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Digital games are one of the most engaging forms of media. Players can have a first-hand experience and the possibility of feeling immersed within a digital setting where agency is exerted. This paper seeks to understand the role of digital games as new means of communication and their potential to convey messages that may defy gamers to question the moral grand narratives that shape contemporary societies. In a moment when many countries have opted to close or limit the circulation in their borders, it is important to think about the role played by the border as a historic liminal entity for the representation of societies and communities, distinguishing those who belong from those who do not. The representation of the border in digital games have tended to follow one of the main tropes explored in other media: the border as a physical space that set boundaries between different nations and different regions of the world. In order to assert the potential of digital games to offer a more comprehensive representation of the border as a liminal space, the case of Papers, Please! (2013) will be analyzed. Based on a qualitative methodology, having content analysis as primary data collection method, the paper intends to contribute to the discussion on how history may narrativized and, eventually, reinterpreted in digital games. Papers, Please! analysis will be centered on the relationship that is set between player and border, that is presented as a liminal space where the game's action takes places entirely. Moreover, the paper intends to discuss the role that has been played by digital games in the representation of serious topics and how they have evolved as communication tools beyond their role as entertainment products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When participants in introductory business courses encounter the term "operations strategy," it is not easy for them to appreciate what operations strategy is about, or how it fits with overall business strategy. This game breaks down highfalutin jargon into experiences that participants can readily relate to. While working in teams to make paper boats, and competing with other teams, participants realize that they have intuitively engaged in the formulation and implementation of their team's operations strategy. They begin to appreciate the interplay between the customer's requirements, their own team's strengths, the "competitive priorities" that their team must emphasize, and the tradeoffs inherent in making these decisions. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

As members of a social species, we spend most of our time interacting with others. In interactions, we tend to mutually align our behavior and brain responses to communicate more effectively. In a semi-computerized version of the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, we investigated whether people show enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization when making explicit predictions about others' actions. Across four experimental conditions, we measured the dynamic brain activity using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning method. Results showed that interpersonal neural synchrony was enhanced when participants played the game together as they would do in real life in comparison to when they played the game on their own. We found no evidence of increased neural synchrony when participants made explicit predictions about others' actions. Hence, neural synchrony may depend on mutual natural interaction rather than an explicit prediction strategy. This study is important, as it examines one of the presumed functions of neural synchronization namely facilitating predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usage of games in the process of teaching and learning is always advantageous, because children prefer to learn playfully. Board-games are particularly enjoyable for children. They do not learn consciously, but they enjoy playing together with their parents and siblings, because board-games bring together both family and friends. Playing board-games is not only a joyful activity, it also develops different skills of the player, as communication skills, strategy creating and problem solving competency, cooperation, etc. Nowadays there are many boardgames on sale, active board-game playing communities organize events, and a culture of playing board-games is developing. Thus integrating board-games in educational activities seems to be a natural process to follow. But this integration has many obstacles, as time and curriculum constrains, the lack of methodological knowledge of the teachers, inadequate choose of educational board-games for some subjects, etc. The aim of this research is to study primary school teachers' attitude to playing board-games and their board-game playing practice. The results show that majority of the participating elementary school teachers love playing boardgames, almost half of them also play board games in their private life. Most of them bring these games to the classroom as well. Teachers love these games, because they are fun, teach logical thinking, make students creative, help them to relax, are team builders, motivate students to learn, get used to speed, develop attention, teach strategies, and are childhood favorites. [This paper was presented at the TDID Doctoral Students' Conference, 14-16 May 2020.]

