Enhancing Scientific publications with serious games

1. Esther van der Drift & Koen Ekelschot Enhancing Scientific publications with serious games

2. Problem statement • How can we enhance scientific publications in the field of social sciences through the use of serious games? • Core points • Scientific publications • Social sciences • Serious games

3. Motivation • Traditional article • Enriched publications / Rich Internet Publications / The article of the future • Serious games?

4. Motivation • Serious games for educational purposes much more common these days • No research on using serious games for scientific communication • Serious games can be much more engaging and fun than multimedia applications.

5. Motivation • Why social sciences? • Understandable for non-experts (less jargon than say, biology) • Diverse (e.g. cultural anthropology, educational sciences, psychology and sociology) • Experiments, communication concepts & theories

6. Current state of research • Defining serious games • “A mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives." • Types of serious games: • Knowledge-based: Code Red: Triage • Skill-based: Re-mission

7. Work hypothesis • What kind of research is done in social sciences? • Are there elements that can be mapped to serious games? • Visualizing/performing the experiment • ??? • A few examples of how one could develop a game based on scientific research

8. Hobbits and orcs problem Jug problem

9. Research method • Literature review • Serious games • Different types • Effects onlearning/understanding • Game elements / indicators • Conceptual, procedural, attitudinal • Research in social sciences • Cognitive theories • Performing experiments

10. Literature Games: • Rollings, A. & Adams, E. (2003). On Game Design. Indianapolis: New Riders • Stapleton, A. (2004) Serious Games: Serious Opportunities. Paper presented at the Australian Game Developers’ Conference, Academic Summit, Melbourne, VIC. • Van der Spek, E.D., Wouters, P., & van Oostendorp, H. (2009). Code Red: Triage. Or, COgnition-Based DEsign Rules Enhancing DecisionmakingTRaining in a Game Environment. In Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications, 2009(pp. 166-169). Coventry: IEEE. • Zyda, M. (2005). From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games. Computer, 38(9), 25-32.

11. Literature Social science: • Anderson, J.R., (2000). Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. New York: Worth Publishers. • Huang, M.H., & Chang, Y.W. (2008). Characteristics of research output in social sciences and humanities: From a research evaluation perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(11), 1819-1828. • Loftus, E. F. (1996). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. • Loftus, E. F., & Pickerall, J. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720-725. • López, J., & Cáceres, M. (2010). Virtual games in social science education. Computers & Education, 55(3), 1336-1345.

12. Planning • 20-12: Types of research finished • 30-12: Generalizingexamples of games • 10-01: Demo finished • 15-01: Conclusions finished • 17-01: Paper finished • 24-01: Last refinements