“I Want Them to Feel the Fear…”

By utilizing digital tools that are nearly ubiquitous in the lives of youth, writing teachers can leverage these practices for developing traditional English language arts instruction and skills proposed by state and federal standards. In this chapter, the authors propose how the development of computational literacies through multimodal writing and video game design can help guide critical and academic development in an inner-city Los Angeles public school. In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students' literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann, et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research shows students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.

Reducing Corruption and Protecting Privacy in Emerging Economies

This chapter presents a location-based affective computing system, which can assist growing emerging markets by helping them reduce crime and increase public safety when used in conjunction with CCTV. Internet systems based on location-based services have increased in availability. Social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook now employ the information on user locations to provide context to their posts, and services such as Foursquare rely on people checking into different places, often to compete with their friends and others. Location-based information, when combined with other records, such as CCTV, promotes the opportunity for a better society. People normally abused by corrupt state officials for crimes they did not commit will now have alibis, shops will be able to more effectively build trust and procure new customers through “social proof,” and other forms of corruption will be tackled such as benefit fraud and tax evasion. Trust that everyone is paying his or her fair share can develop.

Can Exergaming Promote Physical Fitness and Physical Activity?

This systematic review of systematic reviews evaluates the effectiveness of exergaming on physical fitness and physical activity. A systematic literature search was conducted on 10 databases, and 1040 articles were identified. Sixty-eight articles were found potentially relevant and were selected for closer screening. Cross-referencing was conducted to find other potentially relevant articles. The quality of all relevant articles was evaluated using the AMSTAR tool. After all the duplicates were removed and inclusion, exclusion, and quality criteria were implemented, six articles remained for review. The results indicate that exergaming is generally enjoyed and can evoke some benefits for physical fitness and physical activity, but the current evidence does not support the ability of exergaming to increase physical fitness or physical activity levels sufficiently for significant health benefits. This systematic review also revealed several gaps in previous research. Additional high-quality research and systematic reviews concerning exergaming are needed.

Does Game Quality Reflect Heuristic Evaluation?

Usability evaluation tools in the form of heuristic lists can be very helpful in software development. In the field of video game design, researchers are continuously developing new heuristic tools aimed specifically at video game productions. However, through previous studies, the authors have found that even though these tools are frequent and common, design issues regularly appear in video games. This study examines whether video game heuristics are able to capture and evaluate softer values of video game interaction, based on the challenges, flow and immersion of gameplay. By conducting a heuristic evaluation on low scoring and high scoring games the authors manage to show which kind of design issues are most frequent in both high and low scoring games. As a further result of the study, two new heuristics are presented.

Assistive Systems for the Workplace

Recent advances in motion recognition allow the development of Context-Aware Assistive Systems (CAAS) for industrial workplaces that go far beyond the state of the art: they can capture a user's movement in real-time and provide adequate feedback. Thus, CAAS can address important questions, like Which part is assembled next? Where do I fasten it? Did an error occur? Did I process the part in time? These new CAAS can also make use of projectors to display the feedback within the corresponding area on the workspace (in-situ). Furthermore, the real-time analysis of work processes allows the implementation of motivating elements (gamification) into the repetitive work routines that are common in manual production. In this chapter, the authors first describe the relevant backgrounds from industry, computer science, and psychology. They then briefly introduce a precedent implementation of CAAS and its inherent problems. The authors then provide a generic model of CAAS and finally present a revised and improved implementation.

A Case for Integration

There is growing interest in assessment of student learning within education, not least because assessment practice within some sectors (the UK higher education sector for example) is stagnant: many courses designed independently to the assessment method and assessed through a small number of traditional methods. Games-based learning has shown little deviation from this pattern – games themselves often removed from assessment of the skills they are designed to teach, and in the worst cases from the intended learning outcomes: gamification being a particularly formulaic example. This chapter makes the case for an integrated approach to assessment within learning games and the wider curriculum, drawing on elements within game design that provide natural opportunity for such integration. To demonstrate and evaluate such an approach, integrated assessment case studies (including a full study from the University of Leicester) are presented and discussed.

