Juho Kahila

University of Eastern Finland | UEF · School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education

Previous research on learning-related digital games has focused on studying learning outcomes with mostly adult participants. This study explores what children have experienced they have learned by playing digital games, how these learning experiences relate to 21st-century skills, and in which contexts do the children benefit from playing digital...

In addition to gaming, there are many other activities around digital games. These metagame activities have so far been studied from the perspective of single metagame phenomena and rarely from the perspective of the children who play digital games. This exploratory, qualitative study provides an overview of children's metagame activities. A total...

Over the past decades, numerous practical applications of machine learning techniques have shown the potential of data-driven approaches in a large number of computing fields. Machine learning is increasingly included in computing curricula in higher education, and a quickly growing number of initiatives are expanding it in K–12 computing education...

Previous research on children’s digital games-related aggressive behavior has been conducted from an adult perspective, but children’s voices are missing. This study contributes to filling this gap by exploring how children explain the reasons for their gamer rage, what background factors they recognize as influencing gamer rage, and how they expla...

Playing digital games is very popular among children. Gaming is a multidimensional phenomenon involving many activities other than playing the actual game itself. This dissertation approaches children’s digital gaming as a multifaceted phenomenon that includes not only playing the actual game but related metagame activities. The main aim of this st...

This case study explored the applicability of sequence mining and process mining methods on qualitative video data of a group-based problem-solving situation. For the case study, audio and video data were collected from a pilot experience of an educational escape room, which was designed to practice the application of computational thinking (CT) sk...

The year 2022 saw a shift in the potential and popularity of generative text-to-image models-that is, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven programs that visualize user's text prompts as an image. Over the fall 2022, the technology found its way to popular media and compulsory school arts and crafts teachers' discussion boards. This study was designe...

In this study we provide a new viewpoint on the body of literature regarding rewards in serious and educational games. The study includes a quantitative bibliometric analysis of literature in this context from 1969 to 2020. The dataset from the Scopus abstract and citation database was analyzed with the Bibliometrix R library. The data set was manu...

With growing concerns over children’s data agencies, researchers have begun to draw attention to children’s and young people’s privacy practices in social media environments. However, little is known about the experiences of pre-service teachers who play a key role in educating future generations. This study aimed to address this gap by exploring F...

The increase in the number of smart mobile devices has led the explosion of a variety of educational and recreational game applications. This study’s purpose is to find common themes in the reward types of the cumulatively most-installed educational and recreational mobile games. The video games were observed by researchers from previously recorded...

Tekoälyn ja erityisesti uudet koneoppimisen tekniikat ovat teknologisen murroksen keskeisiä ajureita. Tänä päivänä koneoppiminen on myös yhä enemmän sulautumassa osaksi kehollista ja materiaalista maailmaa sekä vuorovaikutusta. Antureiden, verkkoyhteyksien ja tietokoneohjelmistojen kautta rakennukset, esineet ja tekstiilit ovat muuttumassa älykkäid...

Gamer rage, rage induced by digital games, is an understudied area, especially from children’s perspective. This study explores children’s stories of the reasons and manifestations of their gamer rage. Data consisted of 31 children’s essays which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results show that children explain their own in-g...

Over the past decades, numerous practical applications of machine learning techniques have shown the potential of data-driven approaches in a large number of computing fields. Machine learning is increasingly included in computing curricula in higher education, and a quickly growing number of initiatives are expanding it in K-12 computing education...

https://journal.fi/kasvatus/article/view/107970

Digital games are a very popular medium among people of all ages. While information related to games is in high demand among adolescents, their digital game-related information-seeking remains an understudied subject. This study explored what kind of digital game-related information adolescents seek, and from what information sources. The data were...

An entire generation of children is growing up with machine learning (ML) systems that are greatly disrupting job markets as well as changing people’s everyday lives. Yet, that development and its societal effects have been given minor attention in computing education in schools, which mainly focuses on rule-based programming. This article presents...

This systems short paper presents the design and implementation of an escape room game for practicing computational thinking (CT) skills in the primary school. The game, which can be packed into two small suitcases and set up anywhere, combines physical and virtual elements in order to engage learners into exploring the room. Aural elements with sp...

While much has been written about the personal, social, and democratic benefits of networked communities and partici-patory learning, critics have begun to draw attention to the ubiquitous data collection and computational processes behind mass user platforms. Personal and behavioral data have become valuable material for statistical and machine le...

This innovative practice full paper is grounded in the societal developments of computing in the 2000s, which have brought the concept of information literacy and its many variants into limelight. Widespread tracking, profiling, and behavior engineering have set the alarms off, and there are increasing calls for education that can prepare citizens...

This Research to Innovative Practice Full Paper presents a multidisciplinary, design-based research study that aims to develop and study pedagogical models and tools for integrating machine-learning (ML) topics into education. Although children grow up with ML systems, few theoretical or empirical studies have focused on investigating ML and data-d...