Developing culturally relevant design guidelines for encouraging healthy eating behavior

Unhealthy eating behavior is a major contributing factor to the onset of several diseases and health conditions (e.g., obesity, type 2 diabetes). It is therefore not surprising that health interventions aimed at modifying dietary behavior have been identified as the cornerstone treatment for many health conditions. Interventions that use persuasive technology can be effective for motivating healthy eating behavior, and recent years have witnessed an increasing number of persuasive technologies with the purpose of promoting healthy eating behavior or attitude by manipulating various determinants of healthy behavior. However, these applications generally take a one-size-fits-all approach that is biased toward individualistic cultures. To resolve this problem, we propose culturally relevant design approaches for tailoring persuasive technology interventions to collectivists and individualistic cultures. Our guidelines are based on a large-scale survey of 554 participants' (collectivist=306 and individualist=247) eating behavior and associated determinants – identified by Health Belief Model – to understand how healthy eating behavior relates to various cultural groups and sub-groups. We developed two models of healthy eating behavior for the collectivist and individualistic cultural groups identified by Hofstede, and an additional eight models to investigate the moderating effect of gender and age on healthy eating behavior. We then explored the similarities and differences between the models and developed persuasive profiles of motivators of healthy eating behavior for each group. Additionally, we proposed two approaches for designing culturally relevant persuasive applications based on our results. The first is a one-size-fits-all approach that will motivate the majority of the population, while not demotivating any user. The second is a personalized approach that will best motivate a particular cultural group. Finally, to make our approaches actionable in persuasive intervention design, we map the theoretical determinants of healthy eating behavior as identified by Health Belief Model to common persuasive system design strategies.     

Can computer models be used for social learning? A serious game in water management

Computer simulation models are increasingly used to support solving complex problems in natural resource management, with social learning as subsidiary goal of the solution process. In this research, a serious game on water management is used where participants receive feedback on consequences of their choices from an Integrated Assessment Meta Model. This study aims to determine if and how social learning takes place and explores the role of the model in social learning. Group discussions were qualitatively analysed to uncover and understand the mechanisms in this process. Results show that social learning took place in 10 of the 12 game sessions. Though model feedback was an important driver for social learning, social learning was driven most by the team's reflection on their perspective. We conclude that using a model can facilitate social learning in a serious-game setting, in particular in combination with reflection on teams' perspectives.     

Ubiquitous games for learning (UbiqGames): Weatherlings,a worked example

This paper provides a rationale for a class of mobile, casual, and educational games, which we call UbiqGames. The study is motivated by the desire to understand how students use educational games in light of additional distractions on their devices, and how game design can make those games appealing, educationally useful, and practical. In particular, we explain the choices made to build an engaging and educational first example of this line of games, namely Weatherlings. Further, we report results from a pilot study with 20 students that suggest that students are engaged by the game and are interested in learning more about academic content topics, specifically weather and climate, after playing the game. Research should continue to determine whether Weatherlings specifically does increase learning in these areas, and more generally to determine whether any learning gains and similar results with regard to engagement can be replicated in other content areas following the general model for game design.     

一种基于目标的过程实例演化方法

过程具有长生命周期、分布式结构、异构等特性.为适应不可预料的环境变化,过程还需要不断地演化.提出一种过程实例的演化方法以控制对过程实例的改变.它可以检查并保证演化前后的过程实例具备"基于目标的行为一致性",从而避免用户对过程的盲目修改.目标作为行为一致的标准,需要分析演化后的过程实例来保证它可以完成目标.通过用Büchi自动机描述过程实例和其目标的语义,一个过程实例是否能够完成其目标是可判定的.     

Goal-based structuring in recommender systems

Recommender systems help people to find information that is interesting to them. However, current recommendation techniques only address the user's short-term and long-term interests, not their immediate interests. This paper describes a method to structure information (with or without using recommendations) taking into account the users' immediate interests: a goal-based structuring method. Goal-based structuring is based on the fact that people experience certain gratifications from using information, which should match with their goals. An experiment using an electronic TV guide shows that structuring information using a goal-based structure makes it easier for users to find interesting information, especially if the goals are used explicitly; this is independent of whether recommendations are used or not. It also shows that goal-based structuring has more influence on how easy it is for users to find interesting information than recommendations.     