A game of rock-paper-scissors is an interesting example of an interaction where none of the pure strategies strictly dominates all others, leading to a cyclic pattern. In this work, we consider an unstable version of rock-paper-scissors dynamics and allow individuals to make behavioural mistakes during the strategy execution. We show that such an assumption can break a cyclic relationship leading to a stable equilibrium emerging with only one strategy surviving. We consider two cases: completely random mistakes when individuals have no bias towards any strategy and a general form of mistakes. Then, we determine conditions for a strategy to dominate all other strategies. However, given that individuals who adopt a dominating strategy are still prone to behavioural mistakes in the observed behaviour, we may still observe extinct strategies. That is, behavioural mistakes in strategy execution stabilise evolutionary dynamics leading to an evolutionary stable and, potentially, mixed co-existence equilibrium. Author summary: A game of rock-paper-scissors is more than just a children's game. This type of interactions is often used to describe competition among animals or humans. A special feature of such an interaction is that none of the pure strategies dominates, resulting in a cyclic pattern. However, in wild communities such interactions are rarely observed by biologists. Our results suggest that this lack of cyclicity may stem from imperfectness of interacting individuals. In other words, we show analytically that heterogeneity in behavioural patterns may break a cyclic relationship and lead to a stable equilibrium in pure or mixed strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a fairly new motivational technique, the so-called Gamification, which consists of introducing game mechanics in non-game environments to promote motivation and engagement. By the turn of the 21rst century, Gamification took off in the business field and soon after became an attractive concept for researchers and professionals in education as it appears to be an increasingly popular method to motivate learners. Nevertheless, it is still a nascent field in terms of empirical evidence available to firmly support its educational benefits. This paper intends to shed some more light on this topic through a comprehensive review of literature published in the most prominent journals. The present study is framed within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in higher education and Computer-Assisted Language Learning, and focuses on the effects of gamified learning environments on student's motivation and learning. A Meta-analysis method was used to explore relevant empirical research published between 2011 and 2019. After reviewing a corpus of 68 papers drawn from the leading databases Scopus and Web Of Science, and from which only 15 could be included in the study, we can point out two main findings: (i) there is still very limited literature in the field of SLA and, (ii) results seem to be predominantly positive in terms of motivation and engagement but only a few studies confirm clear interconnections with learning outcomes. The results suggest a lack of solid correlations between Gamification, motivation and cognitive processes.

Christopher Bensch is vice president for collections and chief curator at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. He oversees the acquisition of and care for the world's most comprehensive collection of playthings. He also serves as the primary spokesperson for the National Toy Hall of Fame. Andrew Borman is digital games curator at The Strong. He collects digital games and coordinates the museum's digital game preservation efforts. Michelle Parnett-Dwyer is curator at The Strong. She collects and interprets a comprehensive collection of toys and dolls. Nic Ricketts is curator at The Strong. He acquires and interprets the museum's collection of board games, puzzles, and other nonelectronic games, as well as photographs, art, and paper ephemera. In this interview, The Strong's curators discuss the impact of the pandemic on play and the museum's collecting and preservation efforts.

As president of Little Big Horn College, David Yarlott writes that he had the good fortune to be involved in several events with Indigenous peoples from other countries. He has participated in several World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) conferences and also a World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (WIPCE). The events took him to Kananaskis, Alberta in Canada; Honolulu, Hawai'i; Cloquet, Minnesota; and Cusco, Peru in South America. One event included travel to Cuiaba, Brazil, for the Brazilian Indigenous Games in 2013. In this article he writes that attending the different conferences gave him a view from the outside looking in. He was able to observe presentations on best practices-the "diamonds of success"-for different educational programs and projects of Indigenous nations from many parts of the world. Of course these presentations provide information on the challenges and struggles overcome to make their programs successful. Such presentations do not do justice to the intimate challenges and successes these programs have incurred. Yarlott relates in this article two things he remembers as particularly impressive at these conferences: (1) the passion, commitment, and energy the presenters have regarding their work; and (2) their dedication to preserving their respective traditions, cultures, and languages.

Collaborative worldbuilding is an ideal digital writing project for promoting critical thinking about contemporary issues, developing and applying disciplinary expertise writing transfer, and building digital literacies. In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic where the student experience was characterised by isolation, collaborative worldbuilding also offered a powerful means of building solidarity and community. This paper presents a case study of using collaborative worldbuilding for gaming to achieve key digital writing learning outcomes. The case study shows how this innovative pedagogical approach can be mapped to two key frameworks for information and digital literacies: the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens and the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education of the Association of College and Research Libraries. The case study also illustrates how a MediaWiki installation can be used for worldbuilding and as a means of critically introducing students to Wikipedia itself. Qualitative feedback from the students shows that the class achieved its key learning outcomes. More importantly, student engagement during the class and their feedback ascertains that collaborative worldbuilding is a powerful means of building connections and empathy between students in the context of isolation, amid a global pandemic.

This paper analyzes the relationship between proportional reasoning and understanding fair games in Costa Rican students. We conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the answers to six items on comparing ratios of increasing difficulty level and another item on prize estimation in a fair game. We describe the strategies employed and the semiotic conflicts detected in 292 Costa Rican students from Grades 6 to 10 (11-16-year-olds), comparing the findings with those established in previous research. The results show an increase in the level of proportional reasoning with the grade, although the age at which the higher levels are reached is lower than that assumed by Noelting. The percentage of students applying correct strategies in the fair game problem also increases with grade, and a relationship between the understanding of fair game and the level of proportional reasoning is observed.

