No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Serious game on recognizing categories of waste, to support a zero waste recycling program
... Precisely, this is the most important reason for searching for new tools and strategies that adjust to the current reality, in terms of teaching and promoting recycling. As mentioned in the article, "Serious game on recognizing categories of waste, to support a zero waste recycling program" [6], despite the fact that the topic of recycling is a tedious task; it is important to generate means through which it can be promoted and, even better, teach people about recycling and the correct handling of the waste we generate. This objective can be achieved using current trends, such as the use of technology, in order to promote recycling as a daily task or activity. ...
... Menon et al. [6] conducted a study to support a waste recycling program in public places in India, the program consists of an augmented reality game and a motion detection device, its objective is to train people in sorting waste from different categories like hard and soft plastic, paper and cardboard. ...
... The serious game proposals [6,[9][10][11] are meant to work in their country or city of origin, so they cannot be used by users from other parts of the world who want to learn about waste management and taking care of the planet, due to the language of the game or recycling regulations. The video game's difficulty is another factor to take into account, in the study developed by Gaggi et al. [10], results show that from the third level of the game on, players experience trouble winning and advancing to the next levels, another factor to consider is accessibility, since games like Ant Forest [11] and PadovaGoGreen [10] are only available and functional in the countries where they were developed and released. ...
Nowadays, the process of sorting waste, which consists of the selection and grouping of solid and liquid waste generated in different human activities, has acquired great ecological and economic importance for the benefit of environmental conservation. In recent years, the use of technology to create solutions that generate environmental awareness in people has grown significantly. There are applications such as PadovaGoGreen, Save the Planets and Ant Forest, which are games to motivate users to recycle and take care of the planet’s natural resources in a fun and creative way. However, they are only available and functional in the countries where they were developed and released. Also, their players experience trouble winning and advancing to the next levels. Hence, we carried out the development of the beta version of a video game, accessible and easy to use called “Cool Ways To Manage Waste” to promote and educate on the most appropriate practices for the correct management of waste and recycling, the game is focused on the scheme of a serious game. The game was evaluated by young users and we used Student’s t-test for paired samples, making hypotheses comply right tailed test in order to check the significance of the performed process.
... Όπως υποστηρίζουν οι Menon et al. (2017), σημασία έχει η διαλογή των απορριμμάτων στην ίδια την πηγή, κατά το στάδιο της απόρριψής τους στους κάδους. Επίσης, όταν η διαλογή γίνεται από την πηγή, αυξάνεται η συνολική αποδοτικότητα του συστήματος διαχείρισης απορριμμάτων κατά 76% (Menon et al., 2017). ...
... Όπως υποστηρίζουν οι Menon et al. (2017), σημασία έχει η διαλογή των απορριμμάτων στην ίδια την πηγή, κατά το στάδιο της απόρριψής τους στους κάδους. Επίσης, όταν η διαλογή γίνεται από την πηγή, αυξάνεται η συνολική αποδοτικότητα του συστήματος διαχείρισης απορριμμάτων κατά 76% (Menon et al., 2017). ...
Στην εργασία αυτή παρουσιάζεται η διερεύνηση ανάπτυξης δεξιοτήτων του 21ου αιώνα, όπως είναι η κριτική σκέψη σε μαθητές/τριες της Πρωτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης, κατά την εμπλοκή τους με ένα σοβαρό παιχνίδι με θέμα την ανακύκλωση και τις διαδικασίες ταξινόμησης των υλικών. Οι μαθητές/τριες της Ε΄ τάξης, ενός Δημοτικού Σχολείου της Ανατολικής Θεσσαλονίκης, πρώτα αναγνώρισαν από το περιβάλλον τους, το βιβλίο τους και άλλες πηγές τρεις διαφορετικές διαδικασίες που υπάρχουν για την διαχείριση των απορριμμάτων. Χωρίστηκαν σε ομάδες και κάθε μια ομάδα ανέλαβε μια από τις τρεις διαδικασίες ανακύκλωσης και μέσα από το κατάλληλο σχεδιασμένο παιχνίδι, κατανοήσαν την διαδικασία της ανακύκλωσης που επέλεξαν, παρουσίασαν την εμπειρία που απόκτησαν από τη βιωματική διαδικασία, μπόρεσαν να διατυπώσουν τα υπέρ και τα κατά της κάθε διαδικασίας και διέκριναν την συνεισφορά που μπορούν να κάνουν σε ατομικό επίπεδο για την ανακύκλωση.
