Ángel del Blanco

Complutense University of Madrid | UCM · Department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

The assessment of functional status is a critical component of clinical neuropsychological evaluations used for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in patients with cognitive brain disorders. There are, however, no widely adopted neuropsychological tests that are both ecologically valid and easily administered in daily clinical practice. This...

Background: First experiences in the operating theatre with real patients are always stressful and intimidating for students. We hypothesized that a game-like simulation could improve perceptions and performance of novices. Methods: A videogame was developed, combining pictures and short videos, by which students are interactively instructed on...

The Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT) in collaboration with the e-UCM research group of the Complutense University of Madrid has developed three screen-based simulations representing the ONT supra-hospital deceased donation management processes. As the ONT is using these game-like simulations as a support tool for its instructional app...

The exceptional success achieved by the Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT) in recent years has made other countries highly interested in following this organization’s methodologies. A good training program is one of the key elements of the ONT. Until 2012, the ONT training program was a paper-based case teaching method, and the small nu...

Massive Online Open Courses are in the process of radically changing the use of technology in education, as measured both by the number of enrolled students and the level of academic excellence of the institutions that are driving their adoption. Typically, online learning management systems have relied on simple questionnaires for feedback and eva...

The integration of educational video games in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) is a challenging task in need of standardization to improve interoperability and to safeguard investment. The generalized use of VLEs has fostered the emergence of rich contents, and different standards exist to improve their interoperability and reusability. This wo...

Abstract Background: The National Transplant Organization of Spain (ONT) has created a successful way of working that is well-known as the “Spanish Model”. This “Spanish Model” comprises all the processes of managing the donation, logistics and distribution of organs and the organization of the actual transplants. Objective: This study investigate...

Simulations and Serious Games (SGs) are very promising educational tools as they include new powerful characteristics such as learner engagement or authentic environment for learning. Therefore SGs offer to the teachers an innovative and interactive instrument that can be used to support new models of teaching. Currently, there is a discussion abou...

The rising acceptance of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in the e-Learning field poses new challenges such as producing student-centered courses which can be automatically tailored to each student's needs. For this purpose digital games can be used, taking advantage of their flexibility (good video games always try to adapt to different players...

Digital games have a great potential to improve education of people with cognitive disabilities. However, this target audience has attracted little attention from industry and academia, compared to other segments of the population. As a consequence, there is little knowledge available about how to design games that are usable and enjoyable by peopl...

Serious games are increasingly being used in education to support the development of skills that future professionals and citizens require. However, the inclusion of games in the curricula can threaten the universal right to education for students with disabilities if they are not designed to be accessible. In this paper we discuss the need for too...

The evaluation process is key for educator's acceptance of any educational action. The evaluation is challenging in most cases but especially when educational games are used. In educational games if in-game evaluation exist it is usually based on a series of simple goals and whether these goals are achieved (i.e. assessment). But we consider that e...

Development, packaging and deployment of educational games following e-Learning standards has benefits, such as improved reusability and interoperability of contents. Moreover, standards can facilitate that games exchange data with other software agents (e.g. Learning Management Systems - LMS) in a standardized manner, which opens up a wide range o...

Authoring educational games introduces difficult problems because it is the product of multidisciplinary work, integrating very different experts with different backgrounds that use different terminology. In this paper we discuses how a team composed of computer science experts, an education expert and two medical experts successfully tacked the pr...

In this paper we present WEEV (Writing Environment for Educational Video games), a methodology for educational point-and-click adventure game authoring. Our approach aims to allow educators to actively collaborate in the educational game development process, using a narrative-based representation. WEEV is based on a pragmatic reinterpretation of pr...

The integration of educational video games in educational settings in general, and e-learning systems in particular, can be challenging for educators. We propose a framework that aims to facilitate educators' participation in the creation and modification of courses that use educational games. Our approach addresses problems identified by previous...

The rising acceptance of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in the e-Learning field poses new challenges such as producing student-centered courses that can be automatically tailored to each student's needs. For this purpose digital games can be used, taking advantage of their flexibility (good video games always try to adapt to different players)...

This paper presents a DSVL that simplifies educational video game development for educators, who do not have programming backgrounds. Other solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of educational video game development have been proposed, but simple to use approaches tailored to the specific needs of educators are still needed. We use a multid...

The increasing acceptance of video games as learning tools has promoted new studies on how to include them in the teaching-learning process. An interesting trend is the use of modern web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) as a delivery platform for games and the integration of the information that can be extracted from the game-play sessions i...

The increasing adoption of e-Learning technology is facing new challenges, such as how to produce student-centered systems that can be adapted to each student's needs. In this context, educational video games are proposed as an ideal medium to facilitate adaptation and tracking of students' performance for assessment purposes, but integrating the g...

In e-Learning the interest on the use of new kinds of highly-interactive content is increasing. In this regard video games are one of the media that is gaining momentum because of their high potential for enhancing both students' motivation and learning outcomes. Nevertheless, the actual adoption of games in the educational system is scarce. In thi...

Educational game authoring tools allow for the creation of educational games for personal computers and web-browsers reducing costs and development cycles. However, gaming has changed in the last few years, with a significant increase of games developed for mobile devices. We propose an extension of existing educational game authoring tools that al...

Educational computer and video game are a digital medium that have been proved to be useful in improving both students’ motivation and learning outcomes enhancing the overall learning experience. On the one hand, games can introduce new appealing interfaces and highly interactive experiences. On the other hand, e-learning environments can help to a...

Educational video games and serious games are becoming more and more relevant as a complement to traditional instructional approaches. However, several barriers are in the way of the general adoption of this technology, such as the high cost or the integration of the games in the learning flow. At the group at the Complutense University of Madrid w...

Web-based distance education (often identified as e-learning) is being reinvented to include richer content, with multimedia and interactive experiences that engage the students, thus increasing their motivation. However, the richer the content, the more difficult it becomes to maintain accessibility for people with special needs. Multimedia conten...

The widely used e-learning technology is facing new challenges such as how to produce student-centered systems that can be adapted to the needs of each student. Those objectives should be met in a standard compliant way to simplify general adoption. In this context, educational videogames are proposed as an ideal medium to facilitate adaptation and...

Serious games are becoming a powerful tool in education. However, there are still open issues needing further research to generalize the use of videogames and game-like simulations in the educational system. On the one hand, how to take advantage of the videogames' inherent adaptation behaviour in order to maximize the effectiveness of the learning...

Although Virtual Learning Environments have become popular educational tools, they remain a very active research topic. Two important aspects being discussed for next-generation VLEs are how to track the performance of the students for assessment and how to provide personalized learning experiences (i.e. adaptive learning). In this line, educationa...

La popularización de los Entornos Virtuales de Enseñanza (EVE) en los últimos años ha dado lugar a múltiples procesos de estandarización con el objetivo de facilitar la interoperabilidad y posible reutilización de contenido, salvaguardando de este modo inversiones realizadas. Por otro lado, a medida que los juegos digitales se perfilan como un nuev...

Computer and videogames are rapidly entering the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning. Among the different approaches and game genres, adventure games have been pointed out as one of the most appropriate choices for education. Enthusiast instructors are looking for tools to develop their own educational games, but there are few tools for the rapid...

Educational video games, or teaching games, can help in language learning by increasing student motivation or by allowing contextualized learning. However, game development is a costly and complex activity with many open issues. In this paper we present a method that allows for rapid game prototyping, thus reducing the risks implied in development....