearman = 0.61 − 0.81). Initial results suggest that prosodic chunking may be associated with CF. This corroborates current literature for different neuropathologies including AD (Dodge et al, 2015; König et al 2015; De Looze et al; in revision). Shorter speech units suggest a narrowing down of the scope of planning with greater WM deficits. Prosodic chunking may provide valuable information for clinicians towards the assessment of CI in AD. Current analysis is exploring the relationship between speech features and structural neuroimaging metrics to probe the neuroscientific basis of such deficits.

Exploring the Difficulties African-American Middle School Girls Face Enacting Computational Algorithmic Thinking over three Years while Designing Games for Social Change

Computational algorithmic thinking (CAT) is the ability to design, implement, and assess the implementation of algorithms to solve a range of problems. It involves identifying and understanding a problem, articulating an algorithm or set of algorithms in the form of a solution to the problem, implementing that solution in such a way that the solution solves the problem, and evaluating the solution based on some set of criteria. CAT is an important scaffolded on-ramp as students develop more advanced computational thinking capabilities and apply computational thinking to solve problems that are more constrained and require greater expertise. Supporting Computational Algorithmic Thinking (SCAT) is both a longitudinal between-subjects research project and a free enrichment program supporting and guiding African-American middle school girls over three years as they iteratively design a set of complex games for social change. This article explores Scholars' reflections about the difficulties they faced while using CAT capabilities as they engaged in collaborative game design for social change over those three years. We particularly focus on how these difficulties changed over the course of three years as well as new difficulties that emerged from year to year as Scholars become more expert game designers and computational algorithmic thinkers.

From start to finish: teenagers on the autism spectrum developing their own collaborative game

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how teenagers on the autism spectrum respond to their involvement in the creation of a collaborative game, meeting the curriculum requirements in programming at secondary level in England.Design/methodology/approachTwo autistic teenagers were involved in participatory design processes to elaborate and develop together a collaborative game of their choice using the visual programming software, Kodu Game Lab.FindingsWith the support of adults (teachers and the researcher), the participants were able to demonstrate and strengthen their participation, problem-solving and programming skills. The participants expressed their preferences through their attitudes towards the tasks. They created a game where the players did not need to initiate any interaction between each other to complete a level. Furthermore, the students naturally decided to work separately and interacted more with the adults than with each other.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a small case study and so cannot be generalised. However, it can serve as starting point for further studies that involve students with autism in the development of interactive games.Practical implicationsIt has been shown that disengaged students can develop various skills through their involvement in software programming.Originality/valueOverall, this paper presents the involvement of teenagers on the autism spectrum in the initial design and development of a collaborative game with an approach that shaped, and was shaped by, the students’ interests. Although collaboration was emphasised in the intended learning outcomes for the game, as well as through the design process, this proved difficult to achieve in practice suggesting that students with autism may require stronger scaffolding to engage in collaborative learning.

Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention.

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

On the Collaborative Game of Low-skill Manufactures Based on Value-Creation

Faced with the dilemma of low-skill manufactures in the process of value-creation, this paper presents factors of all interest bodies in the entire industry chain and sets up the value-creation game model of resources complementarity, collaborative production, management control for the goal of low-skill manufactures value optimization.

GTCharge: A game theoretical collaborative charging scheme for wireless rechargeable sensor networks

Collaborative charging schemes are indeed helpful for energy replenishment. However, classic and traditional collaborative charging schemes are still suffering from a series of severe problems, which are almost neglected. The lack of homogeneity and dynamic charging decisions on collaborative charging schemes in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSN) deteriorate the charging efficiency. To enhance charging performance, especially in terms of charging efficiency, in this paper, a game theoretical collaborative charging scheme, namely GTCharge is devised. The charging process is converted into a collaborative game taken between wireless charging vehicles (WCVs). We investigate the functionalities of contribution degree, charging priority and profits. Then GTCharge is demonstrated in detail, in which each WCV seeks for the maximum profit when fulfilling charging tasks. The conditions including all WCVs’ charging strategies are proven to reach a Nash Equilibrium point. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to show the advantages of the proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrate the merits of the proposed scheme in terms of charging efficiency.

