Feedback is a critical aspect of optimised learning design, but there are few, if any, feedback models that map different types of feedback and how they may assist students to increase performance and enhance their learning experience. This research paper outlines a feedback model as an extension of the four-dimensional framework which includes a consideration of the type, the content, the format, and the frequency of feedback, as well as the agent which delivers it. This model is based upon an understanding of learning in the context of designing learning experiences and utilises a game-based model of learning to understand the importance of motivation and autonomy in learners to enhance and accelerate learning. The framework is developed and reflected upon by analysing two cases: a medical triage case in which the timing and frequency of feedback proved critical, and a business simulation which illuminated the need for a range of types of feedback and to be aware of the possibility of different agents (instructor peer and game) that can deliver feedback. The extended model may help game and learning designers alike to discern different types of feedback, both in games and more generally, in more explicit and nuanced ways.

Natural human-computer interaction and audio-visual human behaviour sensing systems, which would achieve robust performance in-the-wild are more needed than ever as digital devices are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of our life. Accurately annotated real-world data are the crux in devising such systems. However, existing databases usually consider controlled settings, low demographic variability, and a single task. In this paper, we introduce the SEWA database of more than 2,000 minutes of audio-visual data of 398 people coming from six cultures, 50 percent female, and uniformly spanning the age range of 18 to 65 years old. Subjects were recorded in two different contexts: while watching adverts and while discussing adverts in a video chat. The database includes rich annotations of the recordings in terms of facial landmarks, facial action units (FAU), various vocalisations, mirroring, and continuously valued valence, arousal, liking, agreement, and prototypic examples of (dis)liking. This database aims to be an extremely valuable resource for researchers in affective computing and automatic human sensing and is expected to push forward the research in human behaviour analysis, including cultural studies. Along with the database, we provide extensive baseline experiments for automatic FAU detection and automatic valence, arousal, and (dis)liking intensity estimation.

This paper presents the RAGE marketplace portal (gamecomponents.eu), which is intended as a hot spot and neutral single point of access for serious game technologies. The portal aims at fostering collaborations and the exchange of technical artefacts and associated knowledge and resources between different stakeholders in the field of serious gaming (e.g. educators, developers, researchers, publishers, policy makers and end-users). After a brief introduction to the H2020 RAGE project, the flexible design of the marketplace portal and its underlying software repository are presented. A concise overview is given of the initial set of advanced game technology components created by RAGE, that are currently exposed in the portal. For empirical validation of these components, we have developed 7 serious games based on subsets of these components, which were then tested in educational practice with several hundreds of end-users. This game components portal want to be a neutral hub not dependent on any technology or provider and therefore it is open for new game technologies submissions. We envision this marketplace as a knowledge and game technologies hub to support and amplify serious game development.

This deliverable is software and as such this document is abridged to be as succinct as possible, with extended descriptions, detailed documentation, video tutorials, example games, quick-start guides, ready to boot Docker images and all source code for the client, server and administration software available online. The final social gamification asset bundle provides game developers with an opportunity to enhance existing games or digital platforms with multiplayer gamification functionalities, catering for both competitive and cooperative game dynamics. The solution provided is a flexible client-server package that can run as a cloud-based service, serving many games or have specific instances for individual games as necessary.

The design of serious games requires developers to tackle pedagogical challenges calling for advanced solutions that the entertainment industry might deem too risky to pursue. One such challenge is the creation of autonomous socially intelligent characters with whom players can practice different social skills. Although there are several architectures in the field of virtual agents that are designed specifically to enable more human-like interactions, they are still not widely adopted by game studios that develop serious games, in particular for learning. In this paper, we present a virtual agent toolkit that was specifically developed with the intent of making agent-based solutions more accessible and reliable to game developers. To this end, a collaborative effort was established with a game studio that has used the toolkit to develop two different serious games. Among other advantages, the toolkit facilitated the inclusion of a dynamic model of emotions that affects not just how the character looks and acts but also how the player's performance is determined.

