CFP: Validating cyber-interventions for training, wellbeing and sustainability

We’re pleased to pass on this call for papers for a special issue of the academic journal Virtual Reality on the theme of  ”validating cyber-interventions for training, wellbeing and sustainability.” While the deadline is very close, we’re told that if an author has serious intention to submit a paper and needs a deadline extension, this can be negotiated.

Validating cyber-interventions for training, wellbeing and sustainability

We define cyberinterventions as the attempt at modifying people’s actions, meanings and habits with a protocol that is primarily supported by a digital environment, with the final goal of increasing wellness of a consentient user and to serve values shared by the society at large. Typical domains of ‘cyber-interventions’ are, for instance, applications designed to increase consumers’ awareness of the environmental consequences of each single consumption act; cognitive-behavioral therapeutic interventions carried out with virtual environments; virtual simulations aimed at training users in the proper reaction to emergency situations; serious games showing the long-term effect of risky behaviors for educational purposes. The environments used for all these interventions range from immersive virtual worlds, to complex driving simulators, to mobile applications.

As is the case with any intervention tool and protocol, the mediated environment for cyberintervention must be validated to prove that it is able to generate the proper user experience instrumental to the goal of the intervention and that the protocol is effective.

We invite scholars to contribute to a theme issue on validation in cyberinterventions of any kind and in any domain. Examples of topics for submissions to this theme issue are:

* Specific methods and techniques to validate cyberintervention and/or cyberintervention environments
* Issues raised while validating cyberintervention and related solutions
* Differences and similarities between cyberinterventions and regular, face to face interventions in terms of validation
* Review/studies on relevant user experience dimensions for specific application fields
* Quality standards, requirements and guidelines to frame cyberintervention
* Relation between user experience validation and cyberintervention effectiveness
* Ethical validation of cyberinterventions
The theme issue will appear in the Springer journal Virtual Reality. Submissions will be peer reviewed in accordance with the journal’s normal process. Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

Guest editors

Anna Spagnolli, University of Padova, Italy

Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Cleveland State University, USA

 

Important Dates

Submission of paper: 22nd of March 2013
Notification of acceptance to authors: 14th of June 2013
Revised papers: 27th of September 2013

To discuss a possible contribution, please contact the theme issue editors at anna.spagnolli@unipd.it and c.bracken@csuohio.edu.

 

Submission modality

Papers should be submitted at: http://www.editorialmanager.com/vire/ under the category of “Cyberinterventions”.

 

About Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality covers a wide range of topics, to fully capture the multidisciplinary nature of the field. From business and commerce to telecommunications, entertainment and gaming to medicine, Virtual Reality covers a wide range of specific application areas, featuring clear, well-written, and accessible articles that will appeal to a multidisciplinary audience.Virtual Reality is abstracted and indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, INSPEC, Google Scholar, EBSCO, Academic OneFile, ACM Computing Reviews, ACM Digital Library, Computer Abstracts International Database, Computer Science Index, Current Abstracts, Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology, DBLP, EI-Compendex, Gale, io-port.net, OCLC, PASCAL, Summon by Serial Solutions

simulations miscellany, 27 January 2013

With absolutely no predictability whatsoever, PAXsims once again brings you various and sundry items of gaming news,. This time we have quite a few interesting scholarly articles in the mix:

In the  International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations 4, 2 (2012), Mark Pearcy discusses “America’s Army: “Playful Hatred” in the Social Studies Classroom.”

America’s Army is a first-person “shooter” online video game produced by the U.S. Army and freely available on the Internet. Ostensibly a recruitment tool, the game constitutes a “mimetic” experience that encompasses real-life Army codes, regulations, and behaviors, approximating an authentic military experience, including realistic missions that involve violence. This article considers the educational role of such mimetic games, practical impediments to its inclusion in classrooms, and the conceptual demands the use of such games may place on teachers and students. Additionally, this article considers the ideological barriers and arguments against the educational use of games like America’s Army. Finally, this article connects the experience of America’s Army to Douglas’ (2008) concept of “playful hatred,” calling for a reconceptualization of the term towards a more competitive and pedagogically useful approach.

In Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 6, 1 (2012), Henrik Schoenau-Fog explores “Teaching Serious Issues through Player Engagement in an Interactive Experiential Learning Scenario.”

