Theoretical Overview of the Game in Education and an Innovative Proposal in Higher Education

There is a growing academic interest in active methodologies related to games, that is gamification and game-based learning (GBL). However, the use of games for educational purposes is not a current trend, since, as discussed in the first section of the chapter, it was already recommended for centuries as an activity to develop certain skills from an early age. Next, gamification is explored in depth by analysing some of its most significant theoretical findings, well-known frameworks, as well as some current experiences in higher education. Similarly, the theory and practice of serious games and GBL are presented, and the chapter ends with the design of a digital escape room implemented with university students of educational degrees.

Cultivating Youth Affinity for College Within the Context of Campus-Based Summer Camps

College and university-based (CUB) summer camps are a prominent pre-collegiate experience targeting middle and high school adolescents, which research suggests may enhance college aspirations and preparedness, develop academic knowledge and skills, and influence future career choices. This study examines factors that predict the relation between affinity for college, program engagement and support, college major selection, and social–emotional outcomes stemming from youth involvement in a CUB camp based on data collected from 641 middle and high school-aged youth who completed an online questionnaire on the last day of the CUB camp. The findings validated a 4-factor model comprised of college brand awareness, college relational expectations, college academic interest–science, and college academic interest–technology. Further, the structural equation model (SEM) results suggested a relation between affinity for college, program engagement and support, and social–emotional outcomes. In addition, a CUB camp student’s lack of a college major had a significant negative direct effect on some dimensions of affinity for college including college brand awareness, college relational expectations, and college academic interest–science. CUB camp providers can use the results of this study to better articulate how their programs might impact adolescent decision making related to college, as well as inform how CUB camp providers may intentionally create affinity spaces that maximize student awareness of college brands as well as their future expectations for the college experience.

Developing pedagogically appropriate language corpora through crowdsourcing and gamification

Despite the unquestionable academic interest on corpus-based approaches to language education, the use of corpora by teachers in their everyday practice is still not very widespread. One way to promote usage of corpora in language teaching is by making pedagogically appropriate corpora, labelled with different types of problems (for instance, sensitive content, offensive language, structural problems), so that teachers can select authentic examples according to their needs. Because manually labelling corpora is extremely time-consuming, we propose to use crowdsourcing for this task. After a first exploratory phase, we are currently developing a multimode, multilanguage game in which players first identify problematic sentences and then classify them.

Organisational Identity and Alcohol Use in Knowledge-Intensive Workplaces

<p>The use of alcohol is an integral social act in many cultures and societies. The reasons for its use, as well as its mental and physical effects on people, have been a topic of academic interest for decades. This thesis examines the relationship between the work lives of individuals and their use of alcohol. At a more specific level, the thesis examines the relationship between alcohol use and the concept of organisational identity. Using data collected from interviews with members of a knowledge-intensive workplace, findings are presented that illustrate how alcohol use can be understood as an important part of processes of organisational identification, and how workers' alcohol use can be affected by an organisation's identity itself. The theoretical implications of these findings are numerous. Firstly, these findings suggest that organisational concepts, such as organisational identity, can be exceptionally useful in gaining an understanding of the reasons why individuals use alcohol in the ways that they do. In addition, the findings suggest that knowledge-intensive workplaces represent a valuable site for further advancing understandings of the work-alcohol relationship. Finally, it is argued that alcohol use in many situations should be understood as a part of individuals' organisational life, and not just a product or outcome of their participation in an organisation.</p>

Organisational Identity and Alcohol Use in Knowledge-Intensive Workplaces

<p>The use of alcohol is an integral social act in many cultures and societies. The reasons for its use, as well as its mental and physical effects on people, have been a topic of academic interest for decades. This thesis examines the relationship between the work lives of individuals and their use of alcohol. At a more specific level, the thesis examines the relationship between alcohol use and the concept of organisational identity. Using data collected from interviews with members of a knowledge-intensive workplace, findings are presented that illustrate how alcohol use can be understood as an important part of processes of organisational identification, and how workers' alcohol use can be affected by an organisation's identity itself. The theoretical implications of these findings are numerous. Firstly, these findings suggest that organisational concepts, such as organisational identity, can be exceptionally useful in gaining an understanding of the reasons why individuals use alcohol in the ways that they do. In addition, the findings suggest that knowledge-intensive workplaces represent a valuable site for further advancing understandings of the work-alcohol relationship. Finally, it is argued that alcohol use in many situations should be understood as a part of individuals' organisational life, and not just a product or outcome of their participation in an organisation.</p>

