Search

Educators are continuously exploring ways to enhance the academic potential of students while fostering a positive social atmosphere within classrooms. To meet these various curricular and interpersonal objectives, teachers are increasingly utilising educational storification in order to engage students and positively support their social relationships. However, research still lacks in terms of how storification impacts students’ social behaviour and communities. With grounded theory methods, and data from a 10-day ethnographic fieldwork, participatory observations, interviews with 11 educational staff and focus groups with 79 students at a middle school employing a Harry Potter theme, this study indicates that storification can strengthen the school community and hinder students’ antisocial behaviour. The storified learning environment formed a shared interest at the school, which facilitated further friendship formations and sense of belonging, however, careful considerations on social cliques and certain norms the selected story potentially delivers are called for. publishedVersion

Within gamers, disabled people remain an understudied minority. While research indicates that they actively play single-player games, we lack an understanding of their experience with multiplayer games. This study aims to answer the following research questions: (a) What kind of games do disabled people play? and (b) Why do disabled people not play multiplayer games? The questions are answered using survey data focusing on playing digital games as a person with disabilities. In total, 92 answers were analyzed. The findings suggest that disabled people play both single-player and multiplayer games and they play games for the same commonly reported reasons as players without disabilities do, although demographics seem to be a key differentiating factor among them in their playing habits, rather than disability differences. However, disabled people reported that they play single-player games more often. We identified four themes from our data that explain why multiplayer games are played less, which are: playing company and insecurity about one’s own skills, lack of relaxation while playing, lack of game accessibility, and lack of interest. Our results indicate that much more work is needed to ensure, especially the social, as well as the technical accessibility of multiplayer games.

publishedVersion Non

Games and game-based applications are part of entertainment, learning, socialization, and many other daily life activities. They have become a key part of the social fabric of our societies, nonetheless, social aspects in games and game-based applications have received little attention, meaning that these game technologies often remain inaccessible to people with disabilities, especially within social use contexts. This study is a literature review of research on game accessibility (2016 -2020 inclusive) to investigate social aspects in game accessibility literature, The findings indicate the scarcity of research primarily investigating social themes. Individuals with disabilities differ in their social accessibility challenges and needs based on the type of disability they have. The lack of conscious research on social aspects of game accessibility threatens to further the exclusion of people with disabilities from gaming and related activities and this study provides directions for further research of social themes. publishedVersion

publishedVersion Non

Altruistic, prosocial activities intended for social change are essential to the continuance of societies. These activities, however, require time, coordination and re-direction of resources toward communal rather than individual goals. With the prevalence of hedonism in many societies, recruiting participants and getting resources for altruistic, prosocial activities have become challenging. This chapter draws a parallel between playing of (video) games and engagement with altruistic, prosocial activities. We argue that both can and often do involve similar mechanics and psychological rewards. Accordingly, we examine two examples of social change communities that have managed to remain active and affect a level of social change over an extended period of time. The two communities examined, Nerdfighteria and a Change.org campaign for the “Bilo family” in Australia, are of similar social purposes, although of different sizes and locality. Through this analysis, we highlight how practices of game-based engagement can be utilized to engage individuals with social change.

publishedVersion

For decades, educators have been exploring various ways to, not only educate, but also to create engaging classrooms and to foster positive social experiences amongst students. To these ends, many educators have now taken steps towards utilizing storification in their pedagogy and classrooms in order to appeal students and positively impact their social relationships. Research, however, is lacking around how storification impacts students' social communities. Through grounded theory methods, 10-day ethnographic fieldwork, participatory observations, interviews with 11 educational staff and focus groups with 79 students at a middle school employing a Harry Potter story theme, this research implies that storification can hinder bullying and students' antisocial behavior. The values and messages teachers delivered through the employed story and change of learning environment and pedagogy manifested teacher dedication and effort to students, which fostered their prosocial behavior in the school. publishedVersion

Post-truth politics have thrived in the shape of fake news and the feeding of divisive emotional nar- ratives. While stories with strong emotional appeal can mobilize, their current post-truth form erodes the ideals of democracy. Some have called to counter the post-truth populism with evidence-based participa- tion, both online and offline. However, such initiatives overlook that human cognition is constitutively narra- tive and emotional and so are practices of deliberative, participatory democracy. A more viable strategy is to embrace emotional narratives and to mobilize civic participation in forms aligned with democratic ideals through evidence-based storification and gamifica- tion. As such, the attraction to emotional narratives becomes a positive force toward evidence-based en- gagement. To further strengthen the implementation of evidence-based, narrativist, deliberative democracy, we employ and propose the analytical frameworks of (1) storification, the use of explicit emotional narra- tive for engagement purposes; and (2) embodied narratives, the implicit narratives conveyed by the very existence of narratives. Accordingly, we discuss partic- ipation initiatives that highlight the potential of these analytical and design frameworks in positively influ- encing civic engagement. acceptedVersion

As technologies and the sophistication of games evolve, so do the possibilities to immerse players in multi-sensorial experiences for different purposes and in different ways. The design and development of the auditory components of video games play an increasingly relevant immersive and inclusionary role within (and outside of) games. Sounds enable a deeper and more meaningful immersion, but also facilitate inclusion of and accessibility to people with different physical and psychological abilities. Sounds also provide a vehicle to challenge or overcome gender or even heritage stereotypes. Recognizing this potential, designers have often explored different means to facilitate accessibility, inclusion or sometimes intentionally challenging auditory experiences to users as, for example, seen in recent game releases where designers created a perceived mismatch between a character's voice and gender for inclusion beyond immersion. The present study aims to identify and thematically review relevant academic literature (47 studies), summarizing the perceived role of game sound design, its impact on immersion, and the way sound design enables (or hampers) inclusivity and accessibility within games. Our findings indicate that although there is research on how audio-related technology enhances immersion in games, studies about its use for increasingly relevant inclusive purposes (in terms of accessibility and social aspects like gender) are relatively scarce. acceptedVersion

With the increasing provenance of hedonic and social information systems, systems are observed to employ other forms of feedback and design than purely informational in order to increase user engagement and motivation. Three principle classes of motivational design pursuing user engagement have become increasingly established; gamification, quantified-self and social networking. This study investigates how the perceived prominence of these three design classes in users’ use of information system facilitate experiences of affective, informational and social feedback as well as user’s perceived benefits from a system and their continued use intentions. We employ survey data (N = 167) gathered from users of HeiaHeia; an exercise encouragement system that employs features belonging to the three design classes. The results indicate that gamification is positively associated with experiences of affective feedback, quantified-self with experiences of both affective and informational feedback and social networking with experiences of social feedback. Experiences of affective feedback are further strongly associated with user perceived benefits and continued use intentions, whereas experiences of informational feedback are only associated with continued use intentions. Experiences of social feedback had no significant relationship with neither. The findings provide practical insights into how systems can be designed to facilitate different types of feedback that increases users’ engagement, benefits and intentions to continue the use of a system.