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Games‐based Construction Learning (GBCL) and games‐based learning (GBL) are being promoted within the curriculum for excellence (CfE). Children in the Upper Primary (Primary 4 onwards) are now being encouraged to construct their own games. These changes have been made from the previous curriculum and are causing frustration with some teachers who believe that they have been left without adequate resources and professional development to introduce such approaches into their lessons. Surveys have shown that while teachers are making some use of GBL in their class very little is being done with GBCL. With environments such as Scratch, Kodu and Gamemaker, game construction is becoming more accessible to children at a younger age. This paper will present an implementation framework for the introduction of GBCL into PE by utilising Scratch. It will discuss the literature surrounding GBCL in PE before presenting a generalised framework for the introduction of GBCL into PE. The framework is based on empirical work carried out in 3 primary schools within Glasgow in 2011/2012 and aims to give teachers a starting point for using GBCL in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hours of exposure to the digital world is claimed to be profoundly affecting and changing this generation’s learning styles and abilities. To make learning more appealing to the students, teachers have started to use digital games within classroom learning. This paper presents the findings from structured interviews conducted with two classes of primary school students from two different schools in Scotland. The interviews were intended to obtain the students’ background on game playing and their views on learning particularly in using games for learning. The participants were exposed to digital games‐based learning (DGBL) and non‐DGBL learning approaches at school prior to the interviews. The findings revealed that most students spent on average less than 1 hour per day playing digital games and the most popular game platform was the console platform. The overall mean for the attitudes towards learning by playing games, learning by making game, towards DGBL and non‐DGBL approaches and towards school is above 2.00 (Mean: 2.50, SD: 0.10), indicating positive attitudes in all observed areas. No gender difference was observed in all of the attitudes. However, some significant differences were found across some items for different age groups. The findings from this study will contribute to the generation of empirical evidence in the field of digital games‐based learning particularly with regards to its application in primary school education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Games‐based learning is perceived by educationalists as a potentially highly motivational approach for learning and teaching at a supplementary level and is starting to be used more frequently at Primary Education (PE) and Secondary Education (SE) level. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has also increased in popularity. CLIL is a bilingual educational approach where an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both the language and the content and each are interwoven. This paper will discuss the development of a generic electronic Content and Language Integrated Learning (e‐CLIL) Web2.0 games engine developed as part of the EU Comenius e‐CLIL project by the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). The Web2.0 games engine directly answers the need for expanding, very quickly, the amount of content available (in any language) for teachers of CLIL. This paper will present an empirical evaluation of the piloting of the Web2.0 games engine. This paper will present both a student quantitative pilot evaluation consisting of 82 participants and a teacher quantitative pilot evaluation consisting of 18 participants of the e‐CLIL Web2.0 games engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that each student has a different way of learning and processing information has long been recognised by educationalists. In the classroom, the benefits derived from delivering learning content in ways that match the student’s learning style have also been identified. As new modes of delivery of learning content such as computer‐assisted learning systems (e.g. eLearning) have become increasingly popular, research into these has also identified the benefits of tailoring learning content to learning styles. However, in games‐based learning (GBL), the adaptation based on learning style to enhance the educational experience has not been well researched. For the purpose of this research, a game with three game modes has been developed. 1) non‐adaptivity mode; 2) a mode that customises the game according to the student’s learning style identified by using a learning style questionnaire; and 3) a mode that has an in‐game adaptive system that dynamically and continuously adapts its content according to the student’s interactions in the game. This paper discusses the term adaptivity in a GBL context and presents the results of an empirical experimental study investigating the differences in learning effectiveness of different learning groups. The study was performed between three different game groups and a paper‐based learning group with 120 students in Higher Education learning SQL (Structured Query Language). The results show that the game developed, regardless of mode, produced better learning outcomes than those who learned from a textbook. Particularly for adaptive GBL, the learning effectiveness was identified to be higher with lower completion time compared to the other modes of the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports on the pre‐piloting of the StartUp_EU Lifelong Learning European Project. StartUp_EU is a project for secondary schools that simulating the excitement and creative innovation of starting up a new company. The project developed a series of mini‐games, an encompassing Web2.0 platform and a collaborative competition for secondary school students, between 14 and 18 years of age, to inspire high tech entrepreneurship. The platform was based on the open source ILIAS Learning Content Management (LCM) platform and the mini‐games were developed in 3D Flash. Each mini‐game focused on a specific challenge/task associated with business start‐up. Students participated in a competition completing a series of 8 tasks simulating the process of arriving at an idea