Cyril Brom

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Charles University in Prague

Objectives Limited research exists on how new computer science (CS) teachers understand fundamental internet principles. This knowledge gap hinders the development of effective upskilling courses, especially as new CS curricula are being introduced worldwide. This study investigates new CS teachers’ conceptions of fundamental internet principles, c...

The national computing curriculum in Czechia was revised in 2021 to incorporate various topics, including fundamental principles of the internet and computer networks at the ISCED level 2 (age ∼11-15). However, schools face a shortage of age-appropriate teaching materials on this subject. To address this gap, we developed four model lessons and cor...

Children frequently use the internet but often lack an understanding of its underlying principles. This contrast stems from the inconsistency between the internet’s complex, invisible infrastructure and processes, and the familiar, user-friendly interfaces children interact with. This study investigates how children’s knowledge of the internet evol...

Teaching the principles of how digital technologies work at the K-5 level is underexplored. We created six model lessons for children covering this topic as part of the newly updated Czech national computing curriculum. Here, we introduce these lessons. They can be viewed through the lenses of a constructivist educational framework, Evocation – Rea...

Background: The development of generative AI systems like ChatGPT has provoked debates about their effective use in educational settings. Aims: The present study explores how university students prompt ChatGPT to solve complex non-routine problems, specifically examining which prompts are associated with higher or lower problem-solving performance...

Recent studies have conceptualized ChatGPT as an epistemic authority; however, no research has yet examined how epistemic beliefs and metacognitive accuracy affect students' actual use of ChatGPT‐generated content, which often contains factual inaccuracies. Therefore, the present experimental study aimed to examine how university students integrate...

Recent studies have identified ChatGPT as an epistemic authority; however, no research has yet examined how epistemic beliefs and metacognitive accuracy impact actual work with ChatGPT-generated content, which is often prone to factual inaccuracies. Therefore, the present experimental study aimed to examine how university students integrate correct...

Children grow up surrounded by computers, encountering them at home, in school, and in virtually all aspects of their lives. This raises crucial questions: How do children perceive the difference between humans and computers? What preconceptions do they hold? The existing literature is limited, mainly describing children's preconceptions about huma...

This study investigates sixth and eighth graders' understanding of the differences and similarities between smartphone and desktop hardware components. Through semi-structured online interviews with 49 students, the research reveals that children most often compared the number or size of components in the devices, or noted that both types of device...

The Czech national curriculum was revised in 2021 to include the basic principles of the Internet in teaching computer science at ISCED level 2. This topic was introduced into curricula in other countries in Europe and beyond (e.g. CSTA, 2017; Eurydice, 2019). However, support for teachers is lacking. Some textbooks addressed this topic (e.g. Page...

University students often employ generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT in resolution of ill-defined problem-solving tasks. However, the experimental evidence about effects of ChatGPT on complex problem-solving performance is still missing. In this preregistered experiment, the impact of ChatGPT on performance in a complex creativ...

The new computing curriculum in Czechia for grades 6–9 focuses on, among others, the topic of computer principles, i.e., how computers work internally. There is a lack of teaching materials in Czechia that deal with this topic. When one wants to create teaching materials for children, these materials should be based on children’s preconceptions abo...

Background Existing studies confirm that some video games can change players' attitudes. However, since we do not know the specific elements responsible for attitude change, the potential of video games to achieve desired educational or behavioural outcomes often remains unfulfilled. Objectives To fill the research gap, our study examined whether...

Rotations of schoolchildren were considered as a non-pharmacological intervention in the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigates the impact of different rotation and testing schedules.We built an agent-based model of interactions among pupils and teachers based on a survey in an elementary school in Prague, Czechia. This model contains 624 schoo...

The new computer science curriculum in Czechia for grades 6 to 9 accentuates, among others, the topic of computer principles, i.e., how computers work internally. For various reasons, there is a lack of teaching materials in Czechia that deal with this topic and support teachers in their teaching. To create quality materials, as a first step, we wa...

The recent revision of the Czech ISCED-1/2 curriculum concerning computer science emphasizes understanding functioning of digital technologies. Czech educational materials for this topic that are comprehensive, compliant and suitable for different age groups are lacking. We have created (action and design-based research) 4 educational posters for t...