Project-based learning is an effective method for students' learning design. For the "Graphic Design for Interactive Entertainment" elective course, the author uses project-based learning to teach UI and UX design to Universitas Pelita Harapan's Visual Communication Design Department students. For the project, the author designed a game mechanic. The students of the course later designed visuals for the game. One game that resulted from this project was "Pro Pickpockets", a game about a group of pickpockets competing to collect valuable prizes for the best pickpockets. This paper elaborates on the design case of Pro Pickpockets as a design project and project-based learning for students in learning UI and UX.

Gamification is a conceptual framework to apply game elements and techniques to improve the interesting process in non-game context. Gamification offers the motivation approach to motivate the player to handle the challenge tasks with game mechanics, game dynamics, and components. Nowadays, To discover the set of game elements and techniques from evaluating the existing related research is more opportunity for success in the exciting process. The core objective of this paper is to review the literature by using descriptive statistics of game elements with the review methodology. The reviewed literature was first coded author-centrally. After each paper was scrutinized for the analysis, the perspective was pivoted, and further analyses were conducted concept-centrally. A systematic review has been conducted that proves the wide variety of game elements, being retrieved a total of fifteen terms of game elements from twenty-two selected papers that were screened from a total of eighty-two documents. Only a few terms are used: points, feedback, levels, leaderboards, challenges, badges, avatars, competition, and cooperation. However, only some can be considered actual elements mechanics and that have not a similar abstraction level. Additionally, the authors examined the relationship between game elements and Self-Determination Theory (SDT): Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness. The results indicated that a few terms of game elements were used: points, feedback, levels, leaderboards, challenges, badges, avatars, competition, and cooperation to explaine the relationship to SDT: Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness. The results from this study will be used to design a gamified system in a healthcare context to promote physical activity.

Much literature exists for rock-paper-scissors (RPS) game. It is well known in a single habitat that spatial models are more stable than well-mixed population. However, the mechanism of spatial stabilization has been unclear. In the present article, we study multilayer model of RPS game in a patchy environment; respective patches are set as lattices. The predation probability of one of three species is assumed to be reduced as a parameter. Simulations on two-layer system reveal the opposite result to those on a single-habitat system. Namely, the well-mixed population becomes stable. In contrast, extinction occurs by random migration in spatially-explicit model, when the reduced predation probability is below a certain critical value. The extinction in spatial model is found to be caused by the collapse of a kind of swarm intelligence (SI). In RPS system, large swarms of each species are automatically protected from its predator. Such a self-organized protection is one of the simplest examples of SI. We also discuss some serious problems for random migration. • Spatial pattern of rock, paper and scissors are studied in patchy environment. • A distinct point of the present paper is to set lattices as respective patches. • We illustrate that biodiversity is sustained by a kind of "swarm intelligence". • Large swarms of each species are automatically protected from its predator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design Thinking (DT) is not merely a well-known design methodology but also an entire mindset towards solving complex societal problems in an innovative way. Its popularity in diverse disciplines beyond design, is due to its relation with the development of key 21st-century skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. Teaching the DT mindset has always required methods different from the traditional, one-way, mainly teacher-led approaches in which students play a more passive role in the learning process. Such creative methods include constructivist teaching practices, such as learning-by-doing and learning-by-making. Game modding, which is defined as the modification of existing games, is also seen as a constructivist teaching approach since in this way students learn by designing a game. The experience is argued to increase the engagement and interaction of players with the game, and combine the roles of player and designer. However, using game modding to teach the DT mindset remains poorly researched. This paper discusses the outcomes of a pilot study developed in the scope of the in-progress Erasmus+ KA2 project 'T-CREPE' (Textile Engineering for Co-Creation Paradigms in Education). This study investigates the influence of game modding on students' adoption of the DT mindset through the use of an online learning platform that enables a game modding experience. This platform includes games that students can play, modify, and/or design their own in the process of developing a project. Students (n = 240) and teachers (n = 9) from three higher education institutions in Belgium and Greece participated in this study. The quantitative and qualitative data collected has provided information on their experiences of game modding while cultivating a DT mindset. The findings of the study indicate that game modding enables students to practise critical questioning, constructionism and co-creation, which are core elements of the DT mindset.

