No abstract

The article reports and discusses a long-term qualitative study of forty 8-10-year-old students who regularly played a math game during math lessons for 9 weeks. The goal was to explore the relations between (i) some of the pedagogical principles that underlie the game and (ii) the playing practice in terms of what actually takes place when students play the math game during regular math lessons. The article discusses indications of matches and mismatches between pedagogical principles and playing practice as they appear in analyses of observations and video recordings. The result highlights the difficulty of predicting areas in which possible mismatches appear between the intentions of the pedagogues and designers of educational technology and the actual use of the technology by the students. This also applies to educational materials that have already been pilot tested and used on a smaller scale. We emphasize the need to observe actual use for extensive periods of time, i.e. to go beyond short-time user testing.

Abstract. We describe our work-in-progress of developing an educational game in mathematics for 12-14 year olds, by adding social and conversational abilities to an existing "teachable agent" (TA) in the game. The purpose of this extension is to affect cognitive, emotional and social constructs known to promote learning, such as self-efficacy and engagement, as well as enhancing students' experiences of interacting with the agent over an extended period of time. Drawing from the EnALI framework, which states practical design guidelines, we discuss specific design challenges and exemplify research considerations as to developing the agent's visual representation and conversational module. We present some initial findings from prototype testing with students from the target group. Promising developments seem to reside in pronouncing the agent's personality traits and expanding its knowledge database, particularly its range of conversational topics. Finally we propose some future studies and research directions.

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on designing for self-efficacy in a game based driving simulator. Self-efficacy refers to how people's beliefs in their capabilities affect their actions. The results show that the design of the feedback system can be used to increase self-efficacy measures thus affecting performance in a driving simulator environment. Selfefficacy has consequences not only for the performance of the particular task, but also for what activities he/she chooses to engage in and the persistence invested in them. Hence we find the results from this study relevant to various aspects of serious games design.International Conference Visualisation 978-0-7695-3271-4/08 $25.00

The present study examined the effects of fantasy proneness on false "reports" and false "memories", of existent and non-existent footage of a public event. We predicted that highly fantasy prone individuals would be more likely to stand by their initial claim of having seen a film of the event than low fantasy prone participants when prompted for more details about their experiences. Eighty creative arts students and 80 other students were asked whether they had seen CCTV footage preceding the attack on Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh up to, and including, non-existent footage of the actual moment of the attack. If affirmative, they were probed for extended narratives of what they claimed to have seen. Overall, 64% of participants provided a false "report" by answering yes to the initial question. Of these, 30% provided no explicit details of the attack, and a further 15% retracted their initial answer in their narratives. This left 19% of the sample who appeared to have false "memories" because they provided explicit details of the actual moment of the attack. Women scored higher than men and art students scored higher than other students on fantasy proneness, but there was no effect on levels of false reporting or false "memory". Memories were rated more vivid and clear for existent compared to non-existent aspects of the event. In sum, these data suggest a more complex relationship between memory distortions and fantasy proneness than previously observed.