Concepts of Employee Ambidexterity - A Literature-Based Analysis of Paradoxical Behavior on an Individual Level

Many companies face the challenge of exploring new business potentials while exploiting internal excellence to meet their market conditions. This results to a mutual limitation of resource capacities and thus to a management task at the individual level. Under this premise, the following article summarizes the arguments and counterarguments in the scientific discussion about the ambidexterity on a employee level. Although academic interest in the study of indi-vidual ambidexterity is growing, there is still a need to understand the different concepts and to classify their potential. For this purpose, the existing scientific literature is compiled according to individual employ-ee behavior, structured and described in its most important results. The review took place between January 2021 and June 2021 by using different academic databases such as Econbiz, Scopus and Web of Science. The sample included 10 articles from a cross-sectoral con-text. The evidence of the analysis demonstrates that ambidexterity in employee behavior promotes economically useful adaptability within organizations. Practitioners and scientists are invited to cope the po-tential of individual ambidexterity and to implement ambidextrous be-havioral practices in organizational reality.

„Wir Nichtgnostiker“: Die Hitler-Engelhardt-Parallele in Christian Krachts Imperium

In 2012 Georg Diez provoked a literary scandal with his review of Christian Kracht’s novel Imperium. Since then, almost ninety informed studies which show an ongoing academic interest in the book have been published. Many of these studies attempted to explain the apparently failing analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt that the novel claimed in an irritating manner. Nevertheless, none of them took an esoteric approach which Kracht himself suggested in an interview with Denis Scheck as a starting point for their analyses, although esoteric references seem to be an ignored constant in Kracht’s oeuvre since Tristesse Royale. Hence, by tracing this esoteric intertextuality in the whole of Kracht’s oeuvre and linking it to the references which Kracht makes to right-wing ideologies since Faserland, it will be shown that there actually does exist an analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt in Imperium which aims to deconstruct Hitler mythemes by ridiculizing Engelhardt. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the interrelations between Kracht’s texts create a rhizomatic network of intertextuality that dissolves the boarders between external references and self-references.

Party regulation in Latin America: A change of normative paradigms

In spite of the growing academic interest in party law in Latin America, we still lack a comprehensive account on how party regulatory frameworks evolved from the time of transitions to the present. This paper aims to fill this gap. In doing so, it makes a double contribution to the field of party regulation. On the one hand, it systematizes, for the first time, all the reforms adopted in Latin America over the last four decades. On the other hand, it introduces a theoretical innovation by using the concept of normative paradigms to analyze a process of legislative change. The main argument of this article is that a permissive paradigm was gradually but overwhelmingly replaced by a prescriptive approach, which conceives parties as semi-state institutions. This shift sheds light on the changing linkages between parties and the state in Latin America.

Application of Functional Theory of Political Discourse in Chilean presidential debates to determine the influence of journalists in the contents

Within the growing academic interest over electoral debates, the role of the journalists who conduct the debates in determining the tenor of the answers has not been sufficiently studied. We used Chile as an extreme case, given the predominant role that the debate moderators receive here, thanks to the “journalistic panel” format utilized in them, where they take turns to interview the candidates. As a framework to describe these contents, we used Functional Theory of Political Discourse by William Benoit. Our data show that, indeed, the candidates use different combinations of said functions, depending on the different frameworks established by the rules for each debate. Clearly, the candidates tend to defend themselves from the attacks of the journalists, rather than their rivals’; and they use other strategies when the rules allow them more freedom.