Women and Men in Computer Science

Playing digital games is described as a pathway to computer science (CS) classes and majors, but not all gamers want to study CS. The goal of this chapter is to explore which gaming motivations and practices are most strongly related to an interest in studying computer science, and whether the connection between gaming and computer science is similar for men and women. The data are from 545 male and female gamers taking an introductory computer science class at one of 15 community colleges in the US. Survey responses were analyzed to provide a picture of what, how often, and why they play, and interviews from 39 of the most avid gamers were analyzed for why and how they play. The results show that, on average, men play more frequently than women, and there are gender differences in the type of games they like to play and why they play them. However, playing more frequently was not associated with greater interest in studying CS for either gender. Interest in CS was highest among men who were motivated to play in order to increase skills, be with friends, connect with the game features, and by the art or graphics. However, CS interest was highest among women who consider themselves to be more serious gamers, play racing and puzzle games, play on a game console, and are motivated by fun, relaxation and social interaction. The results can inform efforts to increase the number of women that pursue computer science. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research on how game play and interest in CS are related.

My Click is My Bond

The growth in Internet use is not only placing pressure on service providers to maintain adequate bandwidth but also the people who run the Websites that operate through them. Called systems operators, or sysops, these people face a number of different obligations arising out of the use of their computer-mediated communication platforms. Most notable are contracts, which nearly all Websites have, and in the case of e-commerce sites in the European Union, there are contractual terms they must have. This chapter sets out to investigate how the role contract law can both help and hinder sysops and their users. Sysop powers are limited by sysop prerogative, which is everything they can do which has not been taken away by statute or given away by contract. The chapter finds that there are a number of special considerations for sysops in how they use contracts in order that they are not open to obligations through disabled or vulnerable users being abused by others.

Critical Transport

At present, medical knowledge is experiencing an exponential growth. This results in serious difficulties to healthcare professionals in keeping up to date. At the same time, medical education is mostly taught using traditional learning methodologies, not always the most efficient. Recently however, there has been a significant increase in the use of computer games for both teaching and training as several published studies are showing that serious games can be more efficient when compared to traditional learning methodologies. Although the current number of serious games used in medical education is still very limited, the authors agree that it's application could lead to the improvement of medical knowledge and skills. This paper describes the serious game Critical Transport which is based on the Portuguese Society of Intensive Care's recommendations for the transport of critically ill patients, as well as the results of a pre/post-test study focused in determining the Critical Transport serious game efficiency as a training tool for training medical students.

Identifying Group Processes and Affect in Learners

In the last five years, the analytical techniques for identifying the processes of online learning have developed to the point where applications for the assessment of learning can be discussed. This would be most appropriate for twenty-first century skills—such as collaboration, decision-making, and teamwork skills—which are the core learning outcomes in immersive learning environments. The state of the art in this field is still at the stage of discovering patterns of the processes of learning, identifying stages, and suggesting their meaning. However, already it is important to consider what technologies can offer and what information teachers need in order to evaluate students' situated performance and to provide useful feedback. This chapter describes an imagined virtual world, one that affords the range of twenty-first century skills, in order to illustrate types of analyes that could be conducted on learning process data. Such analytical methods could provide both descriptive information about the performance of learners and depict structures and patterns of their learning processes. The future assessment of learning in immersive virtual worlds may draw on data about deep embodied processes and multiple senses that usually underpin professional skills, such as affect, visual perception, and movement. This type of assessment could also provide deeper insights into many psychological processes in collaborative learning, decision-making, and problem-solving in virtual worlds, such as motivation, self-efficacy, and engagement. Overall, the view of the assessment presented in this chapter extends beyond the formal learning outcomes that are usually required by tertiary education quality and standards agencies and assessed in traditional courses in higher education to include a range of new capacities that may not be required but are essential for successful performance in contemporary workplaces.