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Research into games for educational purposes reveals some interesting trends. Early studies of consumer games helped to identify the aspects of games that make them especially engaging and appealing to players of various ages and of both genders: the feeling of working toward a goal; the possibility of attaining spectacular successes; the ability to problem-solve, collaborate with others, and socialize; an interesting story line; and other characteristics. These qualities are replicable, though they can be difficult to design well, and they can transfer to games featuring educational content.

it will enable faculty to more precisely identify student learning needs and tailor instruction appropriately. This has implications not simply for individual student performance, but in how educators perceive teaching, learning, and assessment.

Similarly, Userfly, designed for usability testing, provides the ability to record the behavior of visitors to websites, and then play it back for analysis.

computer science professor Paul Gestwicki and English professor Brian McNely are co-developing software for enhancing collaborative knowledge work. Using current theories of learning, rhetoric, writing, and human-computer interaction, the pair is designing an interactive visualization system with the goal of providing a richer understanding of collaboration and a framework for more effective evaluation of the collaborative process within writing.

Let me start by declaring that we, as human beings DO NOT have the ability to communicate with computers. Ever since the modern user interface based the WIMP system of Xerox Corp. came about people have found ways to use applications design around tasks and features. There are programmers and there are users. Computers work digitally, and humans cannot easily translate information to store and instruct computers. This has been a limitation and will be, for a long time. Several companies have tried to get out of this cycle by introducing newer touch and gesture based user interface which hold little value beyond novelty. These have been shown in several movies (including Iron Man 2 – where Tony Shark check’s out pictures of the Black Widow online on his table-top display) However, I’m glad that companies are taking this seriously after the touch interface of the iPhone sparked of a UI craze that has picked up quite a pace. One experimental entrant is the MS Surface. This is a table size computer with the screen facing up and is multi-touch capable. Several great instances of object recognition and collaboration of devices and people have been demonstrated on this device, but it hasn’t been taken seriously as yet (which is probably a cost factor for now)

The story-based, participatory AR games developed by the ROAR team are played on Apple iPhones and Android-based smartphones and use GPS technology to correlate the students’ real world location to their virtual location in the game’s digital world. As the students walk and run around their school grounds, a map on their handheld displays virtual objects and characters (fig. 1 and 2) who exist in an AR layer superimposed on real space. When students come within approximately 30 feet of these digital artifacts, the AR and GPS software trigger video, audio, and text files, which provide academic and problem solving challenges as well as narrative, navigation, and collaboration cues. Figure 1: Live-view of digital objects on school grounds Figure 2: Map-view of player’s position and digital objects on school grounds

Touch-screen based mobile devices are increasingly becoming the communication tools of choice. While there is already an abundance of games, entertainment and utility applications on mobile platforms, the widespread use of such devices for educational purposes is still largely unexplored. In this project, Jay Bagga and Vinayak Tanksale, both of computer science, have developed three native and web-based iPhone applications designed to support and enhance the learning process. The first prototype developed by the team is a political science learning tool, created in collaboration with Joseph Losco, chair of Ball State’s Department of Political Science. The application features textbook chapters, interactive quizzes, polling capabilities and access to web-based resources.