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Research where gamification is used to influence household energy consumption is an emerging field. This paper reviews design features of the prototype Powersaver Game. The aim of this game is to influence household energy consumption in the long-term. The evaluation of the design of the prototype, which is presented in this paper, is part of a larger research project that will give insight into what the influence of gamification is on energy consumption in households by means of electricity and gas usage and on attitudes towards sustainable energy use at home. In the first design step, a comparative literature analysis of eight games developed for related research purposes, provided first suggestions for the design of our game. In the next design step potential players have evaluated its match with the real world. Since our aim is an effective transfer between the game world and real world, we introduced gamification elements from the real world, by energy saving activities, in the game. The perceived match between in-game scenes and activities in the real world indicated improvements for a number of scenes. In the second evaluation the respondents suggested that the design of Powersaver Game is satisfactory, with the exception of some artwork. By involving potential players in the evaluation process we extract promising suggestions for design improvements. The outcomes of these evaluation studies contribute to effectively embedding of real world elements in the game and to improving aspects of the prototype in clarity and attractiveness. In the next stage the Powersaver Game is used in a series of experiments. First, the game will be compared with a control (non-game) version. Next, features such as feedback, personal relevance and competition will be examined.

This report outlines a European Masters of Science programme on serious gaming.

This report summarizes the dissemination activities of the GALA Network of Excellence from October 2012 till October 2013.

This report summarises the activities and outcomes of WP09 during the second year of the GALA project.

Acquiring skills for social and emotional well-being is important for inclusive societies and academic achievement. Studies have demonstrated the beneficial link between prosocial behaviours and improved results in curriculum topics. This paper describes a Prosocial Learning (PSL) process for creation and delivery of digital games for children (7-10 yrs) within educational systems that support learning of prosocial skills. The approach combines prosocial pedagogies with advanced ICT technologies and cloud delivery models to create attractive and exciting learning opportunities for children; produce novel digital game-based pedagogies and simplify deployment.Prosociality is a concept that refers to an individual’s propensity towards positive social behaviours. Individuals with prosocial skills are, for example, able to join in conversations, talk nicely, identifying feelings and emotions in themselves and others, identify someone needs help and ask for help. PSL classifies these skills in terms of Friendship, Feelings and Cooperation. By using interactive digital games supported by additional instructive and reflective activities, PSL allows children to learn social skills that can be generalised to real life situations in the classroom, playground and at home.PSL is implemented through a technology platform offering systematic pedagogical support for prosocial games developed by an ecosystem of teachers and games companies. Capabilities include multi-modal sensors to observe emotional affect, game interaction and decision-making. Information is acquired through standard protocols (e.g. xAPI) and evaluated by learning analytics algorithms to provide real-time feedback on player behaviours that are be used for in-game feedback and adaptation, and by teachers to shape follow-up activities. PSL is validated through short and longitudinal studies at European schools to gather evidence for effectiveness. This paper provides early evidence from short studies that will steer larger pan-European trials to test hypotheses, promote to policy makers and to increase adoption of game-based learning in schools

There are many examples on the use of game-based learning in and outside the classroom, along with evaluation of their effect in terms of engagement, learning, classroom dynamics, concentration, motivation and enjoyment. Most of the research in this area focuses on evaluations of the use of game-based learning applications and the effect they have on the students. The majority of these papers show that game-based learning has a positive effect compared to more traditional learning methods. However, there are very few papers that investigate what specific elements in game-based learning applications that produce a positive effect on engagement, motivation, enjoyment, concentration, classroom dynamics and learning. In this paper, we present an experiment where we investigated how the use of points and audio affect the learning environment. Specifically, the paper presents results from an experiment where the same lecture was taught for different group of students using the game-based learning platform Kahoot!. One group used Kahoot! as it supposed to be used with audio and points, one group use Kahoot! without points, and one group used Kahoot! without audio with points, and one group used Kahoot! without points and audio. The results from the experiment reveal that there are some significant differences whether audio and points are used in game-based learning in the areas of concentration, engagement, enjoyment, and motivation. The most surprising finding was how the classroom dynamics was positively affected by use of audio. A total of 593 students participated in this experiment with a gender distribution of 44% female and 56 male students. Contribution: Factorial design method, lit review

