Abstract: "Adolescent obesity is an increasing challenge, and
pervasive social health games hold much promise for promoting
sustained healthy behaviors.
Researchers and d
esigners of
these
systems
have many potential theories and existing best practices
at their disposal.
Our study, grounded in participatory design,
shows which ones matter
-
both for pervasive social health games
and within the cultural context of a community
we studied over
the course of three years.
We worked with 112 US middle school
students from a lower
-
income community in a series of
participatory design exercises focused on social rewards for
everyday physical activity.
In our analysis, we
discuss
design
implications in four key areas
: social presence, gender effects,
incentives and competition. We show how these themes
manifested in students' designs and why they
were
particularly
important to our participa
nts. We then use
our findings to
suggest
design strategies for youth
-
focused pervasive social health
games."
Abstract: "The purpose of this study aimed to construct an online competitive game-based learning system by using freeware for junior high school students and to assess its effectiveness. From the learning standpoints, game mechanisms including learning points, competition mechanism, training room mechanism, questioning & answering mechanism, tips, and feedback mechanism are taken into consideration while constructing the system. The system contains screens of Log-in, Game lobby, Waiting room, Player's room, Question & Answer, and Scoring. After the system was established, it was implemented in a 10 week teaching experiment. A total of 35 junior high school students participated in this teaching experiment. Both pre-test and post-test were administered and analyzed. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire, containing domains of system operation, learning effectiveness, competition and incentive, and training room learning was also included to assess user's satisfaction. Descriptive analysis and independent t test were used to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study show that most students are satisfied with the four domains of the freeware constructed online competitive game-based learning system. Meanwhile, the online competitive game-based learning system is effective for junior high school students' learning."
Consideration of how Massachusetts will attract video game companies in light of the PAX East announcement and 38 Studios high profile departure to Rhode Island in 2010