for a business to a real product and creating an elevator pitch. Students had to fill in a pre‐competition questionnaire at the beginning and a post‐competition questionnaire at the end of the competition. The questionnaires were completed online and the pre‐piloting lasted eight weeks, from the middle of January 2013 until the middle of March 2013. Forty seven (47) students took part in the prepiloting with the vast majority of them never taken part in a competition about entrepreneurship and had limited or no experience with game‐based learning. This paper presents the results of the pre and post questionnaires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest towards the introduction of Games‐Based Learning (GBL) in education is increasing. Using computer games to assist the learning process offers a wide range of possibilities inconceivable in a traditional classroom. Assessment of the learner during game‐play represents a key challenge for GBL. This task is time consuming and requires both technical and educational knowledge. However, careful consideration of the integration of assessment in GBL is crucial as assessment has a very important role in teaching and learning; it is essential for teachers to assess how much their students have achieved the learning goals of a lesson and learners rely on assessment to receive feedback on their work. This paper discusses the specification of a generalized assessment engine that could be integrated into any GBL application. This paper first reviews the literature on traditional assessment and approaches to assessment in GBL. Next, the paper analyses the characteristics of a range of existing GBL applications. Using these characteristics, the literature on assessment and the outline GBL assessment model proposed by Hainey et al. (2012), a refined assessment model is presented. Finally, based on the refined assessment model this paper proposes a specification for a generalised assessment engine, provides an outline design and discusses the implementation of this design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent report by the Social Protection Committee on the social dimension in the EU 2020 strategy, stated that greater emphasis must be put on innovating the training of human capital to be responsible for improving the quality of life for vulnerable people throughout Europe, including persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Education plays a pivotal role in this process and presents many challenges, especially with regard to the practice learning. However, arranging practice learning for students carries the challenge of finding qualified mentors/practice assessors, finding sufficient numbers of placements for all students, and addressing the risks associated with the safety and well-being of students and trainees. An innovative approach to experiencing practice learning is through simulation- and game-based education where students engage in an imitation of a real-world scenario in playful ways. An immediate advantage of interactive simulations and games is the provision of risk-free environments in cases where consequences are too costly or hazardous in real life; with a simulated practice game there are no consequences outside the boundaries of the game environment. Responding to the above challenges, the Play2Do project (http://www.play2do.eu) develops a 3D gaming environment that provides a safe and readily accessible environment where students studying to become teachers of people with intellectual disabilities can learn by interacting with non-player characters in a simulation of real world scenarios. The approach uses a more modern, constructivist approach to education and represents an example of innovative education in a digital era, particularly a computer-games era. The core constituent of the gaming/simulation environment are the real-world scenarios. In our work, we engaged special education experts from the UK, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Cyprus and created first a sound understanding of what exact needs are addressed by the simulation environment and second a set of six well-defined scenarios. For instance, dealing with a case in the autism spectrum, the player faces certain behaviour patterns in a simulation setting and finds his/her way through the scenes by interpreting the situation and responding appropriately. A key research finding is that gaming and virtual simulations in practice learning may be better used as a tool to give teachers a certain level of confidence and knowledge but not as a replacement of actual practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that a young person makes, and it is increasingly recognised that having a better understanding of careers and career management skills can help to improve the attainment of young people by reducing the risk of dropping out of school early and leading to more positive career outcomes. The Youth@Work game addresses this by supporting young people between the ages of 13-19 years in career planning. The main benefit of using a game-based approach in this area is that a game provides an active and engaging approach to supporting young people in making these complex and difficult decisions. The current paper describes a case study of the design and development of a game, the Youth@work game, to support career planning, from the initial ideas to the working game and explains how theories of theories of career development and choice were used to specify learning outcomes in the game.We will describe how the career competences required for the game were identified and operationalised and how these were implemented as learning outcomes in the game. The two main theoretical frameworks that were used to characterize the desired learning outcomes for the game were: (a) the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) model of career competences and (b) Holland’s model of vocational interests. The SDS model provided a useful organisational framework for the game and both models helped to specify the varied activities in the different zones of the game. The scoring system and feedback are described as well as difficulties that emerged in game design and development as these can provide valuable lessons about general issues that arise in designing games for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer programming is a challenge for students and a major reason why people avoid Computer Science courses. Investigating alternative