Video games are increasingly portraying many topics that we face in our everyday lives. Yet we have only limited evidence about the way narrative games affect how we think about the topics they depict; in other words, about the link between these games and attitude change. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of video games’ effect on attitudina...

University students often employ generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT in resolution of ill-defined problem-solving tasks. However, the experimental evidence about effects of ChatGPT on complex problem-solving performance is still missing. In this preregistered experiment, the impact of ChatGPT on performance in a complex creativ...

Primary school children frequently use digital devices, which can be infected by computer viruses. In this mixed methods paper with two studies (N = 278 + 114), we examined 8-year-olds’ preconceptions about computer viruses and protection against them; how to teach these children about said topics using three different, 30-min-long, content-equival...

Background: Emotional design approaches tend to be instructionally effective in the case of higher education learners. However, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of emotional design for children is limited. Contextual animation is one way that emotional design can be realized. Contextual animation refers to the non-expository animation of con...

The revised Czech national computing curriculum for grades 6--9 entails the topic of how digital devices work. Up to date materials for teaching this topic are lacking in the Czech context. Our goal is to create such materials. As a first step, we mapped preconceptions of children from grades 6--9 about how a digital devices work and what hardware...

Children aged 3–15 frequently use internet-enabled technologies for leisure and educational purposes, yet they have limited knowledge about how the internet works. Literature also indicates that children possess varied and often contradictory internet-related ideas, which have not yet been systematized. This systematic review, drawing from 27 mixed...

Many countries have revamped their primary and lower secondary (K-8) computing curricula, but these curricula have not focused much on the structure of the Internet. Little is known about what knowledge teachers who are supposed to teach about the Internet have on this topic. For children, previous work found out several preconceptions children pos...

Současná revize RVP mění výukový obsah informatiky, mj. přidává výuku základních principů fungování internetu. V současnosti vyučují informatiku na základních školách i učitelé, kteří informatiku nestudovali. Jaké prekoncepce mají o fungování internetu tito učitelé informatiky, není dosud známo. Cílem tohoto projektu je zjistit tyto prekoncepce a p...

Learning grammar requires practice and practicing grammar can be boring. We examined whether an instructional game with intrinsically integrated game mechanics promotes this practice: compared to rote learning through a quiz. We did so “in the field.” Tens of thousands children visited, in their leisure time, a public website with tens of attractiv...

Despite extensive research on attitudes and a rapid growth of the video game market, there is currently no meta-analysis mapping the link between narrative video games and attitude change. Here, we present such meta-analysis. The findings suggest that narrative video games affect players’ attitudes towards the topics depicted in games. This effect...

Amulab states for advanced multimedia learning laboratory. Here we explore how people learn from instructional materials that combine verbal and visual information, and we help develop such materials. Our main focus is on advanced materials in the sense of new media – animations, tutorials, interactive simulations, educational games, and so on.

Purpose: It is unclear how much opening of schools during Covid-19 pandemic contributes to new SARS-CoV-2 infections among children. We investigated the impact of school opening with various mitigation measures (masks, rotations, mass testing) on growth rate of new cases in child cohorts ranging from kindergartens to upper secondary in Czechia, a c...

Petri Nets can be used for a retrospective analysis of a computer game story, for representing plots in serious games as well as for monitoring the course of the story, as recently demonstrated by several authors. It was not clear, however, whether Petri Nets can be used for representing plots and for their unfolding in games that feature large wor...

Instructional quizzes are frequently used in educational games. When they present correct answers after learners have responded, these quizzes can be used on their own for teaching new factual and conceptual knowledge (no additional learning materials are needed). In games, these quizzes are often unrelated to gameplay: gameplay can be viewed as a...

BACKGROUND • Games focusing on recent and still sensitive historical events are increasingly popular. However, the empirical research about the effects of historical video games or video games in general on attitudes towards the topics depicted in game narratives is limited. For instance, virtually nothing is known about historical games’ different...

Lay Description What is currently known about the subject matter No studies address video games' long‐term effects on both explicit and implicit attitudes. The research of video games' effects on short‐ and long‐term attitudes is generally limited. Video games can change short‐term explicit attitudes under certain circumstances. So far, the effect...