This paper examines peer interactions among preschoolers while playing the board game known as "Buaya di Bawah Jambatan" (BDBJ) particularly in learning "adab" and moral values. Additionally, this study is guided by two research objectives focusing on the nature (types) of interactions among players during the game and suggestions or responses from the instructors on the game including its physical outlook and processes. This research embarked upon a qualitative study where 4, 5 to 6 years old children attending a pre-school in Shah Alam were observed when playing 'Buaya di Bawah Jambatan'. The sample was basically a group made up of 2 boys & 2 girls. The teacher assigned for the group became the instructor facilitating the whole process of playing the game. Data collected was mainly from the non-participant observations made by the researchers when the game was played. Video recordings too were made to capture the interactions observed during the whole session. Analysis were made both on the initial observation and the subsequent observations done on the recorded videos. The findings of this research revealed three major themes on peer interactions which include: (1) learning to be with peers; (2) developing creative thinking and problem solving; and (3) humour and laughter. The study also found that suggestions or responses from the instructor comprises both areas of improvements and strengths of the game. These findings are crucial to help teacher-educators to enhance their pedagogical skills and knowledge, particularly on learning "adab" and moral values in more fun, engaging and meaningful ways. Hence, learning "adab" and moral values among children should be more dynamic and relevant to children's lives rather than applying solely on conventional approaches. It is hoped that this study opens more opportunities, insights, and ideas for other researchers to study peer interactions and its relations to games and learning "adab" with children in other populations such as among the marginalized community and B40 group as well as children with Special Educational Needs (SEN).

Purpose: The primary purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the key perspectives that emerge in this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Special Issue as a basis for determining the existence or otherwise of a Soccer Society, as well as reflecting on the challenges that evidence of corruption in soccer (the beautiful game) has had on the game to date. Reflections on these matters are then utilised to offer a prospective analysis of issues for further research. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a reflective analysis that draws on existing societal work to provide key dimensions of accounting and accountability for significant organisations in the world of sport in general and soccer in particular. Findings: Much prior research on soccer has largely focussed on the internal workings of soccer organisations, with little discussion of the importance of context. This paper explores the influence of the game more broadly. Moreover, a number of the papers included illustrate an overwhelming sense of joy and pleasure from experiences of the beautiful game, as well as providing evidence of the general societal good that can flow from it. However, the study also highlights concerns emanating from weak, and seemingly pliable, governance, regulatory and accountability regimes that provide a fertile field for corruption and sportswashing. Research limitations/implications: This paper highlights a research agenda as an encouragement to interdisciplinary accounting researchers to investigate accountability and governance issues as a basis for evidence-based discussions of the impact of soccer and its regulation. Originality/value: This paper specifically, and the Special Issue more broadly, offers a set of original empirical and theoretical contributions with respect to an activity that has faced limited scrutiny and consideration by academic accountants. Together, they offer a substantive body of work to enable future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labeling information is a precarious and risky enterprise. Catalogers have the task of fitting unique concepts within established and rigid language frameworks while also minimizing personal bias. The way information literacy librarians interact with labeled information also influences how users interact with information. Labeling moves beyond the role of categorizing; it also contributes to meaning making and knowledge building. Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" serves as a philosophical footing to illustrate how the labeling of things, in this case information, shapes the way we give things meaning. Critical librarianship and philosophy of information theory add to the discussion by considering how personal perspective, power, and bias to manipulate the game of naming information that takes place in the information literacy classroom. This paper is an invitation for librarians to reflect upon the relationship between labeling and how all users of information engage with labels and subsequently create meaning and knowledge.

This article explores how student behaviour and interactions change when teachers use "producing" as a primary pedagogical strategy (Papert, 1980; Ejsing-Duun and Karoff, 2014). Based on observed student and teacher actions and responses, as well as students' production, this paper emphasizes the importance of understanding how students explore creativity and playfulness while producing in learning situations. This paper is based on a large research project called "Children as Learning Designers in a Digital School (2013-2015)", funded by Denmark's Ministry of Education, which included fieldwork in five Danish public schools, involved about 500 students, and comprised six interventions in the first, second, fifth, sixth, and tenth grades. The project's empirical data consist of observations, participatory observation, and productions students created during the interventions. This paper presents an analysis of how students were creative and playful while producing learning material as games during three of the project's interventions. The study is based on a specific understanding of the creativity with a point of departure (Boden, 2004; Tanggaard and Wegener, 2015) and playfulness (Karoff, 2013) that occur in learning situations. We approach creativity and playfulness as new methods of learning, through six areas of change that inform "[…]how today's kids play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, dwell in place, and treat things" (Ackermann, 2013: 119). This paper investigates how educators handle children's productive processes in a school setting and how teachers can conceptualize and nurture play and creativity as drivers for learning. In this context, the importance of skills and acknowledgement of reproducing and remixing existing materials is discussed. We further argue that playfulness is necessary for creativity to occur. From this point of view, it is possible to understand how learning activities can support creativity--an essential twenty-first century skill (Levinsen and Sørensen, 2015).