Multiplayer Game Design: Performance Enhancement with Employment of Novel Technology

Online multiplayer educational game is designed to support collaboration and assess different cognitive and social abilities among students. The educational games are developed to capture student responses or actions, both shared and unshared, within the game environment and extrinsic resources. This paper describes the implementation of new technology with better performance over existing HTML5 and Flash platform to develop such games, which have been developed as part of the ATC21STM research study by the University of Melbourne. CONSTRUCT2 has been used in preference to other available technologies in creating the games to deliver a reliable experience for students across all browsers, platforms, and devices. The multiplayer component of the games was maintained with the use of the AJAX and Web Socket application which allowed the communication protocol between the client and server to be established. Embedded Canvas on CONSTRUCT2 is used to create all animations and game objects. The paper will describe the issue such as multiplayer game design with new technology and optimization of collaborative game design using dynamic platform structure called „CONSTRUCT2‟ over HTML5 to facilitate the game flow and a positive user experience.

A Collaborative Game

In 2015 matthews and allen engaged in a durational dialogic exchange. This exchange took the form of a collaborative game undertaken over a period of 19 days. The Collaborative Game was enacted via a set of rules.matthews and allen's ‘rules of the game’ parodically exaggerate the social and cultural rules with which we inevitably engage.This textual game adopts the 140-character edict imposed by the social media website Twitter. matthews and allen take this arbitrary rule to its extreme by restricting each communication to precisely 140 characters.The Collaborative Game is constructed from ‘the words of others’ wherein appropriated words are relocated in order to interrupt the expectation of a linear, monologic narrative.matthews and allen's game performs their non-oppositional approach to collaborative dialogue, without a winner, or loser and no consensus either.

Agent Supported Serious Game Environment

This study proposes and applies a novel concept for an AI enhanced serious game collaborative environment as a supplementary learning tool in tertiary education. It is based on previous research that investigated pedagogical agents for a serious game in the OpenSim environment. The proposed AI features to support the serious game are the following: a) a pedagogical game agent, b) non-playing characters, c) chat bots, and d) a game interface called “Progress Map”. This study aims to explore whether the utilization of AI features in game based collaborative learning in a tertiary education course can positively affect students’ attitudes towards the course and educational games, students’ game performance, as well as the students’ perception of their learning environment. Summarizing, even though the intelligent game environment does not affect students’ attitudes, neither towards the course nor towards the educational games, it has a positive impact on the performance of the teams and so it can be considered useful in collaborative game based learning. Moreover, the intelligent game environment improves the cohesiveness in the classroom after the completion of the game activity in terms of helping, supporting, and becoming connected to each-other.

Assessing theory of mind in schizophrenia during a collaborative game

Introduction While Theory of mind (ToM) impairments have been well established in schizophrenia (SZ), very few studies have investigated these impairments during social interactions. However, in daily life the attribution of mental states to others (ToM) is most often implicit and spontaneous whereas classical ToM tasks rely on explicit, deliberate and cognitively-demanding reasoning. Objective The aim of the present study was to fully characterize ToM ability in schizophrenia by investigating this ability during a collaborative game. Methods Ten individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and ten healthy control (HC) participants were recruited. Patients' severity of symptoms was measured using the PANSS. All participants were asked to play a collaborative game with an experimenter. During this game, the aim of the participant was to transfer a given route from his/her map to his/her interlocutor. The prosodic focus marking was used as a linguistic marker of ToM. Participants were also submitted to a classical ToM task requiring explicit attribution of mental states and to a neuropsychological evaluation. Results The results showed that, by contrast to HC participants, SZ patients did not produce prosodic focus marking revealing difficulties to attribute knowledge to their interlocutor during the collaborative game. SZ patients were impaired on both explicit and implicit ToM assessment. No correlation was found between the ToM abilities and the symptoms or the neuropsychological evaluation. Conclusions Thus, the interactive task we used appears to be an original option for studying ToM ability in schizophrenia since it is close to what happens in real-life interactions.

A Collaborative Game to Study Presence and Situational Awareness in a Physical and an Augmented Reality Environment

A Collaborative Game to Study Presence and Situational Awareness in a Physical and an Augmented Reality Environment

Gaming Preferences, Motivations, and Experiences of Pharmacy Students in Asia.