teaching methods is essential to encourage students to learn and understand the concepts of programming. The use of games in learning and training is advocated and supported by many researchers due to its motivational and attractive features. This study focuses on an approach that supports the use of learning methodologies based on constructionist activities. Therefore, a pedagogical framework is proposed to guide lecturers who teach programming on how to integrate games-based learning to present coding concepts in the context of familiar real-world applications like computer games development. The framework is supported by motivational and attractive game features in conjunction with the authentic and meaningful aspects of constructionist activities for Games-Based Construction Learning (GBCL). This paper summarises and presents a framework model based on a literature review and a panel of experts, with a view to performing a two-stage process to validate this framework. The paper discusses the design and validation of the framework and proposes actions regarding its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of social media is impacting on the lives of people with learning disabilities; it is important that this impact be a positive and fulfilling experience. Young people find themselves in a range of dangerous situations online without the support or understanding to keep themselves safe. Practitioners and parents increasingly face problems of this nature themselves and require support to allow them to make informed choices that help keep young people healthy and safe online. While there are examples of resources that promote online safety for people with learning disabilities, young people, carers and practitioners in one area of Scotland have indicated the necessity to have a centralised and interactive resource to encourage people to develop online safety skills and understand how to stay healthy and safe online. These are primarily physical resources such as worksheets, slides and booklets with limited interactive content. In this paper we discuss an alternative approach that uses an immersive games-based learning tool to train and influence the behaviour of young people with learning disabilities. The online safety tool has potential to help community, acute health/social workers or guardians educate and monitor the online vulnerability and safety of a young person with a learning disability. Young people can simulate real life scenarios and learn through problem solving or reflective practice in a format that they can interact with and relate to on a daily basis. Social care professionals or trainers can update elements of the scenarios and content and can remotely facilitate, track progress and monitor behaviour and performance. Requirements and initial concepts were gathered through Experience Labs using a Participatory Design approach and this paper presents the proof of concept game that has been developed and the results from a preliminary investigation of the use of the games with young people with learning disabilities. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the game may impact policy and practice in this area and how the game can be further developed and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of health and social services is increasing as European society grows older and unemployment and relocation across Europe increases. This growing demand for services is creating unprecedented pressures on health and social care systems. Despite differences in political approaches and institutional frameworks, health and social services across Europe face similar challenges in adjusting to demographic ageing, societal change, rising expectations and consumerism, changing employment and family patterns, evolving technological opportunities and funding issues. A key part of the sector deals with vulnerable people. Education and training plays a pivotal role in developing those who work with vulnerable people and, more generally, the social services sector. In many parts of Europe, the sector has a strong emphasis on learning and assessing skills for job roles in real practice environments (“practice learning”). In some qualifications, practice learning can be almost 40% of the total learning time. There are also on-going demands for practice learning with new qualified professionals and professionals as part of CPD. There are clear logistical challenges in arranging practice opportunities where trainees are able to learn the core skills of the job and receive high quality support, supervision and assessment of their practice from suitably qualified mentors/practice assessors. Furthermore, finding sufficient numbers of such placements has been a challenge for the last 30 years. However, there are also other challenges; e.g. risks associated with work-based learning and the safety and well-being of service users in giving trainees access to their lives. This paper discusses the development of a 3D simulated practice learning environment that focuses on supporting people who work with young children. The paper then presents the findings from a large-scale teacher training programme for the game that was run across various European countries with 120 participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "Business Intelligence" (BI) has evolved from Management Information Systems to Decision Support Systems since the mid-1960s. Today, modern decision making methodologies and technologies are referred to under the term "Business Intelligence". The main purpose of this technology is to improve both the efficiency of users' decision making and the effectiveness of decisions. Decision support technology has been implemented and researched in industry and academia for more than half a century, however, challenges in teaching of this field still remain such as access to suitable data sets, finding interesting business cases, and providing realistic and meaningful experiences. Interestingly, the top rank of CIO global technological priorities is still Business Intelligence and Business Analytics, but the skills gap is significantly wide and negatively impacts on business. Moreover, it is not only the BI skills that are needed but also the 21st Century skills, such as, communication, social skills, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, productivity, and risk taking - as suggested by the European Community to meet the requirements from the job market. This situation