In order to inform about a serious subject concerned with the tragic consequences of being a victim of war in an interactive narrative game-like experience, it is essential to design a scenario which engage the participants despite the grave content. This paper thus focuses on how player engagement and playfulness can be applied to drive participants through a non-pleasurable experiential learning scenario in order to communicate serious topics. By investigating the concept of engagement in games, a framework of player engagement will be described. The framework has been used in a case-study to aid the design of an application – the “First Person Victim” – which is intended to be used in combination with an in-class discussion in order to address the serious topic. An evaluation of the scenario indicated that theme related feelings like hopelessness, fear, loneliness, and chaos are experienced by engaged participants and that there is a potential for using the scenario as a tool in teaching.

As the article discusses, this is done through the development of a “First Person Victim” video game which “places the participant in the role as a civilian in a war torn country during an airstrike, where it is possible to explore tragic and dramatic events.”

During the entire experience, the participant’s narrative construction depends on encountering several different audiovisual events varying in tension (Fig 2). There are in total 42 events organized in six scenes, each with seven events. These events can be audio events (e.g. a phone call or cries for help), audiovisual graphical events (e.g. an exploding building), texts (e.g. sms-messages) or video recordings of real actors placed the 3d world.

 

Fig. 2. (a) Meeting a smuggler. (b) Woman being harassed. (c) Rockets hit the City

An ‘Interactive Drama Experience Manager’ (Schoenau-Fog et al. 2010) organizes the various events by selecting the next possible events based on the users’ navigation in the environment as well as causality. For each scene there is one less event to encounter, so in the first scene in an apartment it is possible to encounter seven events, in the next scene on a street there are six events and so on. The final events are all concerned with tragic endings, and users have no options for happy endings. The scenario is mediated through the game engine Unity (2011) by inverting first person shooter (FPS) conventions so it is not possible to use weapons or engage in combat. However, the participants can be shot at, hit by rockets or explosions and step on mines, but in order to let participants encounter as many events as possible before the discussion, it is not possible to die. There is no explicit goal defined by the scenario, as it is the intention to let participants define as many intrinsic objectives as possible in order to keep them engaged through the emergent narrative.

Some participants found the experience engaging, and wished to continue—but others did not.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate engagement in the FPV application and the results show that 40% clearly wanted to continue playing, while 32.5% did not want to try again and 27.5% were in doubt. The survey and observations show that the engaged respondents, who wanted to try again had the desire to continue due to intrinsic objectives, activities related to exploration, solving problems, experimentation and experiencing the characters and story. Moreover, they also wanted to continue mainly because of the theme and positive elements from the game design. The evaluation furthermore investigates the affect experienced by the students, as the mediation of feelings related to the topic is important for the communication of the theme. The engaged group reported the experience of more feelings related to the theme than both the group of respondents who were in doubt and the group who did not want continue.

The group who did not want to continue playing reported that it was mainly due to game design issues and technical problems while feelings related to the theme were not as frequently reported as in the other groups. While most of the students in this group state that they did not feel anything in particular, the findings show that engaged students report that the FPV triggers negative feelings, which are related to the theme, and that they want to continue even though those feelings are not fun, enjoyable or pleasurable.

The findings thus suggest that this affect can be the result of the activities introduced in the PEP framework – e.g. exploration and experiencing the characters. Since there is nothing explicit to accomplish in the FPV, the affect encountered is not intended to include positive feelings such as satisfaction, triumph or closure, which is usually related to accomplishments in game experiences. However, disengagement can also be a sign of successful communication of the theme, since negative emotions related to the content can make participants not wanting to try again. For example, one teacher who did not want to continue stated that she felt afraid and powerless: “I felt a lot like a victim. […] that loneliness… I felt bad.” (Female, 42)

The study finds some potential educational value in the FPV, but provided it is appropriately debriefed and integrated with curriculum.

Another goal of the evaluation in this study is to investigate the potential for using the FPV as a tool in teaching. Findings of the survey show that the engaged students reported that they learned something related to the topic more frequently than the other groups. Moreover, a majority of the students who were disengaged state that they did not learn anything related to the theme. When discussing the experience with the classes, both students who were engaged in the experience and students, who did not want to try again participated in the discussions. Although there was a risk that the self-selective sample of the discussion could result in that only the engaged students would contribute, the discussion showed that also students who were not engaged during the experience of the FPV participated actively. However, the factor of social expectancy could also have affected the outcome of the discussions, as students might want to answer “correct” during the interview, especially because one of the designers, who is a refugee himself, was present at the discussions.