... Όπως υποστηρίζουν οι Menon et al. (2017), σημασία έχει η διαλογή των απορριμμάτων στην ίδια την πηγή, κατά το στάδιο της απόρριψής τους στους κάδους. Επίσης, όταν η διαλογή γίνεται από την πηγή, αυξάνεται η συνολική αποδοτικότητα του συστήματος διαχείρισης απορριμμάτων κατά 76% (Menon et al., 2017). ...
... Όπως υποστηρίζουν οι Menon et al. (2017), σημασία έχει η διαλογή των απορριμμάτων στην ίδια την πηγή, κατά το στάδιο της απόρριψής τους στους κάδους. Επίσης, όταν η διαλογή γίνεται από την πηγή, αυξάνεται η συνολική αποδοτικότητα του συστήματος διαχείρισης απορριμμάτων κατά 76% (Menon et al., 2017). ...
Στην εργασία αυτή παρουσιάζεται η διερεύνηση ανάπτυξης δεξιοτήτων του 21ου αιώνα, όπως είναι η κριτική σκέψη σε μαθητές/τριες της Πρωτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης, κατά την εμπλοκή τους με ένα σοβαρό παιχνίδι με θέμα την ανακύκλωση και τις διαδικασίες ταξινόμησης των υλικών. Οι μαθητές/τριες της Ε΄ τάξης, ενός Δημοτικού Σχολείου της Ανατολικής Θεσσαλονίκης, πρώτα αναγνώρισαν από το περιβάλλον τους, το βιβλίο τους και άλλες πηγές τρεις διαφορετικές διαδικασίες που υπάρχουν για την διαχείριση των απορριμμάτων. Χωρίστηκαν σε ομάδες και κάθε μια ομάδα ανέλαβε μια από τις τρεις διαδικασίες ανακύκλωσης και μέσα από το κατάλληλο σχεδιασμένο παιχνίδι, κατανοήσαν την διαδικασία της ανακύκλωσης που επέλεξαν, παρουσίασαν την εμπειρία που απόκτησαν από τη βιωματική διαδικασία, μπόρεσαν να διατυπώσουν τα υπέρ και τα κατά της κάθε διαδικασίας και διέκριναν την συνεισφορά που μπορούν να κάνουν σε ατομικό επίπεδο για την ανακύκλωση.
... Results are very promising regarding information conveyed through games, intentions and users' overall response in terms of the engagement, interaction and enjoyment of serious games, virtual reality experiences or installations (i.e., playful designs) [81][82][83]. ...
... Hence, it is difficult to understand the actual learning or behavioural outcomes [82,83]; most studies used self-developed surveys or questionnaires, thus accurate comparisons between the results are difficult. Moreover, behaviours have mostly been measured regarding engagement with games or scores rather than actual behaviours. ...
Plastic pollution is an urgent worldwide environmental issue affecting marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Half of the global plastic production is dedicated to items only used once: the so-defined single-use plastic (SUP) items. Different strategies have been implemented to reduce SUP consumption. Game-based solutions are an emerging strategy to favour behaviour change. The present systematic review aims at providing a synthesis of the current evidence about the use of game-based solutions to encourage sustainable behaviours concerning plastic (i.e., consumption, avoidance, waste management, pollution). Relevant studies were identified via three databases: Scopus, ProQuest and Web of Science for qualifying papers published between 2015 and 2021. Twenty-two studies that employed or designed game-based interventions to address the plastic problem were included. Results suggest that there is still little research exploring the use of game-based solutions to address the plastic issue. The studies included in this review mostly aim at changing behaviours and raising awareness towards plastic pollution among the general public. Although findings suggest that game-based intervention can be promising in terms of engagement and motivation and increasing knowledge of the issue, there is still little research focused on proving actual behaviour change, especially over time and in different settings.
... In the context of recycling skills, many games have been designed and implemented to train people to classify waste for recycling, since it is one of the most efficient ways to reduce pollution. Some of them are mobile apps or desktop games [8][9][10][11], but recently, new interactive approaches have been applied. ...