With the wide use of the Internet and digital data sources, there has been a recent emergence of easy access to student data within learning management systems (LMS), grade data through student information systems (SIS) and broader sector data through benchmarking metrics and standards. Learning analytics on top of this data has introduced greater capabilities for improving student performance through immediate feedback. Current literature considers the role of dashboards for student performance and feedback, but few papers consider the efficacy of fast feedback to students or other ways that information can be fed back to learners. In this paper, we consider the work done by three leading groups addressing the impact of gamification in university education, with a specific focus on how data is presented to the learner, that is using elements such as points, levelling up, narrative and progression to scaffold learning. Results indicate increases in student motivation, engagement, satisfaction, retention and performance enhancements.

Gamification is defined as the use of game techniques in a non-game context and has demonstrated potential impact in a wide range of subjects. Informed by the design and processes of digital gaming, gamification often exploits competition to motivate, personified by points, badges and leader boards. Success, however, seems to go beyond these basic features and rely on a concrete acknowledgement of the motivational model of the user, taking into account concepts such as situational relevance and situated motivational affordance, which can be framed under competition and/or collaboration. This paper investigates the impact of competitive and collaborative environments on summative assessment. This study bases its investigation on the StarQuest platform (http://starquest.eu/), a social and gamified collaboration application hosting a private online environment for small groups of individuals to co-curate and share digital contents. Participants were second year undergraduate students (Sport Psychology, n=94), who enrolled on a module entitled A Fundamental Approach to Motor Learning and Control. The module ran for 11 weeks and the curriculum was delivered using a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. The results highlighted a number of strengths and weaknesses of implementing a gamified online platform for team working, which will inform future design, development and deployment of gamified and learning platforms

The use of computational intelligence for leveraging social creativity is a relatively new approach that allows organizations to find creative solutions to complex problems in which the interaction between stakeholders is crucial. The creative solutions that come from joint thinking-from the combined knowledge and abilities of people with diverse perspectives-contrast with traditional views of creativity that focus primarily on the individual as the main contributor of creativity. In an effort to support social creativity in organizations, in this paper we present computational intelligence software tools for that aim and an architecture for creating software mashups based on the concept of affinity space. The affinity space defines a digital setting to facilitate specific scenarios in collaborative business environments. The solution presented includes a set of free and open source software tools ranging from newly developed brainstorming applications to an expertise recommender for enhancing social creativity in the enterprise. The current paper addresses software design issues and presents reflections on the research work undertaken in the COLLAGE project between 2012 and 2015.

Today's complex cloud applications are composed of multiple components executed in multi-cloud environments. For such applications, the possibility to manage and control their cost, quality, and resource elasticity is of paramount importance. However, given that the cost of different services offered by cloud providers can vary a lot with their quality/performance, elasticity controllers must consider not only complex, multi-dimensional preferences and provisioning capabilities from stakeholders but also various runtime information regarding cloud applications and their execution environments. In this chapter, the authors present the elasticity control approach of the EU CELAR Project, which deals with multi-dimensional elasticity requirements and ensures multi-level elasticity control for fulfilling user requirements. They show the elasticity control mechanisms of the CELAR project, from application description to multi-level elasticity control. The authors highlight the usefulness of CELAR's mechanisms for users, who can use an intuitive, user-friendly interface to describe and then to follow their application elasticity behavior controlled by CELAR.

This deliverable outlines the design blueprints for the RAGE application scenario games and forms the rest of the scope for WP4’s tasks. The game designs have been developed in collaboration with application scenario partners in WP5, and informed by WP1, 2 & 3. Additionally peer-feedback has been provided by game developers across WP4. The designs outline the integration of the RAGE assets developed in WP2 and WP3. Each section provides in detail the game play descriptions, game dynamics and mechanics, pedagogies and technical implementation of the RAGE assets into the game applications as described in detailed in WP5’s application documents. The full description of the application objectives and associated learning outcomes has been provided in the project’s MS2 Application Scenario Outlines document.