The task of integrating games into an educational setting is a demanding one, and integrating games as a harmonious part of a bigger ecosystem of learning requires teachers to orchestrate a myriad of complex organizational resources. Historically, research on digital game-based learning has focused heavily on the coupling between game designs, previously established learning principles, student engagement, and learning outcomes much to the expense of understanding how games function in their intended educational contexts and how they impact the working processes of teachers. Given the significant investments of time and resources teachers need to make in order to conduct game-based learning activities, the foci of past research is problematic as it obfuscates some of the pressing realities that highly affect games' viability as tools for teaching and learning. This paper aims to highlight the demands that the implementation and use of an educational game in formal educational settings puts on teachers' working processes and skill sets. The paper is based on two case studies in which a researcher collaborated with K-12 teachers to use MinecraftEdu (TeacherGaming LLC, 2012) as a classroom activity over a five-month long period. By documenting both the working processes involved in implementing the game into the classroom environment, as well as the execution of the actual game-based classroom activities, the studies identified a wide variety roles that a teacher needs to take on if they are to make games a central part of a school curriculum. Ultimately, the paper highlights the importance of understanding the constraints under which teachers work, and argues that a better understanding of the contexts in which games are to be used, and the roles teachers play during game-based learning scenarios, is a necessary foundation for improving games' viability as educational tools.

The Twin Cities PBS "Ready to Learn" project focuses on the building of science and literacy skills of diverse students ages 5 to 8. It also promotes equity for historically underrepresented children in science (race-ethnic minorities, low-income children with disabilities, English Language Learners). The Transformative Transmedia Framework for Early STEM Learners offers a set of guiding principles that integrate various understandings into one comprehensive framework that informs every aspect of the project. This paper outlines the following: (1) addressing the intersectionality of racial, class, cultural, and STEM identities for young learners and dispelling negative stereotypes; (2) grounding "real world" STEM experiences in the lived realities of diverse learners; (3) recognizing and integrating social and cultural assets in STEM learning experiences; (4) integrating equity within Science and Engineering practices; (5) understanding STEM as literacy; and (6) strategies for integration in multimedia contexts.

This article outlines a trend in popular historical culture which has seen the increasing replacement of a concept of history that rests on some form of evidence base by visions of fictional pasts, or -- to put it more precisely -- by an ambiguous blend of the past and fictional pasts. Drawing on ethnographic research focused on the contents of Austrian children's rooms, this paper explores traceable manifestations of history and historical fiction, particularly toy dragons and dinosaurs, in their properties as objects and as focuses of their owners' interpretations as ascertained in interviews. The research finds little clear demarcation in the minds of the children interviewed (all between 8 and 12 years old) between imaginings and cognitive attempts to reconstruct the past. The article examines the influence of these factual-fictional representations on historical thinking from a history education perspective.

This paper explores students' perceptions of the benefits of chess-based instruction as part of an evaluation of a Chess in Schools (CIS) program implemented in 2017-2018 by a State Department of Education in the southeastern United States. The data were collected using a cross-sectional survey administered to students at the end of the academic year after 1 year of exposure to the CIS program. Results from the student survey responses (n = 1,286) indicated that a majority of students across all grade levels felt they had experienced a variety of positive outcomes because of their exposure to scholastic chess-based instruction. These perceived positive outcomes are beneficial for understanding the holistic impact of chess-based learning as they provide insight beyond measuring students solely on test scores or GPA metrics.

Meaningful learning occurs when individuals connect their existing knowledge with their current understanding. Unfortunately, many teaching practices neglect the learners' subconscious knowledge, also known as their "funds of knowledge." The result is a disconnect between school and home knowledge, social injustice towards students whose parents lack formal education, and frustration among learners. In this paper, we argue that mathematical concepts found in cultural games can teach children in grades 4-6 mathematics in Ghana. By describing math-rich games from Ghanaian culture and showing where they fit into the curriculum, we aim to provide teachers with examples of incorporating cultural games into their instruction. Our project emphasizes the importance of using games to enhance teacher pedagogy by blending established teaching methods with innovative strategies incorporating artistic games.

In the context of constructing regional education and talent hub, Macao's higher education talent development strategy impacts the creation of a regional talent hub and the process of industrial diversification. This study adopts a text analysis approach. Through the analysis of 118 texts and the construction of the game model, it reveals that Macao's talent development has been passing through a "market-controlled" and "policy-driven" stage due to the uniqueness of economic and social development. The model of cooperative game based on endosymbiosis implicates that the talent attraction strategy of higher education can play a leading role in socio-economic development to form a cooperative and symbiotic equilibrium with the region as a whole through the "climbing period" when the "actual state" catches up with the "expected value." This paper proposes some policy recommendations, including: prospective discipline layout, breaking down of institutional barriers, cooperation and exchange of talent cultivation, and the creation of a talent-sharing mechanism for promoting the construction of a regional talent hub.