Currently, separating waste is one of the widest trend issues in the world to save our planet. However, changing human behaviour is a challenging task that should be started from childhood by using engaging technologies to foster education and change habits. Serious games are one of the main used approaches in education since they have been proved to be engaging and effective in several domains. Recently, also social robots have been implied as an effective technology to motivate students during the learning process. The research described in the paper aims at combining these two technical solutions, serious games and social robots, to educate young people to correctly recycle waste. A user test was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the application, the cognitive workload, and user engagement. Results confirm that children participating in the study improved their recycling skills and the game approach has been judged as engaging.
... The work of Menon [8] exploits a motion sensing input device like Microsoft Kinect to train people in recycle trash quickly, in fact while a particular waste drops down from the top of the screen the trainee has to it with the help of a ball controlled by its the movements and drag the waste into the correct bin. In Calvi et al. [10] a collaborative VR game inquires through a presence questionnaire the relationship about player immersion and its empathy for the marine environment sustainability while ReLife is a casual mobile game developed by [5] that educate about reuse practices and when players complete tasks to reduce the volume of wasted materials they are also given information on how to produce crafts from them. ...
The proposed video game offers to post-adolescent players educational contents about garbage recycling, implementing a gameplay that merges the Action and Management game genres with a pixel-art inspired graphic style. A preliminary user-based evaluation has been performed with three players using the Thinking Aloud technique. Comments about the game mechanics were generally positive and the sustainability topic was perceived well-integrated and non-invasive, proving the need of further experimentation and evaluation.
KeywordsVideo gameSustainabilityRecyclingManagementEducational
... Eight of the nine studies did not prove entirely useful to our research efforts, as they either presented their gameful approach without actually evaluating the effectiveness of their design (Bifulco et al. 2011;Berengueres et al. 2013;González-Briones et al. 2018), evaluated their design qualitatively as a whole with a small number of users (Lotfi and Mohammed 2014;Sreelakshmi et al. 2015;Menon et al. 2017;Idrobo et al. 2018) or touched on a relevant but adjacent topic (Whalen et al. 2018). Except for one (Luo et al. 2018), these studies did not provide insights into the effect of single design choices on learning outcomes but instead looked at their gameful implementations as a whole. ...
Municipal waste sorting is an important but neglected topic within sustainability-oriented Information Systems research. Most waste management systems depend on the quality of their citizens pre-sorting but lack teaching resources. Thus, it is important to raise awareness and knowledge on correct waste sorting to strengthen current efforts. Having shown promising results in raising learning outcomes and motivation in domains like health and economics, gamification is an auspicious approach to address this problem. The paper explores the effectiveness of gameful design on learning outcomes of waste sorting knowledge with a mobile game app that implements two different learning strategies: repetition and elaboration. In a laboratory experiment, the overall learning outcome of participants who trained with the game was compared to that of participants who trained with standard analogue non-game materials. Furthermore, the effects of two additional, learning-enhancing design elements – repetition and look-up – were analyzed. Learning outcome in terms of long-term retention and knowledge transfer were evaluated through three different testing measures two weeks after the training: in-game, through a multiple-choice test and real-life sorting. The results show that the game significantly enhanced the learning outcome of waste sorting knowledge for all measures, which is particularly remarkable for the real-life measure, as similar studies were not successful with regard to knowledge transfer to real life. Furthermore, look-up is found to be a promising game design element that is not yet established in IS literature and therefore should be considered more thoroughly in future research and practical implementations alike.
... Regarding these circumstances, multiple games have been designed to raise awareness about recycling [12]. It denotes the use of new information and communication technologies with the involvement of digital elements seeking to create video games. ...
Climate change is a global problem that is gradually beginning to show its relevance for Latin-American context. For this reason, this research has proposed the design of two 3D video games oriented towards recycling. It is worth mentioning that these are the first 2 games made in Ecuador by a university institution that aims to raise awareness of sustainable development among its student population. Under this line, the article seeks to present the technical considerations considered to promote the transversal knowledge and ecological awareness.