During the post-game interviews, teachers state that applications such as the FPV could have potential in teaching as an initiator for in-class discussions about a theme. Some of the teachers mentioned that there were examples of students, who usually never contribute to discussions (especially the “quiet boys”), who took active part in the discussions after the experience.

The findings from the discussion and teacher interviews supports the idea that an in-class discussion and debriefing is important and valuable for learning as it makes learners reflect on another level, which is no always achieved during the experience. However, a comparison with a group of students who did not have a post-game discussion would be needed to verify this impression.  The results furthermore suggest that the FPV can be seen as a successful exemplification of how learners in a designed experience (Squire 2006) can gain knowledge of serious issues by “doing and being” (ibid. p.32) in an experiential learning scenario.

Methodologically, this is a very serious and thoughtful piece of scholarship, and well worth a read.

The third issue of the International Journal of Role-Playing came out late last month, with articles on “Creativity Rules. How rules impact player creativity in three tabletop role-playing games,” “An Embodied Cognition Approach for Understanding Role-playing,” “A tale of two cities: Symbolic capital and larp community formation in Canada and Sweden ,” and “The self-perceived effects of the role-playing hobby on personal development – a survey report .”

Want to know how best to teach agent-based simulation? C M Macal and and M J North have some suggestions in the Journal of Simulation (2013).

In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Susannah J. Whitney, Philip Temby, and Ashley Stephens offer “A review of the effectiveness of game-based training for dismounted soldiers“—and find the results rather disappointing:

Computer games are increasingly being used by armed forces to supplement conventional training methods. However, despite considerable anecdotal claims about their training effectiveness, empirical evidence is lacking. This paper critically reviews major studies conducted in the past decade that have examined game-based training with dismounted soldiers. The findings indicate that these studies are characterized by methodological limitations and that the evidence regarding the effectiveness of game-based training for this military population is not compelling. Furthermore, due to methodological limitations with the studies, the possibility of negative training effects cannot be discounted. The paper concludes with implications for the scientific and military communities, as well as recommendations for the conduct of future studies in this area.

If you haven’t yet read the December 2012 issue of the M&S Newsletter, published by the Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office of the US Department of Defense, now’s your chance.

Michael Peck is in search of women. More specifically, in the wake of the recent US decision to (finally) open combat roles to women, his latest gaming column at Forbes asks “Are Female Soldiers Coming to Video Games?“

Issue #3 of Modern War (January-February 2013), complete with a game of near-future coalition operations against Somali pirates (and Somalia).

This year’s Serious Play conference will be held on August 20-22, 2013 at Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA—and they are looking for speakers.

SEATTLE – Jan. 22 2013 – Submissions are now being accepted from professionals who create games or sims or lead game programs for the education, corporate, military, healthcare or location-based market to speak at Serious Play Conference. The annual gathering for leaders in the industry will be held August 20 – 22, 2013 at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash., just outside Seattle.

A new feature of the conference will be four pre-conference workshops on Monday, August 19 designed as introductory sessions for new serious game program directors, workforce and talent development professionals and K-12 educators and university faculty:

• How to Integrate Games into the Classroom – created for heads of school districts, curriculum specialists and cutting edge teachers
• Using Location-Based Games – designed for Instructional designers, museum education departments, non-profit organizations and entertainment destination professionals
• Using Games to Grow Talent, Train and Engage Employees – aimed at IDs, HR and organizational development, military and government workforce managers
• Building a Serious Games Curriculum – geared toward faculty of higher education institutions interested in adding serious game degree programs

Speakers at both the main conference and the various workshops will share their expertise and outline critical success factors in game design. Industry analysts will discuss the latest industry trends and how best to take advantage of current market needs.

The submission form is located online at www.seriousplayconference.com/speakers

The Stack Academie 2013 gaming convention will be held on 3-5 May in Montréal. Volko Ruhnke (designer of Wilderness War, Labyrinth and Andean Abyss, and codesigner of the forthcoming A Distant Plain) and Brian Train (designer of Algeria, Arriba Espana, War Plan Crimson, and a great many others, and the other codesigner of A Distant Plain) will be guests of honour. More details here.