In recent years, a multitude of datasets of human-human conversations has been released for the main purpose of training conversational agents based on data-hungry artificial neural networks. In this paper, we argue that datasets of this sort represent a useful and underexplored source to validate, complement, and enhance cognitive studies on human behavior and language use. We present a method that leverages the recent development of powerful computational models to obtain the fine-grained annotation required to apply metrics and techniques from Cognitive Science to large datasets. Previous work in Cognitive Science has investigated the question-asking strategies of human participants by employing different variants of the so-called 20-question-game setting and proposing several evaluation methods. In our work, we focus on GuessWhat, a task proposed within the Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing communities that is similar in structure to the 20-question-game setting. Crucially, the GuessWhat dataset contains tens of thousands of dialogues based on real-world images, making it a suitable setting to investigate the question-asking strategies of human players on a large scale and in a natural setting. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of computational tools to automatically code how the hypothesis space changes throughout the dialogue in complex visual scenes. On the one hand, we confirm findings from previous work on smaller and more controlled settings. On the other hand, our analyses allow us to highlight the presence of "uninformative" questions (in terms of Expected Information Gain) at specific rounds of the dialogue. We hypothesize that these questions fulfill pragmatic constraints that are exploited by human players to solve visual tasks in complex scenes successfully. Our work illustrates a method that brings together efforts and findings from different disciplines to gain a better understanding of human question-asking strategies on large-scale datasets, while at the same time posing new questions about the development of conversational systems.

Games are a great source of entertainment and are used by people of all ages; they motivate and engage people and affect their behavior. Therefore, games have been widely studied in many non-game contexts. Education is one of those areas where gamified, and game-based learning strategies have been implemented and explored. To engage and motivate students to quiz each other, and as a side effect, build a question bank, as well as to study the gaming and learning behavior of students, we used a peer-quizzing game called "Tower of Questions" (ToQ). The game uses some themes and mechanics found in tower defense (TD) games. The students received points for posing and answering the questions in the game in the form of gems. Students played the game with pseudonyms for one academic term and were told not to disclose their identities to anyone. We conducted a 3-month long study for two consecutive years in the same first-year undergraduate computer science course. In this paper, we present the findings from our studies using ToQ, specifically findings related to the students' self-monitoring and quizzing activities based on the game logs and two self-reported surveys from data collected in the second year of the study.

In this study, the play preferences of 80 five-year-old children, 40 girls and 40 boys, from four schools in Turkey and the characteristics that shape their preferred plays were examined. The research was designed by descriptive method, which is one of the qualitative research patterns, and the data were collected using draw-and-tell technique. Crayons and drawing papers were distributed to the children participating in the study and they were asked to draw a play they wanted to play. During the drawing, the children were interviewed by asking questions. Thematic analysis method was used in the study; open coding was performed to group the drawings and interview records of the children under the themes and sub-themes. As a result of thematic analysis, five main themes were created regarding the plays preferred by children and how and where they prefer to play them. The results showed that all children preferred open-ended plays, they mostly prefer modern plays (50%) (type of play), playing with friends (44%) (social connection), dynamic plays (69%) (physical function), indoors plays (54%) (playground) and to use ready-made toys (42%) (toys used).

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City implemented a science-based curriculum pairing augmented reality (AR) with a student-designed escape room experience to support astronomy learning. AR has the potential to simplify complex systems into digestible concepts. Designing an escape room experience provided students with an exciting opportunity to apply their understanding of astronomy concepts. This paper (1) presents a background of the curriculum, our development process, and describes the student-design framework, (2) describes the design of the escape room and the activities to facilitate science learning, (3) discusses how we utilized augmented reality in the course (4) presents design issues and revelations, and (5) proposes future changes.

In 2009, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern published "Pervasive Games: Theory and Design," based on research conducted during the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games (IPerG) and funded by the European Union (E.U.) from 2005 to 2008. They wrote it--the first book-length treatise on the topic--before the widespread use of smartphones and the ubiquitous impact of gaming on mobile devices. The work documented an era that a number of scholars came to identify as the first wave (or generation) of pervasive games. In 2019 a full decade after the book's publication, the authors were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion as part of the Urban Play Spring Seminar event in Tampere, Finland, to reflect on the evolution of pervasive games and on the recent scholarship about them. Many of the claims "Pervasive Games" made, especially in relation to the design space of these kinds of games, have endured--even when such games are considered in technological and medium-specific frameworks. However, the book also featured claims and characterizations that to the authors themselves appear, in hindsight, optimistic, irrelevant, or simply inaccurate. The emerging genres of pervasive games the authors observed charted paths that later games simply did not follow, and their bold claim that commercially viable pervasive games would not compete with other games, but instead with pastimes, proved inaccurate. Even the delimitation they gave the phenomenon itself remains in flux a decade later--both the umbrella term they used for it and the types of games they included as part of it are still being negotiated. The following is a recorded and transcribed version of the roundtable discussion (including questions from the moderator Dale Leorke and the attending audience) edited for publication. It examines the validity of the term "pervasive games" in an era when games and playfulness have seemingly become ubiquitous, looks at the commercial potential of pervasive play and games, and investigates how these games can meaningfully be connected with the spaces of the cities, towns, and other environments where they are performed.

