This paper analyzes and makes explicit design principles that underline the software game The Return of The Incredible Machine: Contraptions,”. In order to do this it takes into account two complementary perspectives – educational software engineering and theories of learning through play and games. One goal of the analysis is to identify the specific design features that make edutainment softw...

As artificial agents are becoming more complex (autonomous, proactive, etc.) and common in our everyday life, the need for an ethical design of such agents is becoming more compelling, especially if the focus is on persuasiveness [Stock et al., to appear] Examples of agents of this kind are already in sight: systems for preventive medicine, edutainment, dynamic advertisement, social action. In ...

Playfulness came into education at a later date. There are two main theoretical paradigms around play and both are relevant to a discussion around serious games for education. Modern theories aim to mainly describe the benefits of play, and classical theories tend to focus on the reasons for play. The classical theories include explanations for children needing play like ‘surplus energy’, [4] a...

Animated pedagogical agents are animated characters that can interact with learners in computer-based environments, in order to stimulate and encourage learning. They improve the effectiveness of education and training applications, and can also be employed in many other interactive applications to assist novice users. They draw on techniques from interactive entertainment, making them well sui...

Some of the most successful products in the market of robots for edutainment have made manufacturers realize that software for controlling the robots is one of the key elements of the success. Some of them have also conclude that libre software is the best way to produce, maintain, and distribute their software. This paper will summarize the fundamentals of the libre software model, and their b...

How can we include entertainment into an ITC-based educational experience? Edutainment is the blending of education and entertainment; it is about engaging, enjoyable experiences providing a learning value. Understanding better how to make a pedagogical intervention engaging, to stimulate significant effort and reasoning from all kinds of students, could generate a positive impact on education....

Advances in display devices are facilitating the integration of stereoscopic visualization in our daily lives. However, autostereoscopic visualization has not been extensively exploited. In this paper, we present a system that combines Augmented Reality (AR) and autostereoscopic visualization. We also present the first study that compares different aspects using an autostereoscopic display with...

This paper presents an interactive, collaborative virtual heritage system that employs tangible interfaces to make learning experience more interesting and effective. The system is designed for a group of users collaboratively play games to learn a Korean cultural heritage site, the ‘Moyang’ castle. While most virtual heritage applications focus on the reconstruction of objects or places, it ai...

The area of educational computer games is not yet well defined but there are recent attempts at rehabilitating the field. However, sidestepping classic edutainment is not an easy task. Edutainment have since the 1970s used a classic formula for producing educational computer games based on learning theories with problematic assumptions given our current knowledge of how humans learn. This artic...

Discovering and Learning curves according to the EDUSA-Model Abstract—This paper presents a new method of measuring learner’s satisfaction while using electronic learning materials (e-courses, edutainment games, etc.) in virtual non-linear environments. Method is based on a relation of Discovering and Learning probability distribution curves obtained by collecting and evaluating the human-compu...