 

CFP: Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning

Nicola Whitton  (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Alex Moseley  (University of Leicester) will be editing a special issue of Simulation & Gaming devoted to “Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning.” The deadline for article proposals is 31 October 2012 (details below, click to enlarge).

NASAGA 2012

The North American Simulation and Gaming Association will be holding its 50th anniversary conference in Columbus, Ohio on 7-10 November 2012. You will find more information in this leaflet, or on the NASAGA website.

They are also still accepting applications for sessions until March 15. Proposals may be for either of two types of sessions.

Concurrent sessions are 90 minutes, interactive, energetic, lively and original – typically PowerPoint-free. Game night sessions are two hours, held concurrently one evening, and allow time for playing and debriefing a complete game or simulation.

For further information on submitting a proposal, see here.

 

 

Call for papers: 6th European Conference on Games Based Learning (October 2012)

A call for papers has been issued for the 6th European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL-2012) being held at The River Lee Hotel, Cork, Ireland on the 4-5 October 2012. Details can be found here, and the call is open until 16 March 2012).

Over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has changed considerably with the advent of new technologies. One such new technology that holds considerable promise for helping to engage learners is Games-Based Learning (GBL). The Conference offers an opportunity for scholars and practitioners interested in the issues related to GBL to share their thinking and research findings. Papers can cover various issues and aspects of GBL in education and training: technology and implementation issues associated with the development of GBL; use of mobile and MMOGs for learning; pedagogical issues associated with GBL; social and ethical issues in GBL; GBL best cases and practices, and other related aspects. We are particularly interested in empirical research that addresses whether GBL enhances learning. This Conference provides a forum for discussion, collaboration and intellectual exchange for all those interested in any of these fields of research or practice.

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.

CFP: International Journal of Game-Based Learning

Researchers are welcome to submit manuscripts to be considered for inclusion in the second issue of the second volume of the International Journal of Game-Based Learning to be published in April 2012. All submissions should be sent to the IJGBL, Dr. Patrick Felicia, at pfelicia@wit.ie, no later than 30th September 2011.

Mission of IJGBL

The mission of the International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL) is to promote knowledge pertinent to the design of Game-Based Learning environments, and to provide relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the field of Game-Based Learning. The main goals of IJGBL are to identify, explain, and improve the interaction between learning outcomes and motivation in video games, and to promote best practices for the integration of video games in instructional settings. The journal is multidisciplinary and addresses cognitive, psychological and emotional aspects of Game-Based Learning. It discusses innovative and cost-effective Game-BasedLearning solutions. It also provides students, researchers, instructors, and policymakers with valuable information inGame-Based Learning, and increases their understanding of the process of designing, developing and deploying successful educational video games. IJGBL also identifies future directions in this new educational medium.

Recommended Topics

Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Adaptive games design for game-based learning
• Design of educational games for people with disabilities
• Educational video games and learning management systems
• Game design models and design patterns for game-based learning
• Instructional design for game-based learning
• Integration and deployment of video games in the classroom
• Intelligent tutoring systems and game-based learning
• Learning by designing and developing video games
• Learning styles, behaviors and personalities in educational video games
• Mobile development and augmented reality for game-based learning
• Motivation, audio and emotions in educational video games
• Role of instructors
• Virtual worlds and game-based learning

CFP: International Journal of Role-Playing

The online International Journal of Role-Playing is now accepting submissions for its third issue, due to be published in Winter 2011.

The International Journal of Role-Playing invites researchers, designers, developers, academics, artists and others involved in the growing field of research related to role-playing to submit articles. The IJRP is a peer-reviewed journal, and welcomes submissions from any sphere of interest, knowledge network, research field or de-development sector that directly or indirectly relates to role-playing interests.

