Sorting my archives, a seasonal activity, I retrieved notes on a report about research on learning games: "Moving learning games forward. obstacles, opportunities and openess" (Klopfer E., Osterweil S., Salen K. 2009). I posted these notes today, it is [there] I thought it might be interesting to share

Dear all, We have eventually decided ( MAN and ESADE) to have a separate Best Practice section for the efectiveness of use, a section that can continue after the project is over as well, for the sustenability of the GEL group. Thus, also after the January small-group GEL meeting, we have concluded the following: Best Practices Section (with many thanks to Margarida Romero and Mireia Usart for their precious input) Working group on the section: Carol I NDU: Maria Magdalena Popescu ESADE: Margarida Romero, Mireia Usart _______________________________________________________________ GEL members: Michela Ott (ITD-CNR), Maria Popescu (Carol I National Defence University), Kristian Kiili (Tampere University of Technology). Margarida Romero (DIPQA) of ESADE, Ioana Stanescu (Advanced Distributed Learning Romania), Sara de Freitas (SGI,University of Coventry), Muriel Ney (CNRS). GEL friends:  Jeff Earp ( CNR-ITD), Catalin Radu ( Carol I NDU),Arttu Perttula ( TUT), Mireia Usart (ESADE), Antoniu Stefan ( ATS), Sylvester Arnab ( COVUNI) Since the main objective of the GEL project is to provide both educators and game designers with guidelines for a better uptake of Serious Games into education, stressing on elements of curriculum integration, pedagogical theories at their best use and game mechanics conducive to educational effectiveness in a serious game use. Henceforward, the section on best practices (and best papers ) gathered and organized in the above mentioned section will help GEL members get a general view over these aspects. Best Practices Box To meet the objective of the Best Practices section, a page on the GEL website will be created. All the members of the team will be responsible for contributing with articles to best showcase the serious games use and integration into formal education, in facts, figures and lessons learned. The structure proposed for organizing the collection of the articles, is as follows: BEST PRACTICES STRUCTURE Main target : professors aiming to choose and use a SG Secondary target: instructional designers, policy makers 1. Education K-12 a. Policy maker view (Politic level, educational policy makers, institution...) b. Subject matter expert view (according to National Curriculum, ...) c. Educator's view (learning objectives, methodology, assessment, ...) 2. Post secondary (Higher Education) a. Policy maker view (EHEA, Politic level, educational policy makers, institution...) b. Subject matter expert view (according to National Curriculum, ...) c. Educator's view (learning objectives, methodology, assessment, ...) d. Corporate training 3. Corporate training a. Policy maker view (EHEA, Politic level, educational policy makers, institution...) b. Subject matter expert view (according to National Curriculum, ...) c. Educator's view (learning objectives, methodology, assessment, ...) d. Corporate training Design of the best practices database: First, we design and implement, in the GEL page, a table with the inputs for searching the good practices. Teachers will be able to search from the educational level of the practices, from the expert's view, from the collaboration level of the activity and from the kind of activity (onsite or online): Best practices catalog by typology To use this catalog the reader can refer directly to the practices or take into account the practices by type. We will present the list of best practices by Educational level and Expert's view. A. Practices by Educational Level: K-12 - The practices within this first category are those designed and/or implemented in a primary school context. Of course, there are Serious Games and application case studies which are focused on K-12 environments but that can easily be adapted to higher education levels. In these cases, the author of the best practice can make it explicit in the file. Post Secondary The practices within the second educational category are those designed and/or implemented in higher education context. Of course, there are Serious Games and application case studies which are focused on these environments but that can easily be adapted to K-12 or corporate education levels. In these cases, the author of the best practice can make it explicit in the file. Corporate The practices within the corporate training category are those designed and/or implemented especially in companies and adult students. These practices are usually devoted to train competences and skills, and are focused on clear working and results. B. Practices by Expert's view: Practices designed from the Policy maker view are those focused on the applications and benefits in economic terms. These practices can especially be helpful for policy makers and managers that have to invest money or resources and want to assure the quality of the SG innovative implementation in their context. Practices focused on the subject matter expert view are those with a concrete goal on the content. Some SG are designed for practicing languages or mathematics. These SG have a very defined scope and are usually not transposable to other subjects. From an educator's point of view, the important information of a good practice is focused on the learning outcomes and pedagogic implications. These practices are usually case studies or applications in class of different SGs and GBL activities. Corporate training In collaborative activities the students co-regulate the conduct of the learning activity, defining the organizational arrangements and implementation within the range of regulation established by the teacher and the task. C. Practices by Collaboration Level: Individual The practices within this first category are focused on individual learning strategies through the use of SG. These activities can be performed both online or onsite. Multiplayer The practices within the second category are those that can be played individually, but where the player meets other players. Collaborative The practices within the collaborative level are those that are designed or implemented to be performed in groups of 2 or more students. These practices focus on collaboration processes and aim to practice team skills. Competitive These practices in the field of SG are those focused on competition; where players (students) have to compete against each other or in groups, to win the game or perform the GBLactivity. D. Practices by site: Online The practices within this first category are designed and /or implemented outside the classroom. These GBL activities can be complementary to class activities or be performed in an e-learning course environment. Onsite The practices within the second category are those that are developed in class, usually with the guide of the teacher. Both Best practices on SGs and pedagogy that can be performed and implemented both in a distance environment and as a face-to- face learning activity. Following this, our GEL catalogue for Best Practices starts. Please follow the structure and add your contributions: Name of the Best Practice..............,author..............Educational level......................Expert's view..........................Collaboration level........................Online ....../ Onsite ........./ Both............Guide-teacher needed......... / Self-paced.........Practice (in 500 words):..............................   Thank you ! Maria, Marga and Mireia

