Mario Allegra

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Educational Technology ITD

Through a systematic analysis of the literature, this study analyzes the change in the teacher's role triggered by the integration of AI into educational systems. The picture offered by the systematic analysis of the literature conducted in this study reveals a less than total awareness of the urgency with which the challenges imposed by AI in the...

This study investigates the effectiveness of a 6-month parent-mediated early intervention telehealth program for children with an autism spectrum disorder. The participants comprised a total of 27 parents. The findings showed that participation in the program promotes parents’ empowerment and reduce parental stress and a general improvement in the...

The abrupt interruption of face-to-face educational activities imposed by the Italian Government in response to the Covid-19 emergency required a rapid switch to remote schooling to guarantee continuity in education. This paper explores the family’s perception about the organization of remote schooling and its impact on learning. In particular, the...

Metaphors represent a powerful cognitive tool through which it is possible to facilitate the understanding of abstract concepts or concepts belonging to unfamiliar domains. In the field of Serious Games (SGs), metaphors connect the user’s previous experience in the game domain to the information load that is intended to be conveyed. This paper pres...

This contribute investigates how Emergency Remote Education (ERE) impacted families during the spring 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and in particular, the extent to which the impact of ERE on families, measured in terms of space and equipment sharing, moderates the effect of student and family characteristics on students' engagement. The study derived fr...

p style="text-align: justify;">The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between students’ academic motivation, implicit beliefs about intelligence and learning strategies among undergraduate healthcare students. First-year students of healthcare degree courses from a university in Southern Italy were surveyed. The study measured psyc...

Background The efficient management of relational competences in healthcare professionals is crucial to ensuring that a patient’s treatment and care process is conducted positively. Empathy is a major component of the relational skills expected of health professionals. Knowledge of undergraduate healthcare students’ empathic abilities is important...

Background. According to the biopsychosocial approach and patient-centred models, efficient management of relational competences by healthcare professionals is crucial to affect a patient’s treatment and care process positively. Empathy is one of the major components of the relational skills expected of health professionals. The knowledge of the em...

Background. The efficient management of relational competences in healthcare professionals is crucial to ensure that a patient’s treatment and care process is conducted positively. Empathy is a major component of the relational skills expected of health professionals. Knowledge of undergraduate healthcare students’ empathic abilities is important f...

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the possible role of cognitive architectures in the field of Serious Games. The seminal works that explore the use of Cognitive Architecture in games will be analyzed in the light of an emerging perspective of the games AI research area. Finally, an initial proposal of application of Cognitive Architect...

The relationship between the development of 21st-century skills and game-based learning is a field to explore. Among the 21-st century skills, critical thinking is one of the most analyzed skills. This study aims to deepen the relationship between learning and disposition to critical thinking (DCT) in the context of Serious Games (SGs). In particul...

This issue contains seven selected articles, which gives an overview of the rich field of serious games. So among the topics covered in this issue there are: gamification of learning experiences, serious games in everyday life, artificial intelligence as a means to significantly increase the effects of serious games, understanding the effect of lea...

Background: The nursing shortage is of worldwide concern, with nursing student retention acknowledged as a priority. As a fundamental step towards exploring factors that can guide the implementation of strategic approaches to retain undergraduate nursing students and prevent their attrition, the aim of this study is to examine the motivation for c...

Although several investigations of spatial reasoning and mental rotation skills have been conducted in research areas linked to STEM education, to the best of our knowledge, few of these studies have examined the relationship between spatial reasoning and computational thinking. Given this gap in the literature, the present study investigates the r...

Background: Quality of life (QoL) is an important outcome in the management of children with asthma. Mobile Health (m-Health) and Therapeutic Education Programs (TEPs) are increasingly recognized as essential components of pediatric asthma management to improve disease outcomes. Objective: To evaluate the effect of an education program (MyTherap...