Children bring to schools preconceptions concerning diverse topics. Research on children’s preconceptions about the internet is limited. We examine these preconceptions (Grade 5 and 9; N = 56) by using semi-structured interviews and employing thematic analysis. Preliminary results indicate that children’s knowledge is fragmented and often contradic...

Lay Description What is already known User‐initiated cosmetic customization (the term user‐initiated is afterwards left out of the text for brevity) refers to making choices about a game's visual or audio attributes without directly affecting the content of gameplay itself. Studies with non‐child learners showed that a sub‐type of cosmetic customi...

Background Rotations of schoolchildren on a weekly basis is one of the nonpharmaceutical interventions often considered in the covid-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate the impact of different types of rotations in various testing contexts. Methods We built an agent-based model of interactions among pupils and teachers based on an online s...

Children increasingly use computing devices. However, it is unclear whether they have basic knowledge of security-related issues such as computer viruses and, in case they do not, what they can learn about them. It was found previously that Czech 8-year-olds have only limited knowledge of computer viruses, but neither naïveunderstanding of older ch...

Children increasingly use computing devices. However, it is unclear whether they have basic knowledge of security-related issues such as computer viruses and, in case they do not, what they can learn about them. In this study, we first examined preconceptions of computer viruses among Czech and German primary school students using a newly developed...

Abstrakt Článek na základě kvantitativní a kvalitativní analýz y odpovědí 9810 rodičů zkoumá vnímání vzdělává-ní v domácím prostředí z pohledu rodičů v době uzavřených základních škol z důvodu pandemie COVID-19. Cílem empirického šetření bylo odpovědět na otázky, jaké bariéry ve vzdělávání doma v době uzavřených základních škol rodiče identifikují,...

Lay Description What is already known about this topic Contextual animation is frequently used in multimedia learning games (MLGs) for children. Contextual animation is understood to be non‐expository picture motion, which can be added to already existing representational pictures that provide context for target instruction. It is not known whethe...

Schools have been closed in many countries due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, but education continues online. Little is known about how parents cope with educating their children in this unprecedented situation. Here, we present the results of a rapid survey examining the experience of Czech parents of children in Grades 1–9 (Age ~ 6–15; N = 9,...

We explored whether problem‐solving interactivity within an instructional game fosters learning for children aged 8–10 years. Participants (N = 139) studied a biological topic either through a game‐based learning environment (in which they solved assigned problems by interacting with a plant model) or from a standard learning environment (in which...

Schools have been closed in many countries due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, but education continues online. Little is known about how parents cope with educating their children in this unprecedented situation. Here, we present the results of a rapid survey examining the experience of Czech parents of children in Grades 1-9 (Age ~ 6-15; N = 9,...

Little is known about the instructional effects of narrative framing elements in child learning games. In this study, second and third graders (Mage = 8.24) played one of two versions of a successful, commercial mathematical learning game at home for 2 weeks (N = 95; between‐subject design). The versions differed in the presence/absence of a backgr...

Many eight-year-olds use mobile devices. These devices can be attacked by computer viruses, with possible, serious consequences for device owners. Eight-year-olds do not always learn in schools about the concepts of computer viruses and protection against them, but they may still have everyday conceptions about these concepts: acquired outside scho...

Game-based learning is supposed to motivate learners. However, to what degree does motivation driven by interest in playing an instructional game affect learning outcomes compared to motivation driven by interest in the very learning process? This is not known. In this study with a unique design and intervention, young adults (N = 128; a heterogene...

Lay Description What is already known about this topic Anthropomorphizing graphical elements in multimedia learning materials (e.g., by adding eyes) generally enhances learning. This could be due to increased motivation or due to effects of the anthropomorphisms on attention distribution. Only one study has used eye tracking to test attention distr...

Little is known about what design elements in digital learning games enhance learning; especially in the case of child audiences. This study examines the effects of a learning game’s visual design on perceived attractiveness and learning outcomes. We developed two visual designs for the game: one with supposedly high esthetic value and another with...

Despite the increased interest in gamification approaches, there is a lack of comparative studies that shed light on the applicability of these approaches in educational contexts. In this explorative study, with an experimental design, university learners (N = 98) studied a complex process (i.e., how to brew beer) in a 2-hour-long computerized simu...