Goals,values, and reasoning

It is impossible to model human reasoning without taking into consideration the values and goals behind a decision. Although the problem of inference with values and goals has been discussed by a number of authors, many issues still stand in need of further development. The main purpose of this work is to discuss the issue of modeling of values and goals in reasoning and argumentation, hence the need for an analysis of existing definitions of values and goals, a discussion of relations between them, and the formulation of value- and goal-based mechanisms of reasoning.     

探究式学习在VB.NET程序设计教学中的应用

根据探究式学习的特点提出将其应用于VB.NET程序设计课程中的方法。实践表明,探究式学习可以提高学习效率,培养学生探究、思考问题的学习习惯,使学生乐于学习知识,既培养学生学习的积极性,加深课程学习,促进理论联系实际,又培养学生的探索精神、创新精神和团队合作精神。     

Teachers' implementation of a game-based biotechnology curriculum

Research in education suggests that computer games can serve as powerful learning environments, however, teachers perceive many obstacles to using games as teaching tools. In this study, we examine three science teachers' implementation and perceptions of a curriculum unit incorporating the game, Mission Biotech (MBt) and a set of supporting curriculum materials. The curriculum unit was designed to provide multiple avenues for teachers to adjust and modify materials and implementation plans based on their unique classroom goals and environments. To understand how individual teachers use, conceptualize, and reflect upon the MBt unit and its implementation, we conducted three case studies, including classroom observations and teacher interviews. Findings include many similarities among teachers including adaptation of activities to classroom norms and practices, high value placed on quality curricular resources and support, advantage of the game to provide experiences that are normally out of reach for students, and concerns about effective use of time. Unique features of different teachers revealed implications for design and professional development for game-based curricula. For example, the study revealed that teachers need support to integrate and make explicit connections between the game and supporting curriculum materials.     

The effect of a persuasive social impact game on affective learning and attitude

To investigate whether a persuasive social impact game may serve as a way to increase affective learning and attitude towards the homeless, this study examined the effects of persuasive mechanics in a video game designed to put the player in the shoes of an almost-homeless person. Data were collected from 5139 students in 200 middle/high school classes across four states. Classes were assigned to treatment groups based on matching. Two treatment conditions and a control group were employed in the study. All three groups affective learning and attitude scores decreased from the immediate posttest but the game group was significantly different from the control group in a positive direction. Students who played the persuasive social impact game sustained a significantly higher score on the Affective Learning Scale (ALS) and the Attitude Towards Homelessness Inventory (ATHI) after three weeks. Overall, findings suggest that when students play a video game that is designed using persuasive mechanics an affective and attitude change can be measured empirically.     

Information system development agility as organizational learning

Information System Development (ISD) agility is concerned with why and how ISD organizations sense and respond swiftly as they develop and maintain Information System applications. We outline a theory of ISD agility that draws upon a model of IT innovation and organizational learning. The theory adopts March's concepts of exploration and exploitation to investigate agility in the context of ISD organizations. Depending on their learning focus, ISD organizations make choices as to what sensing and responding swiftly means. This is reflected in how they value speed in relation to other ISD process goals, including quality, cost, risk and innovative content. The paper examines two specific Research Propositions: (1) ISD organizations locate themselves into different innovation regimes with respect to their need for exploration and exploitation, and (2) their perceptions of agility differ in those regimes as reflected in their process goal priorities. We validate these propositions through an empirical investigation of changes in ISD organizations' process goals and innovation practices over a period of over 4 years (1999–2003), during which time they shied away from exploration to exploitation while innovating with Internet computing. These ISD organizations viewed agility differently during the studied time periods as reflected in how they traded innovative content or speed vis-à-vis the other process goals of cost, risk, and product quality. In conclusion, this paper discusses implications for future research on agility in ISD organizations.     