drives BI instructors to improve their teaching strategies or to have considered alternative methods to educate their students. Business Simulation Games are recognized as an effective educational method to enable students to learn how to make decisions and manage the business process in a modern enterprise, link abstract concepts to real world problems, and improve quantitative skills. Additionally, a game is a future technology trend that will be able to support developing new skills, because game characteristics can contribute and sustain 21st Century skills. Therefore, the "BI Academy" (BIA) project at the Stuttgart Media University in collaboration with the University of the West of Scotland has developed a business simulation game, called BI game. It is anticipated that using the BI game can help instructors to overcome the limitations and challenges in teaching BI, support students to improve their BI skills and 21st Century skills through the learning process, help students to get a better understanding of how to use BI tools to support decision making, and can leverage students' BI maturity level. This paper first presents the status of Business Intelligence in academia, the conceptual framework being used as the basis for game design, the technical framework supporting the game operation, and the organisational format of the BI game which provides a closed-loop learning environment. The paper then describes the preliminary results of students' self-assessment, which shows that most of the students assessed themselves as having quite good 21st Century skills but quite low BI skills. Finally, the paper will provide directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Games-based learning has developed a reputation with educationalists as it is perceived as a potentially engaging form of supplementary learning that could be utilised to enhance the educational process. Games-based learning has been utilised at all levels of education including primary, secondary and tertiary education. Despite this recognition and utilisation there is still a lack of empirical evidence to support the validity of games-based learning as an approach. This paper will present the findings of a systematic literature review performed from 2000 to 2013 specifically looking at quality empirical studies associated with the application of games-based learning in Primary Education (PE) level. The results presented in this paper are a subset of a larger study categorising studies into: behavioural change, affective and motivational outcomes, perceptual and cognitive skills, knowledge acquisition and content understanding and soft skill outcomes. This paper will specifically focus on the knowledge acquisition and content understanding category where 68 studies were identified; overall however only 29 of those studies made it over the quality assurance threshold. This paper will present a synthesis of these high quality studies associated with knowledge acquisition and content understanding. The studies showed that games-based learning has been used to teach a variety of subjects to children and young people under the age of 14 with mathematics, science, language and social studies being the most popular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) is the main regulatory body responsible for registering people who work in social services and is responsible for regulating their education and training. In Scotland there are currently 191, 000 social service workers who work with a variety of different people in a variety of different settings ranging from care home services for adults to early year settings such as nurseries and out of care clubs. Games-based Learning has developed a reputation with educationalists for being a potential form of supplementary learning and has been applied in a number of different subject areas. The current state of computer games technology allows the creation of games beyond that of 2D games or web-based eLearning games for increased engagement and immersion. It is therefore considered to be beneficial to use current computer games technology to create a realistic, 3D simulated practice environment for social and health care training. This paper will introduce a generic simulated practice environment developed in Unity for childhood practice training. The paper will describe the preliminary development of the games-based learning environment and discuss the implemented prototype. The paper presents an analysis of an expert evaluation that has been performed on this prototype and discusses future developmental directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious Games (SG) are increasingly used by educators to assist the teaching and learning process and offer many advantages over traditional education. They are highly engaging, motivating and they have the potential to adapt to each student quickly becoming an ideal supplementary tool for education. However, if the majority of teachers agree that using SGs increases the motivation, learning and retention of their students, very few of them are ready to trust their assessment to verify that the learning goals have been met. They would rather adopt a more conventional method such as a paperbased test. We believe two main reasons explain this attitude: a lack of ownership over the games used and the rigidness of the games, making them unmodifiable by the teacher. To overcome these issues, we have developed an assessment engine to be used by both SG developers and educators. The engine's design results in a separation of a game and its assessment, and the resulting modularity allows the teachers to modify the assessment of a game even after distribution. This paper focuses on the teacher interface of the assessment engine. After reviewing the literature associated with ingame assessment and learning analytics, the paper will provide a summary of the engine and its functionalities, present the Learning Analytics (LA) dashboard. We will then describe the visual language that allows teachers to edit a game's assessment system based on the LA reports. Thereafter, the authorisation and versioning mechanics of the engine will be detailed, showing how the system regulates the access to the games and stressing the fact that every teacher will have, after modification, a unique game customised to their students' needs. Finally, we will provide conclusions and state the remaining work to be undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]