EDUCATIONAL EXERGAMES   Introduction The potential use of games in educational settings is huge because a large and growing population is engaged with playing games. However, the popularity of games has also created problems. For example, obesity has become a big problem in many countries recently. According to Gorgu et al. (2009) the reasons for obesity include a high calorie diet and a serious lack of physical activities in the daily lives of children. It has been argued that video games are one of the main reasons for physical inactivity (Vanderwater et al., 2004; Sothern, 2004). Furthermore, physical activity in schools has steadily declined since the 1970’s. During this same period, the percentage of overweight children in the US, for example, has more than doubled (Hedley et al. 2004). The emerging exergame genre tries to have an effect on this by encouraging players to perform physical movements during gameplay.   An adequate amount of physical activity is important for children because research has shown that 1) increased physical activity has positive impact on cognitive functioning and academic achievement (Donnelly & Lambourne, 2011; Castelli, Hillman, Buck & Erwing, 2007), 2) physical activity activates brains for enhanced learning and memory (e.g. Ratey & Hagerman, 2008; Hopkins, Nitecki, R. & Bucci, 2011), and 3) good fitness prevents troublesome behaviour in schools. However, currently students spend the majority of their time sitting in a classroom, which is not an optimal solution from both learning and health perspectives. In fact, EU has stressed the importance of introducing good practices regarding the provision of regular physical activity in schools.   Thus, I propose that we should explore the possibilities that exergames can provide for education. Educational games that are controlled with physical movements could be engaging and effective combination. However, for example Quinn (2005) has argued that it is a real challenge to design engagement that integrates with educational effectiveness. The challenge of proposed approach is even higher, because an exertion dimension has been added to this problem space. A combination such as this, educational exergames, is a new, unstudied branch of research in the era of serious games. Next, I will present a crucial design problem related to educational exertion games and suggest some future research directions on this theme.   Balancing cognitive and physical workloads According to Tenenbaum (2001) exercise intensity impacts the focus of attention. Thus, the integration of learning content and exertion interfaces raises new game design challenges. Research on sports has shown that when the physical workload increases, attention allocation tends to shift toward bodily sensations. Such natural attention change disturbs processing of game elements and that way also learning and problem solving. Thus, we should develop solutions that take into account players physical and cognitive constrains and in the ideal case adapt to them. Figure 1 presents a starting point to conceptually model this phenomenon. Vertical axis describes the amount of cognitive workload and horizontal axis the amount of physical workload. The green dashed line illustrates the constraint that combination of cognitive and physical workloads form on performing cognitive tasks.         Figure 1. Educational exergame model (Kiili, to be published)   The balancing of workloads and adaptation to players characteristics is very challenging, because for example the cognitive workload is composed from several factors like amount of game elements, the amount of players, the amount of possible movements, the complexity of rules, the type of audio-visual implementation, game tempo, etc. Furthermore, the senso-motoric aspect provides also its own flavor to this soup. However, despite of this complexity educational exergames provide researchers a nice and novel playground to work with.    Call for research So, I call research on educational exertion games. First of all, we need robust theoretical research that defines design principles for educational exertion games. Secondly, we need empirically constructed models that describe how educational exergames can be effectively integrated into schools and to other organization like elderly homes. Thirdly, long-term interventions should be conducted to explore the benefits of educational exertion games.    References <!--StartFragment--> Castelli, D.M., Hillman, C.H., Buck, S.M. & Erwin, H.E. (2007). Physical fitness and academic achievement in third- and fifth-grade students. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 29, 239–252. Gorgu, L. et al. (2009). Towards Mobile Collaborative Exergaming. 2nd International Conference on Advances in Human-oriented and Personalized Mechanisms, Technologies, and Services, Porto, Portugal, 61-64. Hopkins M.E, Nitecki, R, & Bucci, DJ. (2011). Physical exercise during adolescence versus adulthood: differential effects on object recognition memory and brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels. Neuroscience. Quinn (2005). Engaging learning:Designing e-learning simulation games. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Ratey, J. & Hagerman, E. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. Sothern, M. (2004). Obesity prevention in children: Physical activity and nutrition. Nutrition, 20(7-8), 704-708. Tenenbaum G., (2001). A social-cognitive perspective of perceived exertion and exertion tolerance. In: R.N. Singer, H. Hausenblas and C. Janelle, Editors, Handbook of sport psychology, Wiley, New York (2001), pp. 810–820. Vanderwater, E.A., Shim, M.S. & Caplovitz, A.G. (2004). Linking obesity and activity level with children’s television and video game use. Adolescence, 27(1), 71-85. <!--EndFragment-->