This paper investigates unplugged computing as a formal pedagogical strategy to teaching computing to a Maltese secondary class of Year 9 students. It aims at identifying the effectiveness of this pedagogy outlining the strengths and weaknesses in its application, taking into consideration the level of attainment for students, as well as the impact on teachers' lesson preparation. This research study is based on the delivery of five unplugged activities. It analyses students' reaction when exposed to such unplugged activities to assess the viability of using this pedagogy when teaching computing concepts in a formal setting. The study concludes that unplugged computing is an effective pedagogical strategy that helps attain a high level of engagement and student involvement, encouraging teamwork and collaboration. Students experience a wide attention span and good retention through the constant link of computing scenarios to real-life examples and the use of tangible non-computing related objects. Notwithstanding, the study also identifies certain limitations of this pedagogy, mainly that it is not sufficient as a standalone pedagogy, but needs to be applied in conjunction with other pedagogies to be able to cover all the expected learning objectives of the curriculum.

Our research focuses on developing elementary students' mental computation skills with the help of card games. Choosing this area of study was motivated by our personal experiences, namely, that mathematics programmes of study do not lay emphasis on this aspect; there are too few hours dedicated to developing this skill, and several mental computation strategies are not presented in the classroom. As a result, students struggle with mental computation, a basic skill needed in our day-to-day life, and a relevant basis for further mathematical knowledge, computation competence, and higher order thinking skills. In order to develop this skill, we have transformed well-known card games into didactic games, which encourage development almost unnoticeably, given the fact that children love to play, they need play. We have devised five new, appealing tools, with different levels of difficulty, suitable for developing mental computation skills in an attractive way. This paper presents an experiment involving second grade (8-9 years old) students. Two experimental groups were involved. The aim was to investigate whether mental computation is more efficient when using the traditional method or when using card games. We hypothesized that using card games might prove helpful in developing mental computation skills.

Pervasive gaming is a reality-based gaming genre originating from alternative theatrical forms in which the performance becomes a part of the players' everyday life. In recent years much research has been done on pervasive gaming and its potential applications towards specific domains. Pervasive games have been effective with regards to advertising, education and social relationship building. In pervasive games that take place over a long period of time, i.e. days or weeks, an important success criterion is to provide features that support in-game awareness and increases the pervasiveness of the game according to the players' everyday life. This paper presents a "Dynamic Pervasive Storytelling" (DPS) approach and describes the design of the pervasive game "Nuclear Mayhem" (NM), a pervasive game designed to support a Web-games development course at the Nord-Trøndelag University College, Norway. NM ran parallel with the course and lasted for nine weeks and needed specific features both to become a part of the players' everyday life and to remind the players about the ongoing game. DPS, as a model, is oriented towards increasing the pervasiveness of the game and supporting a continuous level of player "in-game awareness" through the use of real life events (RLE). DPS uses RLE as building blocks both to create the overall game story prior to the start of the game by incorporating elements of current affairs in its design and during the unfolding of the game as a mean to increase the pervasiveness and in-game awareness of the experience. The paper concludes that DPS is a promising approach for creating a game story which increases the pervasiveness of the game and supports in-game awareness.

In this paper we consider the problem of making design of digital games accessible to primary school children and their teachers, and we argue for the need of digital games that are easy to alter by young learners. We know from previous research projects that digital games do not enable children to express their creativity at full, in contrast with lowfidelity prototypes and non-digital toys (such as card or table top games). Therefore, we propose here a novel approach that serves as a middle ground between digital and traditional table top games, and grants children more freedom to express themselves, articulate their understanding and difficulties both individually and socially. This approach, called cardbased model for digital game design, is an alternative to the current trend of associating programming with digital creativity. A preliminary study was conducted by transposing a digital game into a trading card game, to investigate the potential of the approach: as expected, students participating to the study shifted between playing and design thinking. The card-based model introduced in this paper works full circle: it enables learners to go from digital games to cards and back. In fact, the card-centric game architecture that resulted from the study allows a digital game to be reified as trading card-game, so that learners can re-design and digitize it to obtain a new a digital game, without programming. The next step is to involve primary schools in more complete evaluations of our new game development approach.