When a game supports prevocational math education but integrated reflection does not

The present study addressed the effectiveness of an educational math game for improving proportional reasoning in prevocational education, and examined the added value of support in the form of reflection. The study compared four conditions: the game with reflection prompts, the game with reflection prompts plus procedural information, the game with procedural information only and the game without additional support. It was found that students' proportional reasoning skill improved after playing the game. The game managed to target prevocational students with low prior knowledge, a group that has the potential to understand proportional reasoning but has not yet encountered the right learning situation to live up to their potential. However, it was also found that students need to be computational fluent to profit from the game. Furthermore, no added value of the support was found. The way the support was structured may have been too demanding for most of the students. The fact that the prevocational students (and specifically those with low prior knowledge) improved by playing the game is noteworthy, because the topic of proportional reasoning is demanding for this group of students who often have lower abilities as well as in some cases a high resistance to learning.     

The multivoicedness of game play: Exploring the unfolding of a student’s learning trajectory in a gaming context at school

The purpose of this article is to gain knowledge about how interactions in a gaming context become constituted as effective resources for a student’s learning trajectory. In addition, this detailed study of a learning trajectory documents how a computer game becomes a learning resource for working on a specific topic in school. The article reports on a qualitative study of students at an upper secondary school who have played the computer game Global Conflicts: Palestine to learn about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sociocultural and dialogic approach to learning and meaning-making is employed as an analytical framework. Analyzing different interactional episodes, in which important orientations and reorientations are located, documents how the student’s learning trajectory developed and changed during the project. When engaged in game play in educational settings, experiences with playing computer games outside of school can relevantly be invoked and become part of the collaborative project of finding out how to play the game. However, these ways of engaging with a computer game might not necessarily facilitate a subtle understanding of the specific topic that is addressed in the game. The findings suggest that the constitution of a computer game as a learning resource is a collaborative project, in which multiple resources for meaning-making are in play, and for which the teacher has an important role in facilitating student’s adoption of a multiperspective on the conflict. Furthermore, the findings shed light on what characterizes student-teacher interactions that contribute to a subtle understanding, and offer a framework for important issues upon which to reflect in game-based learning (GBL).     

Motivational aspects of different learning contexts: “My mom won’t let me play this game…”

Learning motivation should describe mechanisms that direct toward the learning goals, initiate learning activity and hold one‘s learning ability on a level that enables person to attain new information and more complex knowledge. Educational games are emerging as a new form of learning that should improve student’s desire for knowledge. Idea that educational games can be used as an effective teaching tool is what inspires our work in this field. In our study we attempted to explore the connection between motivational effects and application of educational game design as a learning tool. Additionally, we took into consideration effects of this approach on improving final exam results. Our results indicate that designing computer programs can raise enough curiosity and can be seen as a relevant learning tool for students.     

Children’s choices and strategies in video games

It is important to develop an understanding of children’s engagement and choices in learning experiences outside of school as this has implications for their development and orientations to other learning environments. This mixed-methods study examines relationships between the genres of video games children choose to play and the learning strategies they employ to improve at these games. It also explores students’ motivations for playing the games they choose to play. One hundred eighteen fourth- and fifth-grade students participated in this study. Qualitative analyses of student responses resulted in a model for classifying motivation for game choices. Children primarily cite reasons that can be classified as psychological or cognitive reasons for choosing to play certain video games, and are motivated by the challenge and thinking required in the games. Analyses using Chi-square tests of association demonstrated significant relationships between video game genre and learning strategy used for two of the six learning strategies (p < .05). Children playing action games are more likely to use repetition to learn the game and children playing adventure games are more likely to use their imaginations to take on the role of the character in the game and think the way the character would to make decisions in the game. There were also several gender differences in learning preferences.     

The Design is the Game: Writing Games, Teaching Writing

This article makes both conceptual and empirical arguments for why composition scholars and teachers ought to take notice of how video games are designed and developed in such a way as to make them so compelling. Thinking about games’ design principles as an analogy for composition curricula, I argue that video game designers and developers discuss and approach their design processes in many of the same ways writing teachers do. Data presented are taken from several years’ worth of ethnographic interviews, observations, and artifact analyses from within the game design and development community. This paper demonstrates how one of the designers from this ongoing study builds on his knowledge of games as distinctly interactive meaning-making spaces, noting that this approach to game design fits well with a re-thinking of the task of designing writing and learning spaces.     