... An example is ARGY [6], which uses Augmented Reality to promote consumption of electronic devices in a greener manner. Virtual Reality has also been successfully used to train users in selecting and sorting the waste [46]. The users are asked to drag the rubbish in the right bin placed in the room, and the game is able to recognize the answers using a motion sensing input device. ...
In this paper, we investigate the use of a social robot as an engaging interface of a serious game intended to make children more aware and well disposed towards waste recycle. The game has been designed as a competition between the robot Pepper and a child. During the game, the robot simultaneously challenges and teaches the child how to recycle waste materials. To endow the robot with the capability to play as a game opponent in a real-world context, it is equipped with an image recognition module based on a Convolutional Neural Network to detect and classify the waste material as a child would do, i.e. by simply looking at it. A formal experiment involving 51 primary school students is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the game in terms of different factors such as the interaction with the robot, the users’ cognitive and affective dimensions towards ecological sustainability, and the propensity to recycle. The obtained results are encouraging and draw promising scenarios for educational robotics in changing children’s attitudes toward recycling. Indeed Pepper turns out to be positively evaluated by children as a trustful and believable companion and this allows children to be concentrated on the “memorization” task during the game. Moreover, the use of real objects as waste items during the game turns out to be a successful approach not only for perceived learning effectiveness but also for the children’s engagement.
... The application and examination of the measurement scales to festivals with other cultural or artistic themes in different countries would definitely help refine their validity and reliability. Last but not least, in light of the wide application of technology-assisted learning under various environmental education scenarios [47,48], understanding the effectiveness of visitor learning of compulsory waste sorting will be greatly leveraged by comparative analyses of the learning facilitated by host interpretations and by technology. ...
Compulsory waste sorting has been in practice in pilot cities in China and is expected to be fully implemented in urban areas of the country by 2025. However, the learning of compulsory waste sorting by non-local festival attendees in a semi-free choice festival context and the roles of the relevant factors require further investigation. In particular, for the non-local attendees, the festival context avails both the opportunity and occasion for effective learning of compulsory waste sorting, a unique research window worth further exploration. Employing a systematic modeling approach to comprehensively investigate the interrelationships among the identified significant factors, this study explores and examines the mechanism of this learning process with a hierarchy of positive relationships between the host communications, learning outcomes and behavioral intentions of the festival attendees concerning compulsory waste sorting. The research subject of this study was a branded forest music festival held in a waste-sorting pilot city in East China, which has long been pivoting to the promotion of environmental-friendly values. The objective measurement of the learning outcomes integrated by this study accentuate the effectiveness of the proposed structural model. Our research findings confirmed all of the hypothesized relationships and established positive learning outcomes for the festival attendees on waste sorting as instructed by the festival hosts. The role of the festival attendees’ environmental attitudes in mediating their learning outcomes was corroborated. This study advances the understanding of the experiential learning processes of pro-environment and sustainability knowledge and behavior in festival contexts, areas that require future research attention with growing reflections on and awareness of environmental protection and sustainable development.
... In contrast to a regular graduate classroom, where the teacher is more familiar with the "real world" of the work than the students, here the teacher (an international professor) was able to offer technical HCI skills and finesse, but primarily needed to support them to apply the concepts and methods to their existing practice; to enter the "user-centered headspace" and get the "knack" of using HCI concepts. The results were positive, in that existing projects could be designed with greater human-centred rigour, leading to further innovation [3,4,5,6]. Also, the ability to think academically about HCI enabled a wave of international publications, such as the system for teaching rural children to code: "Haathi Mera Saathi" presented at IDC2016. ...
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita) is based in South India and focuses on humanitarian technology and sustainable innovation and development. There has been a structured HCI training since 2015, serving a diverse set of student needs. As well as training MTech and PhD technologists aiming for the international job market, we serve three other groups which are less commonly found together in the Digital North. These are: specialist national professionals focusing on applied humanitarian technology, young national undergraduates keen to use their newfound skills in the service of rural India, and international mature students and visiting professionals who come to Amrita University specifically to work on projects for social good. Beyond this, we feel that the work undertaken in India is of unique potential to act as a beacon to guide international efforts in equitable, humanitarian applications of technology.