This article presents how students implemented learning into digital learning games as a means of learning. It was investigated how students could learn by creating learning trajectories for specific learning goals inside digital games. Previous findings were that the students learned by building these games in the design process. But this article investigates what specific features in the two used game tools afforded creation of learning trajectories in various ways. The tools therefore also enabled deep learning processes for the players of the games with lesser or greater ease. Further research is needed concerning how to scaffold the students in the game design processes with the digital tools to support deep and motivating learning processes. The design-based research project used co-design processes and took place in workshops with teachers and adult students from full-time upper secondary general education at VUC Storstrøm through two iterations. The study used learning theory, learning design theory and theoretical concepts about educational technology to analyse the empirical data. The purpose of the study was to formulate empirical and user-driven theories relating to the students design of learning games. The study used qualitative methods; this included audio and videotaped utterances and observations of the teachers and students as well as analysis of the students’ paper prototype and digital learning games. This article presents new knowledge about how students can implementlearning and game elements into analogue and digital learning games as ameans of learning and teaching curriculum‐based subject matter. The purpose of the analysis is to identify what learning‐game design elements were used in four learning games created by students, to investigate how these elements were em83 ployed, to determine what learning trajectories emerged in the two digital game tools and to offer reflections and suggestions regarding the learning processes students experienced when building the various learning trajectories for specific learning goals into the digital games. The article examines how specific features in the two digital game tools, Scratch and RGBMaker, afford creation of learning trajectories in various ways, enabling deep learning and gameplay processes for the players of the games. According to the study, the level of complexity of the built‐in learning trajectories in the games was mirrored in the cognitive complexity of the student game designers' learning processes. The article presents four student‐created games that demonstrate a progression in the depth of potential learning experiences. The student learning‐game designers re‐interpreted and used the conceptualised game‐mechanics in the game tools to create complex learning trajectories and engaging gameplay. The analysis can be used to guide teachers on what learning‐game design processes and elements should be supported in order to facilitate deep learning in this teaching and learning approach.The design‐based research project used qualitative research methods; this included audio‐ and videotaped utterances and observations of the teachers andstudents as well as analysis of the students’ paper prototype and digital learninggames. Teachers and adult students from a full‐time upper secondary generaleducation program at VUC Storstrøm participated in co‐design workshopsthrough two iterations.

In this paper, we will introduce the Game Enhanced learning Model (GEM), which describes a range of gameoriented learning activities. The model is intended to give an overview of the possibilities of game-based learning in general and all the way up to purposive game productions. In the paper, we will describe the levels of the model, which is based on our experience in teaching professional game development at university level. Furthermore, we have been using the model to inspire numerous educators to improve their students’ motivation and skills. The model presents variousgame-based learning activities, and depicts their required planning and expected outcome through eight levels. At its lower levels, the model contains the possibilities of using stand-alone analogue and digital games as teachers, utilizing games as afacilitator of learning activities, exploiting gamification and motivating students through role-play. The higher levels include modifying existing games, fundamental game development, creating games while enhance learning in a desired topic, andfinally the development of purposive games. It is our experience that the four lower levels, which are concerned with using games in the classroom, gamification and roleplay, can be applied by almost any teacher in any topic - if assistance is available at the first sessions. It is however in the four higher levels, which are concerned with game development, that we experience the greatest impacts. Most so with digital game development since these levels also simultaneously improve students’ technical skills and motivation to learn programming. In order to illustrate the use of the model, we will describe an initiative to change the renowned Aalborg University Problem Based Learning model into a more production-oriented approach. The initiative was named “The Purposive Game Production” and focused on accommodating a range of wishes from students while making the education more tailored towards finding the students’ passion and securing a job after graduation.