An Evolutionary Dynamical Analysis of Multi-Agent Learning in Iterated Games

In this paper, we investigate Reinforcement learning (RL) in multi-agent systems (MAS) from an evolutionary dynamical perspective. Typical for a MAS is that the environment is not stationary and the Markov property is not valid. This requires agents to be adaptive. RL is a natural approach to model the learning of individual agents. These Learning algorithms are however known to be sensitive to the correct choice of parameter settings for single agent systems. This issue is more prevalent in the MAS case due to the changing interactions amongst the agents. It is largely an open question for a developer of MAS of how to design the individual agents such that, through learning, the agents as a collective arrive at good solutions. We will show that modeling RL in MAS, by taking an evolutionary game theoretic point of view, is a new and potentially successful way to guide learning agents to the most suitable solution for their task at hand. We show how evolutionary dynamics (ED) from Evolutionary Game Theory can help the developer of a MAS in good choices of parameter settings of the used RL algorithms. The ED essentially predict the equilibriums outcomes of the MAS where the agents use individual RL algorithms. More specifically, we show how the ED predict the learning trajectories of Q-Learners for iterated games. Moreover, we apply our results to (an extension of) the COllective INtelligence framework (COIN). COIN is a proved engineering approach for learning of cooperative tasks in MASs. The utilities of the agents are re-engineered to contribute to the global utility. We show how the improved results for MAS RL in COIN, and a developed extension, are predicted by the ED. Author funded by a doctoral grant of the institute for advancement of scientific technological research in Flanders (IWT).     

Minimum Nomic: a tool for studying rule dynamics

We propose a kind of self-amendment game, Minimum Nomic, as a model to study rule dynamics. Nomic is a game in which changing a rule of the game is a move. Minimum Nomic is a reduced version of the original Nomic, which keeps the essence but promotes the evolvability of the self-amendment game. We discuss the characteristics of Minimum Nomic from the viewpoint of how the changeability of the rules and the durability of the games change with the progress of the game. By analyzing the dynamics of purpose and goals, and the self-referential property in observations of the games played, we claim that Minimum Nomic is an interesting tool to study rule dynamics. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

FARMTASIA: an online game-based learning environment based on the VISOLE pedagogy

Virtual interactive student-oriented learning environment (VISOLE) is a game-based constructivist pedagogical approach that encompasses the creation of an online interactive world modeled upon a set of interdisciplinary domains, in which students participate as “citizens” to take part cooperatively and competitively in shaping the development of the virtual world as a means to construct their knowledge and skills. FARMTASIA is the first online game designed using the VISOLE philosophy, encompassing the subject areas of biology, government, economics, technology, production system and natural environment. The “virtual world” deployed is a farming system covering the domains of cultivation, horticulture and pasturage, situated in a competitive economy governed by good public policies. The design and implementation of FARMTASIA pursue three vital principles. The first one is to make the game as realistic as possible so that students can learn in a near-real life environment; the second one is to inject motivational elements so that students can sustain to learn and acquire various knowledge and skills with the game; and the third one is to make easy for teachers to conduct various VISOLE facilitation tasks. According to our exploratory educational study, we show evidentially that positive perceptions and an advancement of subject-specific and interdisciplinary knowledge appeared among the students who participated in VISOLE learning with FARMTASIA.     

Safety Cultural Preconditions for Organizational Learning in High‐Risk Organizations

The research on organizational accidents shows that both safety culture and complex technology make members of high‐risk organizations blind to hazards and signals of danger. I discuss how these forms of ignorance can be reduced by means of cultural redundancy, which I understand as the organizational promotion of several co‐existing frames of reference of equal standing. This approach is contrary to the main stream research on safety culture, which promotes the ideal of a ‘unitary safety culture’. Previous research shows that organizational learning occur trough comparison of perspectives and reflection upon practice. I argue that cultural redundancy is a precondition for processes of learning and culture change that may reduce ignorance to hazards and signals of danger in high‐risk organizations. Such processes are, however, contingent on a climate of trust and openness in which co‐existing safety cultures can meet and set forth processes of organizational learning.