Thursday 5 May 2011

IEEE VS Games 2011 conference

I have been for the last couple of days at IEEE VS Games 2011, taking place at the National Technical University Athens in Greece. Yesterday I chaired a short papers session on "Virtual Worlds and Games Technology" while today I presented a full paper I co-authored titled "Elemental: An insight into the development and evaluation of a secondary education chemistry game using XNA".

This article discusses the creation of an educational game intended for UK GCSE-level content, called Elemental. Elemental, developed using Microsoft’s XNA studio and deployed both on the PC and Xbox 360 platforms, addresses the periodic table of elements, a subject with extensions in chemistry, physics and engineering. Through the development process of the game but also the eventual pilot user study with 15 subjects (using a pre and post test method to measure learning using the medium and self-report questions), examples are given on how an educator can, without expert knowledge, utilize modern programming tools to create and test custom-made content for delivering part of a secondary education curriculum.

The article will soon be on the IEEE Xplore repository for download whereas the conference itself (the 4th outing this time) will take place in Genoa, Italy next year at October. More info here.

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