Interactive Simulation Game Research Articles

HIRE ME!: Interactive Gaming Simulation as a Teaching Aid to Enhance English Speaking Skills Among UTHM Students

English is the dominant language in many nations throughout the world. Nonetheless, despite the government’s efforts, Malaysian university students still see speaking English as a daunting endeavour. This article discusses how interactive simulation games may be used as a teaching tool to help Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) students improve their English-speaking abilities. Furthermore, the purpose of this research is to study the fundamentals of English-speaking skills, to design an informative and appealing interactive simulation gaming as a teaching aid, and to verify the effectiveness of interactive simulation gaming in enhancing English-speaking abilities. A mixed method design combining qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches was employed. A semi-structured interview was conducted with a professor from the Centre for Language Studies at UTHM, and the collected data were carefully verified with content analysis. Additionally, a questionnaire was distributed among 69 UTHM students from different faculties to gather insights on how to design an interactive and engaging gaming simulator for English speaking learning. Once the data have been collected, it will be thoroughly analysed and validate with descriptive analysis. The findings of this study offer valuable insights into the fundamental aspects of English language learning and provide opportunities for further improvement and refinement of the game. Future studies could focus on refining the game’s aesthetics and overall visual appeal, creating a more immersive and captivating gaming experience, and incorporating elements of gamification to further enhance motivation and drive sustained engagement. The game can be created by making it into Virtual reality, the players are able to immerse the gameplay of feeling in a real situation of being interview while answer the questions that has been given out by the game has provided.

Reconstruction of collaborative problem solving based learning in thermodynamics with the aid of interactive simulation and derivative games

The reconstruction of thermodynamic learning aims to develop and innovate the student-centred learning. Another aim was to provide the students’ 21st century skills such as problem-solving and reflective thinking skills through collaborative problem solving. Enhancement of students’ ability to solve problems, effectively carried out in groups in which they are encouraged to exchange arguments, combine knowledge and skills in finding solutions. The reconstruction of thermodynamic learning was developed with the help of interactive simulations in abstract concepts, cycles and graph, and derivatives games with the objective of assisting in the understanding of thermodynamic. Method used in this research was design and development research (DDR). There were two stages that had been done in this research: (1) the design and development model which was the design of CPS based thermodynamic learning model, and (2) the development of learning tools including: syllabus, semester learning plan, learning activity, and learning experience. The results showed that the difficulty in understanding abstract concepts could be overcome by the use of interactive simulations and derivative games. Therefore through the CPS model can be students are trained in cooperating, collaborating, arguing for solutions by utilizing technology and information to address world challenges in the 21st century.

Using a modified version of SIMSOC to promote active learning in crime causation and response in an unjust society

ABSTRACT This article assesses how an interactive simulation game, a modified version of Simulated Society (hereinafter ‘SIMSOC-modified’), was used for teaching a theoretical criminology course in a Hong Kong university. Its use was intended to enable students to experience inequalities, in terms of wealth and power. The primary focus was to observe how participating in SIMSOC-modified impacted students’ knowledge of and attitudes toward crime causation and their intentions to engage in activism and radicalism. The findings showed that SIMSOC-modified promoted students’ active learning, resulting in cognitive and attitudinal changes toward the social causes of crime and increased intention to radically support the social groups they closely identified with. Rather than solely relying on didactic lectures and tutorials, we found strong support for the use of SIMSOC-modified in teaching crime causation and responses.

Designing productively negative experiences with serious game mechanics: Qualitative analysis of game-play and game design in a randomized trial

Design, rather than medium, ultimately predicts learning outcomes, but the game-based learning literature has had difficulty successfully linking game design decisions to learning behaviours and outcomes. The current research investigates how explicit game design strategies can promote productive negativity (i.e. learning from failure), which has been identified as an important mechanism in both gaming and learning. We performed a randomized controlled trial with undergraduate biology students to investigate how game design might facilitate misconception resolution about random molecular behaviour through productive negativity. Students engaged with either a computer-based interactive simulation (n = 20) or serious game (n = 20) for 30 min, while their computer screens were recorded and click-stream data collected. We described in detail the theoretical framework underpinning our serious game and simulation using the Activity Theory Model of Serious Games (ATMSG); qualitatively coded and analysed video recordings of gameplay; and visually overlaid this data with the ATMSG models to draw conclusions about how game-design decisions influence learning-related behaviours. We found that the serious game resulted in significantly more productively negative experiences, while the interactive simulation allowed for greater exploratory or experimental behaviours. Based on our analyses of the qualitative gameplay data, we were able to recommend three game design strategies to enhance the occurrence of desired game-flow loops (e.g. productive negativity) with respect to an ATMSG framework: 1) including additional game mechanics on the primary game-flow axis of the ATMSG framework (i.e. mandatory interactions) limits the exploratory nature of the application; 2) integrating two or more primary-axis mechanics in a game-flow loop increases the frequency of interaction with this loop; and 3) gameplay loops that involve mechanics that fall off the primary-axis (i.e. non-mandatory mechanics) occur less frequently than those which involve primary-axis (i.e. mandatory) mechanics. This study is one of the first to successfully make direct comparisons between students' interactions in a game and a non-game application to provide concrete and actionable serious game design recommendations.