This document presents the first release of the project’s storytelling framework, which is composed by two assets. The purpose of this framework is to facilitate the use of interactive storytelling for the development of applied games. More precisely, the framework is meant to aid developers in the creation of game scenarios where both players and autonomous characters are playing an active role in a narrative that unfolds according to their actions. The document describes the current state for the assets that are part of this framework, also providing links to the source code of the assets as well as associated demonstrations and documentation. The primary audience for the contents of this deliverable are the game developers that will use the proposed framework in their development process. The information about the specific RAGE use cases that are using the framework is written in Deliverable 4.2.

Acquiring skills for social and emotional well-being is important for inclusive societies and academic achievement. Studies have demonstrated the beneficial link between prosocial behaviours and improved results in curriculum topics. This paper describes a Prosocial Learning (PSL) process for creation and delivery of digital games for children (7-10 yrs) within educational systems that support learning of prosocial skills. The approach combines prosocial pedagogies with advanced ICT technologies and cloud delivery models to create attractive and exciting learning opportunities for children; produce novel digital game-based pedagogies and simplify deployment. Prosociality is a concept that refers to an individual's propensity towards positive social behaviours. Individuals with prosocial skills are, for example, able to join in conversations, talk nicely, identifying feelings and emotions in themselves and others, identify someone needs help and ask for help. PSL classifies these skills in terms of Friendship, Feelings and Cooperation. By using interactive digital games supported by additional instructive and reflective activities, PSL allows children to learn social skills that can be generalised to real life situations in the classroom, playground and at home. PSL is implemented through a technology platform offering systematic pedagogical support for prosocial games developed by an ecosystem of teachers and games companies. Capabilities include multi-modal sensors to observe emotional affect, game interaction and decision-making. Information is acquired through standard protocols (e.g. xAPI) and evaluated by learning analytics algorithms to provide real-time feedback on player behaviours that are be used for in-game feedback and adaptation, and by teachers to shape follow-up activities. PSL is validated through short and longitudinal studies at European schools to gather evidence for effectiveness. This paper provides early evidence from short studies that will steer larger pan-European trials to test hypotheses, promote to policy makers and to increase adoption of game-based learning in schools.

This final report provides an overview of the final versions of the RAGE games made using the RAGE assets after the first round of pilot testing and formative evaluation. The document serves as internal communication and discussion in RAGE among game companies and asset developers together with case owners and evaluators. The document is structured as follows: each game is contained in its own section, which is then divided into a section covering a short overview, a section on changes since initial version (presented in D4.3), a section on the use of RAGE components and a section providing actual game screenshots from the latest version of the game, together with narrated description.

This paper discusses our perspectives on pervasive learning based on live projects at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, UK DMLL.org.uk, aligning with the need to respond to the blurring of boundaries between physical and digital learning spaces and contexts. The paper describes a holistic and modular approach in thinking about pervasive learning design and with special interest on games and gamification. Findings are presented on a study carried out on physical learning spaces and students' engagement with these spaces digital and physical. The paper also describes a pilot on the use of game mechanics in a blended learning environment. The findings will inform other projects that are investigating the crossings between gamification and pervasive gaming, including the potential of indoor mobile communication to support context-aware resources and future 'learning spaces'. The holistic model may inform future initiatives in integrating knowledge, tools and services towards facilitating a pervasive and technology-enabled learning exploiting both physical and digital contents and contexts.

The document describes the requirements for the gamification of prosocial learning. A conceptual framework is defined that is derived from multidisciplinary perspectives (pedagogy, psychology, teaching practitioners, game designers) of prosociality as the basis for understanding the technical and operational requirements for creating games to teach prosocial skills in schools. The conceptual framework provides the theoretical foundation for technical work developing a platform for prosocial gaming and innovation in the delivery of such games to schools

This document describes the evaluation strategy for the assessment of game effectiveness, market value impact and ethics procedure to drive detailed planning of technical validation, short and longitudinal studies and market viability tests

We present a system designed with the aim to facilitate the social creativity processes underlying creative research. It provides asynchronous and synchronous facilities for multi-user interaction while leveraging creativity with computational tools for inspirational search, inspirational clue generation and problem solving advice. Initial evaluation with a small group of users indicated that the software is in-line with the creative research approach where users work together with concept developers taking on multiple roles throughout the design process.