... While serious games and gamification in recycling and waste management has been explored [e.g. 24,[25][26][27][28][29], much more is needed to understand how these can be used in recycling processes. The lack of feedback from recycling behaviour [30] and the lack of space to recycle well are known hurdles for increased recycling rates [31]. ...
... An example is ARGY [6], which uses Augmented Reality to promote consumption of electronic devices in a greener manner. Virtual Reality has also been successfully used to train users in selecting and sorting the waste [46]. The users are asked to drag the rubbish in the right bin placed in the room, and the game is able to recognize the answers using a motion sensing input device. ...
In this paper we investigate the impact of a social robot in the context of serious games in which the robot plays the role of a game opponent by challenging and, at the same time, teaching the child to correctly recycle waste materials. To this aim we performed a study in which we investigated the dimensions that are used to evaluate serious games integrated with those that are typical of the interaction with a social robot. To endow the robot with the capability to play as a game opponent in a real-world context, we implemented an image recognition module based on a Convolutional Neural Network so that the robot could detect and classify the waste material as a child would do, by seeing it. After a preliminary evaluation of the approach, we started a formal experiment in which we measured the effectiveness of game design, the robot evaluation and the evaluation of cognitive and affective elements that can form the pro-environmental attitude and then the tendency to recycling. A primary school classroom was involved in the study and, results obtained so far, are encouraging and drew promising possibilities for robotics education in changing recycling attitude for children since Pepper is positively evaluated as trustful and believable and this allowed to be concentrated on the 'memorization' task during the game.
Natural security refers to all aspects of security related to a reliable, sufficient, affordable and sustainable supply of natural resources, and energy to meet the needs of society by protecting the environment, human health, and living things. Effects derived from climate change are one of the biggest challenges encountered in terms of natural security. Simulation games play a vital role in building a sustainable world. This study investigates the games for topics like natural security, energy security, carbon capture and storage, renewable energy and waste. A review of the literature showed forty-three studies which focused on the objective of the study. Most of the games were used in education and used to transfer knowledge in the field of waste. The paper points out the importance of natural security and the need to develop more games in natural security and its related fields to build a regenerative economy.
Background
To overcome the high failure rate of gameful interventions, we need to better understand their design and evaluation strategies to build an evidence-base for best-practice approaches that bring about meaningful change. This systematic review asks: ‘What behavioural and technological design and evaluation theories and approaches are applied in games developed to bring about positive environmental outcomes?’.
Method
We reviewed 52 papers published between 2015 and 2020 that used gameful interventions to improve behaviour related to environmental outcomes. These papers were analysed to review the behavioural and technical design, and the assessment and evaluation approaches, employed by the intervention designers.
Results
We found that these publications report on simple aspects of the behavioural and technical design behind the intervention but fail to justify their design choices in terms of theory and evidence. Furthermore, variability across their evaluation approaches and outcomes exists.
Discussion
This review highlights several systemic flaws in the literature that limit our understanding of gameful interventions in the pro-environmental context. First, based on this review, we cannot be convinced that these interventions were designed according to best practice for intervention design or for technology development. Second, the justification for proposing a gameful intervention is not always clear. Finally, it is unclear whether these interventions are being evaluated based on best practice. Thus, it is not clear that we can draw confident conclusions about evidence-based outcomes of short-term engagement (in structural gamification interventions) or long-term behaviour change (in content gamification and serious game interventions).
