Within a scenario of rapidly increasing convergence of digital technologies and integration of media services, the role of the creative content industry is expected to increase accordingly and the video games software industry plays a major role. In this general context, Digital Games use the platforms and techniques of the videogame industry to create products and services and have a potential to further education, health, public policy, government or corporate training, and strategic communication objectives.

Digital Games with useful objectives going beyond the simple fun of playing may serve social purposes like inclusion, health, skilling, learning and other public services, where their action complements more classical approaches. Because of their ludic dynamics, they are usually very welcome to different kind of public (not only youngsters) and this is their strength.

Considering that the video games industry is going through a period of change, including significant transformation in the value chain, Digital ‘Serious’ Games thus offer opportunities not only for the existing actors but also to new entrants with expertise in training, simulation, healthcare and social inclusion.

More Info: http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/eInclusion/games.html#events

Sara de Freitas, University of Coventry, UK

Paul Maharg, Northumbria University, UK

Brief:

Games and simulations have had a new lease of life in the digital revolution. There are remarkable examples of fascinating games that are also tools for learning complex knowledge, and engaging simulations that are used for pleasure and work-related training and education. Their existence raise many research questions: how are they designed? Who plays them? What are the economics of such games for players, providers, others in the market, and how do the economics affect game and simulation production and use? Where are they being used in education and training, and to what effect? Digital Games and Learning (DGL) aims to explore these and many other questions about the design and use of games and simulations in our societies. The series texts will provide:

- Insights into how games and simulations can be used effectively in education

- Appreciation of the multi-disciplinary research base that is emerging in this fast-developing field

- Knowledge of the implementations that can be put to use in different levels of education: school, further education, higher education and workplaces.

More Info: Download Flyer

Journal of Universal Computer Science

Special Issue on

Technology for learning across physical and virtual spaces

Introduction

Nowadays education does not happen exclusively face-to-face, in the physical space. Neither does it happen exclusively through online tools in the virtual space, like Virtual Learning Environments, blogs or wikis. There is a continuous transfer from one space to another: certain activities are done in the classroom, some are accessed on a web virtual learning environment or a 3D world, then the students perform the activities and collaborate ubiquitously either physically or digitally.

This is what has been traditionally understood under the heading of blended learning, but recent technological advances have opened broad opportunities to link these spaces more profoundly, thus enabling the realization of learning activities across spaces that incorporate and coordinate objects from them all. Examples are: the use of augmented reality, that superimposes a digital layer on top of the physical space, providing extra information or linking objects; the use of 3D virtual spaces mirroring the physical space (e.g. showing an image from the physical world coming from a camera); sensors or RFID technology in the physical space that can provide information such as identity or location to digital applications; or tangible computing devices that enable the manipulation of objects in the physical space that have impact on the digital space…

The main different spaces that can be linked to support innovative activities include virtual learning environments, 3D virtual worlds, physical classrooms and open learning spaces that can be integrated with virtual spaces through roomware, mobile and location-aware technologies. New research questions arise in this new technological and learning context: How to design and technologically support innovative learning scenarios across physical and virtual spaces? What are the opportunities and challenges that learning scenarios across spaces pose to the learners’ assessment? Can educational technology specifications offer interoperability solutions to facilitate the transfer between spaces? How can educators orchestrate, adapt, monitor and evaluate the learning process occurring across different virtual and physical spaces?

Topics

Educational scenarios, technological solutions and evaluation studies focused on learning activities happening across spaces, which can include, but are not limited to:

Virtual Learning Environments
3D Virtual Worlds
Roomware and other pervasive devices for the classroom
Mobile and location-aware technologies for open learning space
Transversal topics include, but are not limited to:

Architectures, frameworks, models
Design of activities, assessment
Interoperability, educational technology specifications, data flow, linked data
Orchestration, adaptation, monitoring, evaluation
Related topics include also:

Augmented reality
Augmented virtuality
Mediated reality
Important Dates

Submission deadline: Extended to 10 January 2012
Decision notification after first round of reviews: 15 February 2012
Submission of revised version: 31 March 2012
Final decision: 15 May 2012
Submission of final version: 31 May 2012
Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should not exceed 20 pages. All submissions must be in English, formatted according to the guidelines of Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS), and submitted as pdf-files. The submission guidelines can be found at http://www.jucs.org/ujs/jucs/info/submissions

Manuscripts should be submitted via email to the guest editors. The subject of the submission email should be: “JUCS SI Submission: Technology for learning across physical and virtual spaces”.