The emergence of simulating human movement and behavior rose in order to imitate and replace human interference of this complex demeanor. It is so diverse and uncontrollable to the extend it is almost impossible to undergo exhaustive experiments. Hence, simulating this model is crucial. Especially in designing a public area where human density is t...

In this work, starting from the social practice theory, we identified two kinds of creativity: a situational creativity that takes place when, starting from a defined situation, a social practice is played; and a creativity of habit that concerns the agents' capacity for generating new practices from habit when the situation is not defined or is un...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2018, held in Palermo, Italy, in December 2018. The 38 revised regular papers presented together with 9 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. The papers cover the following topics: games for skill...

The Artificial Intelligence is related to Computer Science and the computational modelling techniques are part of Artificial Intelligence likewise the computational and simulation model. The technique consist the theories and concept which can be operated by the machine and important to realize that the computational method allows for creating, ana...

The bottleneck networks of the vehicular traffic flow required the clear understanding and the insights of congestion factors, determines the time and location of traffic breakdown. The congestion propagates through the network caused by the numbers of vehicles continuously growing. There have been lots of research studies to resolve the issues. Si...

Understanding the evacuation mechanism has been important subject nowadays in order to model the simulation on the pedestrian behavior in crowd evacuation for the case study of fire emergency scenario in the building. Almost two decades the interest of Social Force Model (SFM) in pedestrian traffic increased significantly as a microscopic model to...

Educational activities based on dance can support interest in comprehension of concepts from maths, geometry, physics, bio-mechanics and computational thinking. In this work, we discuss a possible use of a dancing humanoid robot as an innovative technology to support and enhance STEAM learning activities.

Understanding the evacuation mechanism has been important subject nowadays in order to model the simulation on the pedestrian behavior in crowd evacuation for the case study of fire emergency scenario in the building. Almost two decades the interest of Social Force Model (SFM) in pedestrian traffic increased significantly as a microscopic model to...

uManager is a typical management/construction game aimed to foster entrepreneurial skills in young students in which the user has to construct and manage a holiday resort. The game model connects the GMs with the Levels and Tasks to give to the game designer the maximum flexibility in the definition of a learning path.

uManager is a typical management/construction game aimed to foster entrepreneurial skills in young students in which the user has to construct and manage a holiday resort. The game model connects the GMs with the Levels and Tasks to give to the game designer the maximum flexibility in the definition of a learning path.

Educational activities based on dance can support interest in comprehension of concepts from maths, geometry, physics, bio-mechanics and computational thinking. In this work, we discuss a possible use of a dancing humanoid robot as an innovative technology to support and enhance STEAM learning activities.

This paper analyses the connection between spatial reasoning and STEM education from the point of view of embodied theories of cognition. A new learning model based on the use of a humanoid robot is presented with the aim of teaching and learning basic STEM concepts in a fruitful and engaging fashion.

Human safety is an important issue when handling the crowd evacuation in order to avoid death and injuries. Human behavior changes from normal to panic behavior when they are in an emergency scenario such as building on fire. Modelling panic behavior on evacuee is a critical challenge as the human movement is unpredictable. Simulation (example: Dis...

This paper arises from some remarks within the field of Serious Games about the lacks of an effective and suitable framework for supporting both the design and the analysis of serious games. Such an absence recurs as the leading argument against the use of serious games as useful educational tools. The main aim of the paper is to define a methodol...

Abstract The Communication from the European Commission entitled "Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020" highlights the role of Entrepreneurship Education (EE) as a key strategy for stimulating economic growth in Europe. As stated in the report “Entrepreneurship Education at School in Europe”, EE is not yet sufficiently integrated into the school...

This paper proposes a methodological framework to support the design of educational games based on a semantic frame analysis. Starting from a Frame Semantics point of view, the authors provide a deepen analysis of game mechanics definitions using the key concept of verb. To demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model an example is reported to...

Conference presentation for the paper ”A semantic Frame approach to support Serious Game Design”

This work presents the first results of a research project seeking to build a simulation model able to reproduce the differences of Italian students’ performance at regional level. A preliminary qualitative cause-and-effect model defines the main variable involved in the inter-generational skill formation processes, as well as their interplay with...