Pelantar of Tanjungpinang City is a densely populated area and the center of the community's economy where attention to household waste management has not been carried out according to requirements. Housewives still process the waste that is not in accordance with the classification of waste types. The information obtained from the government is still deemed inadequate. The study aimed to explain the relationship between the treatment of waste management and information exposure to housewives in Pelantar of Tanjungpinang City. This research method was categorized as an analytic observational study with a cross sectional approach. The number of population was 964 people and the number of sample was 91 people using purposive sampling technique, namely the housewives in Pelantar of Tanjungpinang City. The hypothesis testing used the Chi Square test. The results of this study showed that there was no relationship between the public knowledge (0.063) and the household waste management. There was a relationship between the community attitudes (0.003) and the household waste management. There was a relationship between the community action (0.000) and the household waste management. There was a relationship between the information sources (0.002) and the household waste management in Pelantar of Tanjungpinang City. This research concludes that there were three variables related to the household waste management, namely attitudes, actions and sources of information. It is suggested that the Tanjungpinang City Administration collaborate with cross-sectoral efforts to increase socialization and education regarding the household waste management, and the community reduce the waste piles and implement the 5 R reduce, reuse, recycle, replace and respect.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can be defined by the amount of virtual elements displayed to a human’s senses: VR is completely synthetic and AR is partially synthetic. This paper compares VR and AR systems for variations of three ball-sorting task scenarios, and evaluates both user performance and reaction (i.e., simulator sickness and immersion). The VR system scored higher, with statistical significance, than the AR system in terms of effectiveness per each scenario and completion rate of all scenarios. The VR system also scored significantly lower than the AR system in terms of percentage error and total false positives. The VR group scored significantly lower than the AR group in efficiency performance: the VR group had less time spent in each scenario, less total time duration, and higher overall relative efficiency. Although post-scenario simulator sickness did not differ significantly between VR and AR, the VR condition had an increase in disorientation from pre-to-post scenarios. Significant correlations between performance effectiveness and post-scenario simulator sickness were not found. Finally, the AR system scored significantly higher on the immersion measure item for the level of challenge the scenarios provided. AR interface issues are discussed as a potential factor in performance decrement, and AR interface solutions are given. AR may be preferred over VR if disorientation is a concern. Study limits include causality ambiguity and experimental control. Next steps include testing VR or AR systems exclusively, and testing whether the increased challenge from the AR immersion is beneficial to educational applications.
It is essential to get disabled people involved and connected to each other and to the rest of the society. Games can be used for this purpose as well as encouraging them to be active physically. However, many of the current interactive games interact with users through voice commands which could be a problem for the deaf/mute people. Microsoft Kinect opens a new aspect for the gaming industry. This hardware can interact with players through a 3D vision and sound detector. This means players can use their body movements as well as their voice commands to control the game environment. The aim of this paper is to develop a Kinect gesture-based game suitable for deaf/mute people. The Microsoft Kinect SDK for Windows is used to develop a game which recognize the gesture command and convert the sign to the text commands in the game (in this instance Microsoft Shape game). Therefore, the deaf/mute player can enjoy taking part in this interactive game. Conclusions are drawn on how researchers can adapt and develop the new game environment which is understandable and compatible with deaf/mute peoples' abilities.
Serious games are games that are designed to educate rather than entertain. The game outlined and evaluated here was commissioned and designed as a tool to improve the group decision making skills of people who manage real-world emergencies such as floods, fires, volcanoes and chemical spills. The game design exploits research on decision making groups and applies pedagogically sound games design principles. An evaluation of the game design was carried out based on a paper prototype. Eight participants were recruited and assigned to two groups of four participants each. These groups were video recorded while playing the game and the video was analysed in terms of game actions and member participation. Results indicate that the group who behaved in a more appropriate manner for a decision making group were rewarded with more positive feedback from the game state. These findings suggest that the game itself delivers appropriate feedback to players on their collaborative behaviour and is thus fit for the purposes intended in the current project.
In past years, computer game designers have tried to increase player engagement by improving the believability of characters
and environment. Today, the focus is shifting toward improving the game controller. This study seeks to understand engagement
on the basis of the body movements of the player. Initial results from two case-studies suggest that an increase in body movement
imposed, or allowed, by the game controller results in an increase in the player’s engagement level. Furthermore, they lead
us to hypothesize that an increased involvement of the body can afford the player a stronger affective experience. We propose
that the contribution of full-body experience is three-fold: (a) it facilitates the feeling of presence in the digital environment
(fantasy); (b) it enables the affective aspects of human-human interaction (communication); and (c) it unleashes the regulatory
properties of emotion (affect).
Serious games can help in training medical first responders by providing emergency simulations which are always available, safer and possibly cheaper than real-world simulations. However, serious games for training emergency medical services (EMS) nurses must take into account the familiarity of the users with 3D videogames, which could be very low. In this paper, we present a prototype of the serious game we are developing for training EMS nurses in decision making and the results of a user study we have carried out with its intended users. The main purposes of the study were to assess nurses' acceptance of this kind of application, as well as to collect suggestions and requirements from nurses.