Game and Digital Culture: A Study on Hay Day Game

Digital games are a commercial product developed and distributed by media companies and often uses characters or scenarios of movies, books, and comics. The digital game play comes from individual media consumption patterns. Playing digital games also offer experience and satisfaction based on interactive communication technologies and immersive gameplay. In this digital age, digital games became more social-based, which means they implement the need to invite friends on social media to come into play and help each other in the game. The problems of this study was to determine what factors make Hay Day popular among the players and to find out how Hay Day changing the social patterns interaction of the players. This study aims to look at the functions of digital games in the context of communication with relations in social media and why certain games can achieve very high popularity, while other games failed miserably. This research focuses on Hay Day. The method used is descriptive qualitative approach with case study method. Data collection is using interviews with players active in the game, as well as observation and literature studies. The results showed that a game may gain popularity if someone has a social media environment prior to play. Interactive concept, simulation, and fantasy game technology are also the reason Hay Day became very popular. The perception that the digital game player who formerly regarded as anti-social experience has shifted in the concept of digital game-based social bookmark. Players who have a lot of friends in games are seen as someone who has a lot of friends and a high social level. This is in line with the functions of a traditional game in Indonesian culture, where the region has a wide variety of games to be played together and motivate positive social interaction. Function of digital games also increased, other than playing the game as entertainment, but also now the game became one of the effective tools to convey the message to the public.

Exploring smart grids with simulations in a mobile science exhibition

Improving the publics’ understanding of the energy system is a challenging task. Making citizens aware of how the complex energy system functions and how consumers of energy services can respond to a changing energy environment seems more difficult. In the context of the German energy transition, more active energy consumers are needed, not only in producing electricity on their own but also interacting with suppliers to make the energy system operate in a more efficient way through the development of a “smart grid”. This article describes an approach taken with a public education perspective to engage citizens in thinking about the issues we are facing in moving toward a future with greater reliance on renewable energy. We introduced a mobile exhibition, including an interactive simulation game, which offered a perspective on the whole energy system. The goal was to stimulate questions and arouse citizens’ interest in learning about the smart grid and help them to prepare for the transition to a smarter way of using energy.

Experimental study on using advance demand information to mitigate the bullwhip effect via decentralised negotiations

This paper analyses experiment results to show that advance demand information (ADI) strategies have the potential to counteract the bullwhip effect and reduce supply chain costs in practice. The experiments are conducted with a new web-based interactive computer simulation game, where human players assuming the roles of suppliers not only make replenishment order decisions but also negotiate for agreements on ADI provision, consumption, and compensation. The game is designed with enhanced information provision and communication channels through which negotiations are conducted strictly between neighbouring suppliers. As such, the supply chain is kept decentralised (i.e. no information is shared across supply chain stages). The effectiveness of ADI strategies is tested in a variety of settings; e.g. when supply chain parameters are heterogeneous, when suppliers have (or do not have) partial knowledge on the customer demand, and when suppliers are inexperienced with the ADI strategy. It is observed repeatedly that the ADI negotiation mechanism significantly improves the supply chain performance, reducing not only the total chain-wide cost but also every individual supplier's cost. This improvement is generally achieved by the downstream suppliers (e.g. retailer) making future order commitments (while carrying higher inventory), which allows upstream suppliers to gain sufficient cost reduction and provide compensation to the downstream suppliers.

Meaningful Play

Interactive multiplayer simulation games have the potential to provide a more mature and statistically accurate approach to help better understand human behavior in relation to local environments and situated contexts. This could be used as a tool to better inform policy and research around environmental issues such as sustainability, food, and climate change. The Games Learning Society Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is currently working on an ecological simulation game, Trails Forward. In this game, three players, a lumber worker, a conservationist, and a housing developer, all work and compete within an accurate model of the Vilas county landscape. Trails Forward provides a template of how play in a simulated environment can inform our understandings of human behavior given real-world privileges and restrictions.

Impact of a web based interactive simulation game (PULSE) on nursing students' experience and performance in life support training — A pilot study

The delivery of effective life support measures is highly associated with the quality, design and implementation of the education that underpins it. Effectively responding to a critical event is a requirement for all nurses illustrating the need for effective educational approaches from pre-registration training through to enhancing and maintaining life support skills after qualification. This paper reports the findings of utilising a web-based multimedia simulation game PULSE (Platform for Undergraduate Life Support Education). The platform was developed to enhance the student experience of life support education, to motivate on-going learning and engagement and to improve psychomotor skills associated with the provision of Intermediate Life Support (ILS) training. Pre training participants played PULSE and during life support training data was collected from an intervention and a control group of final year undergraduate nursing students (N=34). Quantitative analysis of performance took place and qualitative data was generated from a questionnaire assessing the learning experience. A statistically significant difference was found between the competence the groups displayed in the three skills sets of checking equipment, airway assessment and the safe/effective use of defibrillator at ILS level, and PULSE was positively evaluated as an educational tool when used alongside traditional life support training.