Un modello di formazione continua in medicina basato sull’utilizzo di funzionalità di comunicazione e cooperazione integrate nel Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico.

Within a Smart Learning Environment (SLE) learners are involved in a new learning process tailored to create a continuum of education by extending the current educational formal settings to real-life informal learning context. The goal of this paper is to describe the Cognitive Architecture (CA) of a Personal Intelligent Coach able to manage learni...

There is an increasing social pressure to train medical students with a level of competency sufficient to face clinical practice already at the end of their curriculum. The case-based learning (CBL) is an efficient teaching method to prepare students for clinical practice through the use of real or realistic clinical cases. In this regard, the Elec...

There is an increasing social pressure to train medical students with a level of competency sufficient to face clinical practice already at the end of their curriculum. The case-based learning (CBL) is an efficient teaching method to prepare students for clinical practice through the use of real or realistic clinical cases. In this regard, the Elec...

Background: This study is based on the evidence that tests can be used as an educational tool to enhance learning, not just as an evaluation tool. There is a growing body of research that shows that participating in repeated testing improves learning, a phenomenon defined as Test-Enhanced Learning. The aim of the present study was to analyse the e...

“Neuroeducation” and “Educational Neuroscience” are labels that refer to a branch of knowledge which is the subject of a rather heated debate amongst researchers. This new area, arising from an exchange between Neuroscience and Educational Sciences, is generally and mistakenly described as a context where educationally relevant evidences from neuro...

The demand to support special educative needs has considerably risen recently, highlighting the longing of customized learning paths. According to the “Policy guidelines on inclusion in education” (UNESCO 2009, Paris), “the concept of inclusion focuses on the learning environments and it involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, st...

The main aim of this paper is to propose a model, which can explain Italian regional variability in the PISA 2009 data. In the literature, many models have studied the impact on the PISA scores of individual variables, often related to gender, socio-economic status, and motivational factors. In some cases, other variables have been introduced to ta...

Entrepreneurship Education aims to help students acquire skills and knowledge that are crucial for the development of an entrepreneurial mindset. The article describes a blended model based on the use of a serious game within the framework of the EU-funded project “I can…I cannot…I go!” Rev. 2 (PNPV project). The learning model and the serious game...

In this paper we describe an educational model for undergraduate psychiatry students. In the proposed model, the contents of clinical cases are drawn from patients’ clinical data stored in the electronic medical records of the hospital. Teachers can develop a variety of learning materials and tasks based on real clinical cases, related to a variety...

Serious games are designed to train and educate learners, opening up new learning approaches like exploratory learning and situated cognition. Despite growing interest in these games, their design is still an artisan process. On the basis of experience in designing computer simulation, this paper proposes an agent-based approach to guide the design...

Serious games are designed to train and educate learners, opening up new learning approaches like exploratory learning and situated cognition. Despite growing interest in these games, their design is still an artisan process. On the basis of experiences in designing computer simulation, this paper proposes an agent-based approach to guide the desi...

Training and simulation games are a type of serious game that allow learners to deal with realistic scenarios, to test their behavior under controlled conditions and to increase their understanding of the simulated system/process. In these games, the educational goal changes the issues related to the simulation design. In particular, achieving righ...

ICT and Internet have allowed the creation of new educational objects in an innovative and original way, in particular in the fields of the retrieval and study of cultural heritage and art. The connectionbetween the digital and cultural domains brought a new approach to learning which reveals in activities where space and time vanish, giving rise t...

The laboratory courses are an important part of physics studies. Their program includes performing essential experiments of classical and modern physics that verify the laws of physics, which students learn on the other courses. During the development of the laboratory work, students have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with experimenta...

Over the last decade the Italian university system has been subject to a remarkable reform. The number of courses has increased over time; registrations of new students have been rising more than 13 per cent, despite the Italian unemployment rate of graduates remains above the European average. In this new context, characterized by a growing compet...