This paper presents the design and implementation of a distributed virtual reality (VR) platform that was developed to support the training of multiple users who must perform complex tasks in which situation assessment and critical thinking are the primary components of success. The system is fully immersive and multimodal, and users are represented as tracked, full-body figures. The system supports the manipulation of virtual objects, allowing users to act upon the environment in a natural manner. The underlying intelligent simulation component creates an interac- tive, responsive world in which the consequences of such actions are presented within a realistic, time-critical scenario. The focus of this work has been on the training of medical emergency-response personnel. BioSimMER, an application of the system to training first responders to an act of bio-terrorism, has been imple- mented and is presented throughout the paper as a concrete example of how the underlying platform architecture supports complex training tasks. Finally, a prelimi- nary field study was performed at the Texas Engineering Extension Service Fire Protection Training Division. The study focused on individual, rather than team, in- teraction with the system and was designed to gauge user acceptance of VR as a training tool. The results of this study are presented.
We present Haathi Mera Saathi (My Elephant Friend), a game concept which serves as a tool for teaching programming and computational thinking to underprivileged children in rural India. It provides a metaphor and gameplay for embodied and tangible games, and creates a soft early ramp up into the conceptual and digital space of learning to code. We discuss the urgency of digital inclusion for Indian rural children, with reference to technology as an amplifier which they need to learn to direct. We contrast the grounded, embodied style of Haathi Mera Saathi with the current crop of mini-languages and coding games, with particular emphasis on the need for physicality and tangibility in the very early stages of learning to code. We further discuss our experience conducting workshops for students from the tribal and rural belts of India, where we see HMS as an effective approach for taking them from a state of having no background in computers or computing, to a state where they create interactive applications in a Java based environment. Recommendations are given for researchers interested in working with rural village children.
Green Taxation and Environmental Sustainability explores the critical issue of how taxes can be applied across relevant environmental areas - including transport, nuclear power, and water and waste management - to achieve sustainability. © The Editors and Contributors Severally 2012. All rights reserved.
UnrealTriage * is a simulation of a mass casualty incident built based on a modification of a commercial first person shooter game called Unreal Tournament. The simulation involves multiple emergency response players at the scene of a small airplane crash with 30 casualties. The player objectives developed thus far consist of fire suppression and primary triage. Players must locate and categorize the casualties into one of four treatment categories. The victims are tagged as red (immediate), yellow (urgent), green (delayed), or black (fatally wounded). For the game environment, a terrain model (map) based on a real-world airport was created from digital elevation data, satellite imagery, and local engineering data. The Karma physics engine, which is part of the Unreal distribution, was used to define object behaviors such as fire hose dynamics. Simple artificial intelligence (AI) for non-player characters was done through internal scripting, but more
a b s t r a c t The training of social skills in organizational settings has become more and more important for an effective communicative exchange between members of staff. Especially in companies where the line of communication has to be fast and unmistakable, e.g. in crisis management units, the regular training of communication skills is therefore indispensable. The DREAD-ED project proposes an innovative, tech-nology-based teaching methodology to meet these needs. The methodology provides a serious game which enables its users to train soft skills in a virtual environment under safe conditions. The current paper presents the results of two trials conducted with crisis managers and university students in Germany.
Virtual reality (VR) environments offer potential advantages over traditional paper methods, manikin simulation, and live drills for mass casualty training and assessment. The authors measured the acquisition of triage skills by novice learners after exposing them to three sequential scenarios (A, B, and C) of five simulated patients each in a fully immersed three-dimensional VR environment. The hypothesis was that learners would improve in speed, accuracy, and self-efficacy.
Twenty-four medical students were taught principles of mass casualty triage using three short podcasts, followed by an immersive VR exercise in which learners donned a head-mounted display (HMD) and three motion tracking sensors, one for their head and one for each hand. They used a gesture-based command system to interact with multiple VR casualties. For triage score, one point was awarded for each correctly identified main problem, required intervention, and triage category. For intervention score, one point was awarded for each correct VR intervention. Scores were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for each student. Before and after surveys were used to measure self-efficacy and reaction to the training.