Potential topics include but are certainly not limited to the following:

• Role-playing games, e.g. frameworks, storytelling and graphics; art, design and creative industry
• Role-playing culture, psychology, media, economics, and sociology
• Role-playing technology, surveys, vocabulary, training and education
• Other aspects of role-playing and related research and development

The International Journal of Role-Playing is a biannual international journal that covers all aspects of role-playing, irrespective of the medium, platform or intent. The IJRP specifically aims to act as the focal point, for pushing the limits of role-playing knowledge, and to improve sharing of knowledge across the knowledge networks involved with role-playing- and related work, notably the industry, the academia and the arts. The journal will encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences, and will be a free, online forum where knowledge can be harvested. In realizing that the knowledge networks involved with role-playing- and related work are based in a variety of interest spheres, which write and publish their work in different ways, the IJRP will accommodate the knowledge sharing principles of the various networks.

The deadline for submissions is 1 August 2011. Further details can be found at the IJRP website.

CFP reminder: Simulations and Gaming to Build Peace

A reminder to everyone who might be interested in contributing to the forthcoming special issue of Simulation & Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theory, Practice and Research on “Simulations and Gaming to Build Peace” that the deadline for proposals (March 31) is fast approaching.

As for those who have already submitted something, you should be hearing from us in early April.

CFP: Red Teaming, Red Cells and Analytical Decision Support

This may be of interest to some PaxSims readers:

Call for Abstracts

As part of a government funded research project on Red Teaming, Red Cells and Analytical Decision Support, the Centre for Security, Armed Forces and Society (CSAS) of the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) will contract for a number of papers of 1500 to 5000 words. Authors of selected abstracts will receive 1000$ (Canadian) upon delivery of an acceptable paper. Papers will subsequently be edited for publication in journals. Abstracts must be received by February 23, 2011. Papers must be submitted by March 23, 2011.

Papers may address any of the following:

• Red Teaming experiences
• Red Teaming tools
• Red Teaming best practices
• Red Teaming in International Relations
• Red Teaming in security policy
• Challenge function in security decision making
• Alternative Analysis
• Alternative Perspectives
• Red Cell operations
• Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for employment of Red Cells and Red Teams
• Interdisciplinary Red Teams
• Coordination of Red Team activities across department or agency boundaries
• Recruitment, selection, training and development of Red Teams
• Mimetic and Digetic Red Teaming
• Adapting private sector practices to security sector Red Teaming
• Questioning assumptions: limits and constraints of Red Teaming
• Necessity for Red Teams
• Devil’s Advocacy and contrarian techniques in Red Teaming
• Structured analytical techniques for Red Teaming
• Developing imaginative thinking in Red Teams and Red Cells
• Thinking techniques for Red Teaming

For further information please contact Will Chalmers at 613-541-6000 extension 6494 at the Centre for Security, Armed Forces and Society. Please submit abstracts to William.Chalmers@rmc.ca.

Call for papers: Special issue of S&G on “Simulations and Gaming to Build Peace”

CALL FOR PAPERS

Simulations and Gaming to Build Peace

for a special issue of

Simulation & Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theory, Practice and Research

(http://sg.sagepub.com)

Guest Editors:

Rex Brynen, 
Department of Political Science, McGill University
Gary Milante, Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group, World Bank

Simulation has often been used for training and planning armed conflict. However, it can also be used to address and illuminate transitions from conflict to domestic and international peace.

This symposium (special issue) of Simulation & Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theory, Practice and Research will examine the various ways in which simulation and serious games can be used to enrich instructional curricula, train practitioners, promote conflict resolution, and generate theoretical and practical insight into processes of war-to-peace transition. We invite submissions from multiple disciplines, perspectives, and methodological or pedagogical approaches. Theoretical reflections, rigorous and critical evaluation of simulation exercises, literature reviews, and conceptual contributions are all welcomed. The topics that might be addressed could include preventive diplomacy; crisis management and de-escalation; conflict resolution; peace negotiations; counterinsurgency, stabilization, humanitarian intervention and peace operations; refugees; ethnic conflict; humanitarian operations; aid, budgetary planning, and post-conflict reconstruction; conflict-sensitive planning; interagency, civil-military, and coalition cooperation; human rights and election monitoring; media coverage, awareness and advocacy—among others.

Interested authors are invited to submit by an abstract (not exceeding 500 words) of their proposed work for initial review, together with a brief CV on or before March 30, 2011. Accepted proposals will then be asked to submit a full paper by July 31.

For further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Rex Brynen at rex.brynen@mcgill.ca.

Please distribute this CFP widely. For a .pdf copy, click here