We conducted a meta-analysis of 33 independent samples (N = 2924) to address whether adding anthropomorphic faces to multimedia graphics and/or adding pleasant colors are effective emotional design approaches. We found significant positive meta-analytic effects for retention (k = 18, d+ = 0.387), comprehension (k = 14, d+ = 0.317), and transfer (k...

In the contexts of digital game-based and multimedia learning, little is known about the strengths of associations between positive affective-motivational factors elicited during a study session and the quality of knowledge acquisition. Here, we take a step forward in filling this gap by re-analyzing our 11 experiments carried out between 2009-2017...

Recent meta-analyses of studies comparing effectiveness of digital-game based learning (DGBL) to “traditional” educational approaches demonstrated a small superiority of games, with effect sizes similar to those of general computer-assisted instruction. The reasons for the games’ superiority are unknown. Elevated affective-motivational states of le...

Despite increased interest in gamification approaches, there is a dearth of comparative studies shedding light on the applicability of these approaches in educational contexts. This explorative study, with experimental design, sought to explore the net effects of an added game goal, increased freedom of choice, points, virtual currency and praise (...

There is increased interest in augmenting multimedia instructional materials to elevate positive affective-motivational states of learners in order to improve learning. However, these efforts have been only partly successful and meditational effects of affective-motivational states have not always been established. In this study, university student...

Composing instructional texts in multimedia learning materials in a conversational style rather than a formal style can facilitate learning. We investigated whether a specific language/cultural background could present a boundary condition for this effect. In four experiments with a Czech sample (N = 278), we replicated a seminal experiment conduct...

Adding anthropomorphic graphical elements to computerized learning materials has been shown to enhance learning. We have prepared an experimental study, in which we will investigate if learning is enhanced because of the elevated positive affect of learners or due to the attention-capturing effect of the anthropomorphisms. Here, we present a pilot...

Information about what visual elements in instructional animations enhance learning via mediating effects of elevated engagement is largely lacking. In this study, high school students (n = 41) interacted in a laboratory with a roughly 6-minute-long, black-and-white, instructional animation with " emotionally " enhanced graphics. The topic was biol...

Despite the alleged ability of digital game-based learning (DGBL) to foster positive affect and in turn improve learning, the link between affectivity and learning has not been sufficiently investigated in this field. Regarding learning from team-based games with competitive elements, even less is known about the relationship between competitivenes...

A variety of agent programming languages have been proposed but only few comparative studies have been performed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these languages. In order to gain a better understanding of features in and their use by programmers of these languages, we perform a study which compares the two languages GOAL and POSH. The s...

Objectives. The study assessed basic psychometric properties of Czech versions of the Big Five Inventory measuring five basic personality dimensions that differ with respect to number of items (BFI-44 and BFI-10). Subject and settings. BFI-44 and BFI-10 for self-report were administered to six groups of 6.292 participants ageing from 11 to 84 years...

Many contemporary computer games, notably action and role-playing games, represent an interesting class of navigation-intensive dynamic real-time simulations inhabited by autonomous intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). Although higher level reasoning of IVAs in these domains seems suited for action planning, planning is not widely adopted in existing...

Computer games are an important application area for interactive storytelling. In a large subset of games, quests — tasks that the player is assigned to complete — are the primary driving forces of the storyline. The main storyline is usually accompanied by a number of optional side-quests. We present a system for generating side-quests based on ch...

Computerized animations, simulations and games are useful tools for supporting acquisition of mental models. Various personal characteristics, such as prior knowledge and spatial abilities, can influence, in various ways, effectivity of learning from these materials. In comparative studies with between-subject design that investigate learning effec...

There is ample experimental evidence describing changes of tonotopic organisation in the auditory cortex due to environmental factors. In order to uncover the underlying mechanisms, we designed a large-scale computational model of the auditory cortex. The model has up to 100 000 Izhikevich's spiking neurons of 17 different types, almost 21 million...

The quality of high-level AI of non-player characters (NPCs) in commercial open-world games (OWGs) has been increasing during the past years. However, due to constraints specific to the game industry, this increase has been slow and it has been driven by larger budgets rather than adoption of new complex AI techniques. Most of the contemporary AI i...

The effectivity of learning by playing serious games is increasingly subject to research, but information about how these games should actually be used in classes is limited. In this explorative study with between-subject design (N = 166; high school students), we investigated the effectivity of playing two different micro-games in two different wa...