Appropriation of e-learning applications in the class mainly depends on three actors: developers, teachers (experts interested in authoring or using applications), and learners (pupils or students who will play to learn or to express their knowledge). This paper addresses the problems facing primary and secondary school teachers in the technology-enhanced classroom. First we identify three teachers' attitudes towards learning games and apps in the classroom. These attitudes determine how the teacher will contextualize the chosen technologies in the individual (teachers' own appropriation of technologies), interpersonal (interaction and activities in class-guided participation) and community plane (school system and pedagogical goal-apprenticeship). This contribution is based on studies conducted in different Danish schools in the past two years, including primary and secondary education, and classes with special needs students. Our second contribution results from a broad survey of learning applications and game authoring environment for non-programmers, which provided a classification and allowed us to explicitate the roles of different actors in the technology-augmented classroom. We adopt an inclusive perspective on the design of e-learning solutions, based on Rogoff three planes of analysis. The insights from our 2 contributions lead to a tripartite architecture for the creation, sharing and managing of learning games, supporting three actors, and an early prototype of a CMS, currently under development.

There is a bulk of research demonstrating that individualized instruction yields much better results than the traditional uniform approach of one-size-fits-all. An interesting approach to understanding individual differences among learners is Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences, stating that the intelligence of people is multi-dimensional and people have a unique blend of intelligences. According to Gardner the big challenge in education is how to best take advantage of this uniqueness. In the literature, it is suggested that people with different intellectual strengths often exhibit clear preferences toward specific modalities and types of interaction in relation to learning. This raises the question whether this knowledge could be transferred and employed in the design of (serious) games, i.e., do players with different intellectual strengths have preference for different games or game constructs and can these preferences be used to improve the game and/or learning experience? Various theoretical claims regarding these issues have been made but have hardly been substantiated with empirical evidence. We take a step towards that end as we empirically investigate whether individual differences in terms of Gardner’s multiple intelligences correlate with differences in terms of game preferences. This is performed by means of an online survey study among 308 avid gamers. We found that individual differences in terms of intelligences do in fact correlate with preferences for specific games. The results of the study also show that the correlations between players’ intelligences and game preferences cannot be simply explained by considering the genre of the games. This indicates that it will be necessary to look into more detail to the components of the games to be able to explain the preferences and identify what game characteristics are preferred by players exhibiting certain intelligences. Moreover, our results indicate that the theoretical mappings suggested in the literature can be refined and completed further based on the evidences we provide.

It may be argued that most higher education courses are not explicitly designed to teach or develop desirable soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, resourcefulness or adaptability. While such skills – often referred to as ‘graduate attributes’ – are assumed to be developed as a by-product of a university education, there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. Furthermore, traditional didactic teaching methods do not typically require students to exhibit such skills, while prevalent assessment methods such as examinations are ill-suited to measure them. Many commercial video games, on the other hand, require players to exercise a range of very similar skills and competencies in order to progress.\ud \ud The pilot project described here sought to explore the use of video games to develop graduate attributes and to identify suitable instruments for measuring such elusive conceptions. A small group of undergraduate students were recruited and asked to play selected video games for two hours per week over an eight week period. A range of psychometric tests were administered at the beginning and the end of the experiment period in order to gather empirical data relating to the participants’ graduate attributes. Mean differences in the pre- and post-intervention scores associated with each measure were obtained and 95% confidence intervals calculated to provide an indication of whether results obtained might be indicative of a wider population. Participants were also asked to discuss their experience as a group following each session and to blog about it if they were so inclined. \ud \ud Despite the small scale of the pilot, the results were sufficiently encouraging to warrant a larger study, which is now underway. The challenges involved in obtaining empirical data on the effectiveness of a game-based intervention such as this are addressed and implications for the subsequent study are discussed.