Games have been designed to be challenging and fun for humans to play, so we can test the AI system against the best human players in the world to quantify how good our AI systems are getting to be. We went from there to AlphaGo, which was our AI system to master the ancient and complex game of Go. DeepMind: From Games to Scientific Discovery: This paper is an edited version of Demis Hassabis' 2021 IRI Medal talk. He discussed his personal AI journey - from games to scientific discovery, some of his breakthrough results in complex games of strategy, and some of the exciting ways that lessons from the world of games are helping to accelerate scientific discovery. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of this study was to assess gamification as a method of experiential learning theory (ELT) on student motivation and self-efficacy to perform System Engineering/Information Assurance (IA) tasks. The study was a basic qualitative method, whereby data was collected via semi-structured interview and then analyzed for recurring themes and patterns. The students involved in the study were undergraduate students enrolled in system administration and security courses. We introduced ELT in early stages of curriculum in place of commonly used didactic methods of delivering theory. We compared the themes found in increased ELT classes with past didactic sections of the same courses. Data analysis revealed that increasing ELT in IA coursework at all levels of the curriculum increased both student intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. This paper outlines gamification pedagogy used in 200 and 300 level postsecondary courses of system administration. Gathered results indicated high intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy from the students 96 interviewed. The paper will also present examples of gamification ELT lessons at each level of undergraduate study.

Educators must constantly figure out engaging ways to teach data management and modeling concepts, especially to non-technical audiences. This paper introduces and describes an experiential learning activity using playing cards to teach a range of business and technical concepts. The paper is enriched by personal anecdotes and experiences from conducting this activity in both academic and professional settings. A repeated measures survey (pre-test, post-test, and follow-up one week later) is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the exercise. Participants reported enjoying the exercise, demonstrated improved understanding, felt confident about their new knowledge, and recalled important concepts a week later.

It is widely accepted that children in Scotland, as in other high-income countries, are not engaging in sufficient moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA), the consequences of which can be adverse for health and wellbeing. In this paper, it is contended that active play (a form of gross motor or total body movement in which children exert energy in a freely chosen, fun, and unstructured manner) has potential to redress this deficit in MVPA. This paper reflects on lessons learned from active play interventions in Scottish schools, providing recommendations for schools on how to encourage more active play. It is argued that promoting active play during school break times and in the after-school period, and participating in active play interventions are promising ways of increasing children's MVPA and improving their fundamental movement skills.

In simple dyadic games such as rock, paper, scissors (RPS), people exhibit peculiar sequential dependencies across repeated interactions with a stable opponent. These regularities seem to arise from a mutually adversarial process of trying to outwit their opponent. What underlies this process, and what are its limits? Here, we offer a novel framework for formally describing and quantifying human adversarial reasoning in the rock, paper, scissors game. We first show that this framework enables a precise characterization of the complexity of patterned behaviors that people exhibit themselves, and appear to exploit in others. This combination allows for a quantitative understanding of human opponent modeling abilities. We apply these tools to an experiment in which people played 300 rounds of RPS in stable dyads. We find that although people exhibit very complex move dependencies, they cannot exploit these dependencies in their opponents, indicating a fundamental limitation in people's capacity for adversarial reasoning. Taken together, the results presented here show how the rock, paper, scissors game allows for precise formalization of human adaptive reasoning abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to effectively use emerging digital educational technologies educators should reflect on how these technologies influence student learning, including student creativity. Existing research shows that creativity can be supported by emerging technologies, but recent research in this area has not yet been reviewed. The purpose of our systematic review was to identify and synthesize articles in the field of creativity and education concerning the use of emerging digital educational technologies and systems. To this end, we reduce an initial sample of 267 papers to 37 relevant articles. We assess those articles quantitatively and qualitatively to arrive at a clearer understanding of the state of the research. Our analysis reveals a new division between articles focusing on technologies themselves and articles focusing on curriculum developments in technology-related courses. We conclude that research related to educational technology and creativity has been handled with important issues in the field overall, but certain discrimination deserves to be addressed. Notably, we recommend additional research on the impact of technology on creativity in adult education and lifelong learning. Our synthesis will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners in the field of creativity and education, concerning the use of educational technologies and systems.

Law students should be able to fathom the application of legal rules to specific cases and develop a consistent argumentation to support this interpretation by using logic. Different skills and competencies are required for each of these processes. Therefore, effective learning of Law must complement the necessary knowledge of Positive Law with a set of teaching activities aimed at developing a well-structured legal discourse. Can chess be useful when deducing the general features of legal argumentation? Can we use certain positions or chess moves as a basis for the elaboration of didactic metaphors capable of creating dynamic learning environments? We shall present five chess positions in this paper, which we shall use as a teaching resource to extract ideas regarding how legal discourse is structured.