Serious games are becoming popular in various healthcare domains. However, they should be designed to cater toward learners' perspectives, needs, and specifications in order to be used to their full potential in education. This study investigated the gaming experiences, motivations, and preferences of pharmacy students. An anonymous self-administered survey obtained participant demographics, gaming experiences (enjoyment level of different game genres, years of experience, gaming frequency and duration, and motivations), and gaming preferences (on in-game rewards, settings, storylines, perspectives, and styles). Descriptive statistics, t tests, analysis of variance, chi-squared tests, and Fisher's exact tests were used for analysis. The response rate was 69.1 percent (465/673 undergraduates). Role-playing games (RPGs) (4.12 ± 1.07) and massively multiplayer online RPGs (MMORPGs) (3.81 ± 1.26) had the highest enjoyment ratings. Males enjoyed imagination games (e.g., RPGs, MMORPGs) more than females, whereas females enjoyed simulation games more. Top motivating factors for respondents were progressing to the next level (3.63 ± 1.19), excitement (3.33 ± 1.33), and a feeling of efficacy when playing (3.02 ± 1.16). Unlocking mechanisms (25.2 percent) and experience points (17.6 percent) were the most popular in-game reward systems. Most respondents preferred a fantasy/medieval/mythic setting (59.8 percent) and an adventurer storyline (41.3 percent), with similar proportions preferring competitive (35.3 percent), cooperative (33.3 percent), and collaborative (30.8 percent) game styles. Different groups of pharmacy students differ in their gaming experiences, motivating factors, and preferences. There is no "one size fits all" game that is suitable for all pharmacy education. Such differences should be considered when developing a pharmacy game in order to cater to the diverse student population.

Designing and Deploying 3D Collaborative Games in Education

This paper focuses on methodologies of serious games deployment and evaluation. Particularly, this study will present a specific category of serious games that are based on Collaborative Virtual Environments and they aim to support Collaborative Learning. We call these serious games Collaborative Virtual Educational Games (CVEG). The paper aims to analyze the deployment and evaluation process, through the study of relevant bibliography, and by doing so to reveal the existing research gap, which fails to evaluate the threefold nature – game, collaboration, and software - of CVEG. The proposed framework aims to support the design, deployment, and evaluation of a CVEG, by incorporating two consecutive and recurrent cycles, each consisting of distinct phases. Furthermore, each phase is designed to address specific goals. Finally, the paper presents four case studies, applying the proposed theoretical methodology for designing, deploying and evaluating a pragmatic CVEG.

Let's play together: the design and evaluation of a collaborative, pro-social game for preschool children

This study designed an interactive game for preschool children based on the basic social skill of emotion recognition. Ninety-five preschool children from three schools played two interactive games: a especially designed emotion game and a control game for a touch screen device. The increase in scores in recognising the emotion faces from pre-test to post-test is significant for girls when playing the emotion game, with especially large increases in scores from girls from the most deprived school. The boys scored higher for collaborative play and also scored significantly higher than girls at recognising anger but girls were better at recognising fear. Qualitative analysis using the Talk Taken Down technique showed more egocentric than social dialogue but also more non-verbal expressions of cooperation and enjoyment than verbal interaction with the game. The study concludes by suggesting seven design considerations for designing prosocial, collaborative games.

Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab: Giving STEM Education a Second Life

Engineering education in the 21st century faces multiple obstacles including limited accessibility of course resources due, in part, to the costs associated with acquiring and maintaining equipment and staffing laboratories. Another continuing challenge is the low level of participation of women and other groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines. As a partial remedy for these issues, we established a Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab (VESLL) that provides interactive objects and learning activities, multimedia displays, and instant feedback procedures in a virtual environment to guide students through a series of key quantitative skills and concepts. Developed in the online virtual world Second LifeTM, VESLL is an interactive environment that supports STEM education, with potential to help reach women and other underrepresented groups. VESLL exposes students to various quantitative skills and concepts through visualization, collaborative games, and problem solving with realistic learning activities. Initial assessments have demonstrated high student interest in VESLL's potential as a supplementary instructional tool and show that student learning experiences were improved by use of VESLL. Ultimately, the VESLL project contributes to the ongoing body of evidence suggesting that online delivery of course content has remarkable potential when properly deployed by STEM educators.

Computer Gaming and Test Scores: Cross-Country Gender Differences Among Teenagers

Using the PISA surveys (2000-2012), this paper explores the relationship between math test scores and everyday computer gaming by gender and for high income and middle income countries. We use two identification strategies in the spirit of an ideal experiment that would reduce computer gaming through limited internet access or through schools alternative demands. We find that everyday computer gaming has positive effects for boys, but negative effects for girls arising mostly in collaborative games suggesting a role for social effects. Computer gaming is becoming the new swimming upstream factor in the quest to close the gender gap in math.