Schizophrenia is manifested in positive, negative and cognitive symptoms. Especially, the cognitive symptoms offer useful methodological approach for comparative studies using spatial navigation tasks in both, schizophrenia patients and animal models of cognitive deficit in schizophrenia. In order to demonstrate the deficit of spatial cognition in...

One of the challenges in designing storytelling systems is the evaluation of resulting narratives. As the story space is usually extremely large even for very short stories, it is often unfeasible to evaluate every story generated in the system by hand. To help the system designers to maintain control over the generated stories a general method for...

Despite recent progress, behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) in contemporary games is still kept rather simple. This is an opportunity for the academia to develop novel techniques and tools that would allow for easier creation of complex behaviors that are resilient to the dynamicity implied by the presence of the player. There already exist l...

The impairment of cognitive functions represents a characteristic manifestation in schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, together with positive and negative symptoms. Cognitive symptoms offer very useful methodological approach for comparative studies in schizophrenia research. Both animal models of schizophrenia and schizophrenia patients...

Serious games are supposed to instigate engagement and, in turn, improve learning. High engagement is frequently connected with a positive affective state and a high flow state. However, the alleged link between a learner’s affective state, his/her flow state and learning outcomes has not been investigated in detail in the context of serious games....

Objectives: Cognitive deficit is considered to be a characteristic feature of schizophrenia disorder. A similar cognitive dysfunction was demonstrated in animal models of schizophrenia. However, the poor comparability of methods used to assess cognition in animals and humans could be responsible for low predictive validity of current animal models....

The personalization principle, one of the design principles of multimedia learning, states that people learn better from multimedia presentations when instructions are in a conversational style rather than a formal style, possibly due to learners' increased interest. This principle was shown to be robust in short interventions that could be complet...

Animals live in groups for a wide variety of reasons. The main benefits are related to anti-predator behaviour, foraging, mate finding, and/or reduction of energetic costs. In this paper we present a game-theoretical model that supports the waste recycling hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the organic waste materials produced by the members o...

Constructing believable behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) for large open worlds in computer games is a challenging application of AI. One of the greatest obstacles for practical game applications lies in managing the complexity of individual behaviors and in managing their development cycle. We propose the use of "Smart areas" to overcome th...

In recent years, computer games have reached unprecedented level of graphical fidelity to the real world. As the non-player characters (NPCs) in the game world look more and more realistic, players expect them to manifest believable behavior as well. This is accented especially in games that feature large open worlds, which players may explore free...

This study investigates the impact of photorealistic/cartoon-like representations of non-player characters on students' perception of an educational simulation. It is a comparative study, with within-subject design, that compares two different versions of an educational simulation, Czechoslovakia 38-89. Several studies of simulation design suggest...

This paper discusses the experimental implementation of a complex educational simulation, Czechoslovakia 38-89, in Czech high schools. The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the acceptance of Czechoslovakia 38-89 by teachers and students as a teaching tool for history education. We examine whether the simulation was successfully integrated...

With more computing power available, video games may spare increasing amounts of processing time for AI. One prospective application of the newly available resources is the simulation of large amounts of nonplayer characters (NPCs) in open world games. While it is relatively easy to simulate simple behaviours of individual NPCs it is much more diff...

The autonomous agents community has been developing specific agent-oriented programming languages for more than two decades. Some of the languages have been considered by academia as possible tools for developing artificial intelligence (AI) for non-player characters in computer games. However, as most of the research related to the development of...

Animals live in groups for a wide variety of reasons. The main benefits are related to anti-predator behaviour, foraging, mate finding, and/or reduction of energetic costs. In this paper we present a game-theoretical model that supports the waste recycling hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the organic waste materials produced by the members o...

In this demo, we present a working example of a simple game based on character-centric interactive storytelling. The game is situated in a small virtual town where three characters, two girls and a boy (or two boys and a girl) are involved in a dating scenario. The player may influence the boy and guide his actions, his goal is to steer the story t...

Episodic Memory (EM) abilities are important for many types of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). However, the few IVA–EM systems implemented to date utilize indexed logs of events as the underlying memory representation, which makes it hard to model some crucial facets of human memory, including hierarchical organization of episodes, reconstructiv...