ASSESSMENT OF A COMPUTER GAME FOR TEACHING ARCHITECTURAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY

This paper discusses the assessment of an interactive computer simulation game used to teach energy-efficient strategies for cold-climate design in commercial buildings. The paper first provides an overview of the game and in doing so discusses the background, methodology, and concepts used in designing the game. The greater content of the paper addresses an assessment of the data collected during an experimental test of the effectiveness of this game versus traditional learning methods. It concludes with a section that reviews the results of the experiment and makes recommendations for future directions of research in this area.

UTSAF: A Multi-Agent-Based Software Bridge for Interoperability between Distributed Military and Commercial Gaming Simulation

Rapid advances in consumer electronics have led to the anomaly that consumer off-the-shelf gaming hardware and software provide better interactive graphics than military and other specialized systems costing orders of magnitude more. UTSAF (Unreal Tournament Semi-Automated Force) is bridging software written to take advantage of the power of gaming systems by allowing them to participate in distributed simulations with military simulators. UTSAF illustrates the use of multiagent technology to flexibly interconnect otherwise incompatible systems. This article describes an architectural approach for rapidly constructing middleware by taking advantage of built-in capabilities for processing, communication, and interoperation that a multiagent infrastructure provides. Several software agents based on Reusable Environment for Task-Structured Intelligent Networked Agents (RETSINAs) are used to support interoperability between military simulation nodes based on distributed interactive simulation and Unreal game simulators. Using a multiagent system, UTSAF can be expanded to support several network environments and interact with other agent-based software.

Multimedia simulation guides to clinical physiology

The authors present their way of designing multimedia educational software to support the teaching of pathological and clinical physiology, taking advantage of interactive simulation games. Simulation models, created using Matlab/Simulink® from MathWorks, are decomposed to so-called simulation chips suitable for interdisciplinary cooperation during design-time. Interactive animations utilize Flash and Director from Macromedia, the user interfaces of the simulators are implemented in Control Web from Moravian Instruments, all integrated by Microsoft Visual Studio NET. The authors also give their arguments concerning their preference for industrial development tools over academic "open source" tools.

WebQuest: Using WWW and interactive simulation games in the classroom

The World Wide Web is widely considered a successful new media for communication of ideas, a hotbed for commerce, and, more quietly, a new research media that can bring hundreds of gigabytes of useful information to classrooms around the world. However, without a structuring mechanism that allows focus on specific learning domains, the usefulness of the WWW to students is questionable. The huge information "cyberspace" is, to our children, more like having 500 channels of TV. Surfing the WWW is largely a passive consumer activity, multimedia and java applets notwithstanding. We have found that the effectiveness of the WWW as a learning tool can be significantly increased by combining it with constructive tools. This paper presents WebQuest, a system combining the WWW with the notion of an interactive quest game. Using WebQuest, students not only read information on the WWW, but learn to think critically about it as they use it to construct educational simulation games about the themes of their research. They set up complex worlds containing interesting objects obtained by navigating tricky obstacles and landscapes. These objects are needed to solve a quest, or go on to a new level. This approach offers several learning opportunities to students using the World Wide Web. Students can be players or authors of quest games. As players, students learn by finding websites and forming answers to questions to acquire important objects needed to progress through and finish the game. Authors learn by creating the worlds, formulating challenging yet solvable questions, and providing (or not) helpful hints and clues to lead players to sites on the web that will answer the questions. Both players and authors use the quest game-either by constructing or by playing-to focus their research on the web. Used by multiple groups in the same classroom, a dialog is started between authors and players, which facilitates reflective learning. Players help authors to understand what works and what doesn't in a learning game; how much information should be given in a clue, which questions are good or bad, and perhaps provide new topic-related websites. In this paper, WebQuest is described, the roles of teachers and students in the classroom are outlined, and we present our initial classroom tests with middle school, high school, and undergraduate students. We conclude with a description of WebQuest's future development.

Computer Simulation Games in Marketing: Past, Present, and Future

Since personal computer-based simulations are becoming widely available to marketing educators, important distinctions between interactive and batch simulation games are noted, and their respective advantages in effecting experiential learning are described. Inspection of ten contemporary batch simulations results in several comparison bases which are defined and used to contrast four different types of marketing batch simulation games: (1) elementary, (2) perceptual mapping-portfolio, (3) traditional segmentation, and (4) complex. Finally, five trends are identified as possible features of computer games in the near future.

Interactive simulation gaming for energy-policy analysis

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multiple player interactive simulation game in APL for use in education, policy analysis and planning in energy-environment related systems. The “Regional Energy-Environment Game” makes use of APLSV's shared-variable feature to establish communication links between players as well as to provide an interface between these players and an analytical model of an energy-environment system.