Four students were excluded from analysis due to participation in a recent triage research program. Results from 20 students were analyzed. Triage scores and intervention scores improved significantly during Scenario B (p < 0.001). Time to complete each scenario decreased significantly from A (8:10 minutes) to B (5:14 minutes; p < 0.001) and from B to C (3:58 minutes; p < 0.001). Self-efficacy improved significantly in the areas of prioritizing treatment, prioritizing resources, identifying high-risk patients, and beliefs about learning to be an effective first responder.
Novice learners demonstrated improved triage and intervention scores, speed, and self-efficacy during an iterative, fully immersed VR triage experience.
The effectiveness of virtual environments (VEs) has often been linked to the sense of presence reported by users of those VEs. (Presence is defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another.) We believe that presence is a normal awareness phenomenon that requires directed attention and is based in the interaction between sensory stimulation, environmental factors that encourage involvement and enable immersion, and internal tendencies to become involved. Factors believed to underlie presence were described in the premier issue of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. We used these factors and others as the basis for a presence questionnaire (PQ) to measure presence in VEs. In addition we developed an immersive tendencies questionnaire (ITQ) to measure differences in the tendencies of individuals to experience presence. These questionnaires are being used to evaluate relationships among reported presenc...
Geek heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of technology
- K Toyama
K. Toyama, Geek heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of
technology.
Disaster in my backyard: a serious game introduction to disaster information management
- K Meesters
- B Van De Walle
- T Comes
- F Fiedrich
- S Fortier
- J Geldennann
- T Müller
Xdigit: An arithmetic !dnect game to enhance math learning experiences
- E Lee
- X Liu
- X Zhang
E. Lee, X. Liu, and X. Zhang, "Xdigit: An arithmetic !dnect game to
enhance math learning experiences," Retrieved February, vol. 14, p.
2013, 2012.
Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide (Community Experience Distilled)
- A Jana
- Kinect For Windows
- Sdk Programming
- Guide
A study on the impact of clean up campaign abc (amala bharatham campaign)
- V Subramoniam
- V Suresh
V. SUBRAMONIAM and V. SURESH, "A study on the impact of clean
up campaign abc (amala bharatham campaign)," 2014.
Design and implementation of a virtual reality system and its application to training medical first responders
- S Stansfield
- D Shawyer
- A Sobel
- M Prasad
- L Tapia
The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic books
- D A Norman
D. A. Norman, The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded
edition.
Basic books, 2013.
Embodied play to learn: Exploring !dnect-facilitated memory performance
- K.-J Chao
- H.-W Huang
- N.-S Fang
- Chen
K.-J. Chao, H.-W. Huang, w.-e. Fang, and N.-S. Chen, "Embodied
play to learn: Exploring !dnect-facilitated memory performance;' British
Journal of Educational Te chnology, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. EI51-EI55, 2013.
Disaster in my backyard: a serious game introduction to disaster information management
- K Meesters
- B Van De Walle
K. Meesters and B. van de Walle, "Disaster in my backyard: a serious
game introduction to disaster information management," in Proceedings
of the 10th InternationallSCRAM Conference-Baden-Baden, Germany.
Training disaster communication by means of serious games in virtual environ ments Available: http://www.thefuntheory.com/ bottle-bank-arcade-machine Available: http://www.coca-colacompany.coml stories/coke-gamifies-recycling-wit-happiness-arcade
- N Haferkamp
- N E Kraemer
- M Linehan
- Schembri
N. Haferkamp, N. e. Kraemer, e. Linehan, and M. Schembri, "Training
disaster communication by means of serious games in virtual environ
ments," Entertainment Computing, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 81-88, 2011.
[22] [Online].
[Online].
Available:
http://www.thefuntheory.com/
bottle-bank-arcade-machine/
[23] [Online].
[Online].
Available: http://www.coca-colacompany.coml
stories/coke-gamifies-recycling-wit-happiness-arcade/
[24] [Online].
[Online].
Available:
http://theplayful.company/
gamification-of-the-trash-bini
Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide (Community Experience Distilled)
- A Jana
A. Jana, Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide (Community
Experience Distilled).
Gamifying green: gamification and environmental sustain ability
- J Froehlich
J. Froehlich, "Gamifying green: gamification and environmental sustain
ability," The Gameful World, pp. 563-596, 2014.