This paper focuses on the use of mobile technologies for visually impaired people to access a Learning Management System in relation to the aims of the VODIE project. Mobile technologies offer new opportunities for distance learning. New application scenarios are opening up, in particular in an educational context; wireless technologies provide sup...

The focus of this chapter is on “key issues for fostering OER communities of practice with teachers.” It is based on the successful experiences of three European funded projects: SLOOP, TENEGEN, and SLOOP2DESC. These three projects draw on the concept of open education as well as on the open and free software movements. The original idea behind the...

Game-based learning (GBL) refers to different learning methodologies based on the use of games as part of educational strategy in training processes. GBL represents an effective and innovative learning methodology and, in recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the beneficial aspects of using games as learning tools. In fact, in the...

This paper reflects on some important aspects related to online reading comprehension. In particular, it explains the Interactive REading Comprehension (IREC) model that explores the different dimensions and interactions involved in an online reading comprehension process. The components of the model and their impact on the two principal processes...

What moves the young Italian school graduates to enroll at the university? What are the reasons why a growing number of students prefer universities outside their own region? These are the questions that we aim to answer in this paper, taking into account the territorial differences in Italy. The estimated probit models show that, with respect to t...

The purpose of this paper is to describe a computer based triage system which is to be implemented at the Emergency Department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University Hospital "P. Giaccone" in Palermo. Within the hospital there is no existing system of obstetric and gynecologic triage. The number of admissions to the obstetric-gynecologic wa...

p>Web 2.0 applications and the increasingly use of social networks have been creating new informal learning opportunities. Students interact and collaborate using new learning environments which are structurally different from traditional e-learning environments. In these informal unstructured learning contexts the boundaries between the learning c...

This paper focuses on metacognition and reading comprehension processes in hearing impaired students, as deafness causes a number of linguistic difficulties, affecting the comprehension and production of written text and reducing interest in reading. Then a web tool called Gym2Learn is described and the results of a single-subject-design are discus...

The medical record is the document that contains the details of a patient's clinical history. It represents a fundamental tool for patient treatment and care. In recent years, both in Italy and in other countries, several projects have promoted the use of computerized medical records; some of these projects have already been undertaken and conclude...

This paper reflects on some important aspects related to online reading comprehension. In particular, it explains the Interactive REading Comprehension (IREC) model that explores the different dimensions and interactions involved in an online reading comprehension process. The components of the model and their impact on the two principal processes...

This article aims to promote reflection on some crucial aspects of online reading comprehension. Examination of the Italian scenario regarding reading comprehension issues highlights a dramatic state of affairs, with a generation of students who have poor reading skills and are often unable to use simple cognitive strategies. The IREC model is prop...

Editoriale di TD-Tecnologie Didattiche, 49

In: IHEPI 2010 - From higher education to innovation. Management and entrepreneurship in a changing market (Budapest, 6-8 september 2010). Proceedings, pp. 447 - 454. A. Klucznik-Toro, K. Bodis, I. Kis Pl (eds.). Publikon PublisherslIDResearch Ltd, 2010.

In: ICVL 2010 - 5th International Conference On Virtual Learning. Models & methodologies, technologies, software solutions. Phase II-Period 2010-2020: e-Skills for the 21st Century (Targu Mures, Romania, 29-31 October 2010). Proceedings, pp. 226 - 230. M. Pogonariu (ed.). Bucharest University Press, 2010.

In: IHEPI - From higher education to innovation. Management and entrepreneurship in a changing market (Budapest, 6-8 september 2010). Proceedings, pp. 143 - 151. A. Klucznik-Toro, K. Bodis, I. Kis Pl (eds.). Publikon PublisherslIDResearch Ltd, 2010.

In: TD-Tecnologie Didattiche, vol. 49 (2) pp. 62 - 64. Metacognizione e ambienti per l'apprendimento. CNR-Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattcihe (ed.). Edizioni Menabò, 2010.