Not in My Class You Don’t!

It has been recognized that video games may function well as a platform for education. However, educators may be reluctant to use such games, particularly those with violent content, given controversies over games in recent years. Yet recent data suggests that these controversies over video games may have been misplaced. The current chapter examines the controversies over video games, data to support and refute these controversies, and how the public debates on video games may have influenced educators’ decisions about the use of video games in their classrooms. It is argued that it is time to acknowledge that the alleged harmfulness of video games was far overrated and that educators may wish to consider how games, even those with mildly violent content, can contribute to education.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games for Health Communication in Brazil

Video games’ potential for gathering interest from children and adults originated many serious games to communicate, inform, teach, and train. MMORPGs may have even more potential, since they create a shared communication space where players can interact with each other. In Brazil, public Health Communication is a major area of concern, since there is a large population who needs information about health. Much of the communication initiatives come from dated models and are too normative, unable to attend population adequately. This chapter presents first reflections about the main advantages of applying MMORPGs for public Health Communication, using Mediations Theory as a starting point to look into these games’ characteristics. This perspective reveals that, in addition to engagement created by their interactive nature, MMORPGs’ social characteristics are particularly useful for building Brazilian Health Communication current aspirations: creating instances for hearing population, granting them active voice and enhancing their participation in developing public health policies.

Play Yourself Fit

Exergames and Exergaming have become a new phenomenon in recent years due to the release of the Nintendo Wii console and more recently the Microsoft Kinect. Videogames are categorized into genres based upon the actions that gamers are expected to execute to achieve goals and overcome challenges. However, with the development of new technology, and this notion of exergaming, is it actually activity or gameplay that defines the notion of exergames as a genre into current categories? This chapter reviews several genre/taxonomy theories to gain a greater understanding of exergames within the serious games arena, with several facets proposed by the authors to provide a more succinct progress within this sector.

Serious Games and Motor Learning

Digital games in general require fine motor skills, i.e., operating the computer mouse, the keyboard, the touch-screen, or a joystick. With the development of new gaming interfaces, the performance of whole-body movements became possible to control a game. This opens up new lines of application, e.g. improving motor skills and motor abilities. The most important question is whether and how virtual game-based perceptual-motor training transfers to real motor tasks. Theory distinguishes between specific motor skill learning and generic motor ability improvement. Existing evidence shows that the improvement of motor abilities (e.g., balance) is possible by particular exergames while the improvement of motor skills (e.g., basketball throw) depends on several moderators like accuracy of the interface and correspondence of virtual and real tasks. The authors conclude that there are two mechanisms of transfer, located at the elementary and fundamental perceptual-motor level and at the cognitive level. Current issues for technology comprise adaptivity, personalization, game mastering, accuracy of interfaces and sensors, activity recognition, and error detection.

Gaming in School

As the impact of media on society steadily increases, schools need to teach their students media skills. In this regard, the usage of computers is an inherent part of everyday school life. The recent integration of serious games and their future potential in Middle German general educational schools is the subject of this chapter. With the aid of interviews held with experts the usage and potential of serious games in Middle German schools are examined, and the barriers to integrate computers and serious games into lessons are discussed. Serious game usage has clear potential for development. Games are applied in different subjects and for different age groups, but not all teachers are aware of their existence. The interviewees disagree about factors hindering integration of computers and serious games in school. As a qualitative study, this chapter constitutes a basis for further research and enlarges knowledge about serious games in schools.

Concepts behind Serious Games and Computer-Based Trainings in Health Care

In the area of health care, dynamic changes and improvements of computer-based methods of intervention are more and more observable. This tendency is, amongst other reasons, caused by the implementation of theoretical constructs and psychological phenomena, such as flow, immersion, and presence, because they are able to explain processes and effects of medical interventions and thereby provide helpful hints to the enhancement of rehabilitation technology. This chapter provides an overview of the definitions of constructs related to computer-based technology, how these constructs are related to each other, and how they can be measured. Furthermore, practical aspects of improvement, possible areas of application, and potential benefits of implementing these constructs are discussed.

Clinical Virtual Worlds

The deployment of virtual worlds into clinical practice is gradually becoming an accepted if innovative approach. This chapter offers an overview of the application of virtual worlds in a healthcare settings with specific focus on the application of virtual worlds in clinical practice. When combined with dynamic patient data models, facilitators are able to customize and deliver real time immersive clinical training experiences in a range of contexts. Given that virtual worlds are now being implemented in some of the more complex areas of healthcare, this chapter then explores how the lessons being learnt in this context could be applied more widely to other areas of professional development in the healthcare sector and concludes that direct and valuable lessons from mainstream clinical practice with virtual worlds are ready to be applied now more widely in the healthcare sector.

Quantitative Analysis of Voice and Keyboard Chat in a Paper Presentation Seminar in a Virtual World

To investigate the possibilities that are offered to improve teaching within a virtual environment, chat recordings from a paper presentation seminar in a virtual world were analyzed. A total of 9 sessions with more than 500 minutes of recordings from 19 participants were classified in diverse categories by two independent coders. The channel used (voice or keyboard) as well as other attributes of the contributions, the contributors, and the sessions were coded. Results show that the voice channel was mainly used for relevant contributions, while the keyboard channel contained mainly irrelevant contributions. The longer a session was the lower was the percentage of irrelevant contributions, p < .05. Gender and previous experience with digital games are both highly correlated with the percentage of irrelevant contributions, p < .01. Technical and personal factors are related to the rate of irrelevant contributions, while situational and relational factors seem to have a minor impact.

Evaluation of Serious Games

Comprehensive evaluation studies are necessary to “prove” the benefit of Serious Games (SG). This is also extremely important for the commercial success of SG: Best practice examples with profound, well-recorded positive effects will provide relevant arguments to invest into SG for training/education, sports and health, and other application domains. On the other hand, it is not easy to prove the benefit of SG and to measure its effects (e.g. learning effects or medical effects) and affects (user experience factors such as fun during play). Evaluation methodologies might be split into observation, self-evaluation (e.g. questionnaires, interviews), associative methods, performance analyses, and psychophysiology measurement. Technology-enhanced evaluation methods, for instance, facing expression measurement are in the centre of attention. This chapter provides an overview of these methods and describes current interdisciplinary research and technology development achievements in that field.

Personalized, Adaptive Digital Educational Games using Narrative Game-Based Learning Objects

Storytelling and gaming approaches are used as motivational instruments for suspenseful, engaging learning. This chapter describes the concept of Narrative Game-Based Learning Objects (NGLOB), providing a model of how to combine these different axes (narration, gaming, and learning) and how to apply it within personalized, adaptive Digital Educational Games (DEG). From a research perspective, this results in one of the main technical challenges of Serious Games (SG): personalization and adaptation. Here, the central question might be summarized with “How does one create and control a game during play considering the game context and characteristics of individual users or user groups?” This question and the use of NGLOBs are illustrated through the example of “Save the Earth” for teaching and learning geography.