Guest Editors

Carlos Delgado-Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), cdk at it.uc3m.es

Davinia Hernández-Leo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain), davinia.hernandez at upf.edu

Juan I. Asensio-Pérez, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain), juaase at tel.uva.es

The conference committee welcomes contributions on a wide range of topics using a range of scholarly approaches including theoretical and empirical papers employing qualitative, quantitative and critical methods. Action research, case studies and work-in-progress/posters are welcomed approaches. PhD Research, proposals for roundtable discussions, non-academic contributions and product demonstrations based on the main themes are also invited.

Publication opportunity

Papers accepted for the conference will be published in the conference proceedings, subject to author registration and payment. Selected papers will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning and to the International Journal of Game-Based Learning. The latest issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning is available to read online.

The workshop site is http://fdgbl.fdg2012.org/, and includes this abstract:
________________________________________________________
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers and experienced game designers to focus on the foundational, fundamental constructs of digital game-based learning learning. We invite contributions across a range of perspectives from theoretical to conceptual to pragmatic, with a focus on what is applicable across different types, genres, platforms, and purposes of digital games.

Important Dates

Paper submission: 27 February, 2012
Notification to authors: 19 March, 2012
Workshop held: 29 May, 2012
________________________________________________________

From the CFP online I’d just like to make three remarks now:

a) most topics have a very close match with a lot of work that has been done so far by many GaLA partners, which became even more apparent to us all, during the review days at Genoa;

b) FDG workshop publications are usually archived n the ACM Digital Library, which is particularly attractive for many academics worldwide.

c) there’s still over two months before the submission deadline, but let’s not fool ourselves (again…)

In short, I can only strongly encourage everyone in GaLA to prepare and submit (joint) research papers to this highly-rated conference workshop.

Due to the complexity of human nature and individual differences, objective and systematic assessment of human behavior and performance remains highly difficult. In addition, data analysis and evaluation methods for technology-assisted learning and assessment are still underdeveloped because of different perspectives in evaluation. Development of systems and tools able to support provision of effective feedback is a major requirement for a new generation of SGs and TEL tools.

Breakthroughs in this area can be made by advancing issues including, but not limited to (a) an efficient and easy-to-use user interface, (b) effective data management, (c) sensor data fusion and integration, (d) data analysis methods, and (e) user feedback mechanisms.

We invite authors to submit original research articles as well as review articles that describe new devices, hardware/software tools, methodologies, systems, applications, and evaluation studies about user assessment in SGs and TEL, with a special perspective on usability and usefulness for learning. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

* Automatic/interactive assessment of user performance
* In-game assessment mechanics
* Time and precision effects
* Metrics for measuring fun and/or learning outcomes
* User satisfaction and fun evaluation
* User modeling and profiling
* User adaptivity and personalization
* Score rules and mechanisms
* Automated recommendation mechanisms
* Feedback to the users
* Advanced user interaction
* Advanced user sensors and transducer systems for assessment
* Sensor data fusion

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal’s Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:
Manuscript Due Friday, 13 April 2012
First Round of Reviews Friday, 6 July 2012
Publication Date Friday, 31 August 2012

Lead Guest Editor

* Francesco Bellotti, Department of Electronics and Biophysical Engineering, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

Guest Editors

* Bill Kapralos, Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada
* Kiju Lee, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
* Pablo Moreno-Ger, Faculty of Computer Science, The Complutense University, Madrid, Spain

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/si/sgtel/

The article is available in the following link: DOWNLOAD