David Griffiths

In this paper the authors introduce the Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation (GREAT) research project. This EU funded intervention posits the application of digital games, game making and games technologies, as a realisable sustainable solution to actively engage citizens in meaningful dialogue with governments to address the global challenge of climate change.
The primary objective of the intervention is to facilitate citizens by using emergent technologies, to provide input into developing national and international policy priorities to address the challenges presented by global climate change, technologies that are both available and accessible.
The GREAT project commenced on 01 February 2023 and brings together leading scientists in academia and the games industry in a single programme of research and innovation. The Project aims to establish new forms of social engagement and encourage meaningful dialogue between citizens and senior policy stakeholders (policy makers, policy implementers, political parties, and affected citizens).

Since the publication of the IMS LD specification it has been recognised that the lack of a rich set of runtime services is a major barrier to adoption. The approaches taken to resolving this problem are reviewed, and their strengths and limitations identified. A generic widget server developed by the authors is described. Integration of the widget server with the IMS LD runtime system provides an extensible set of services. This has been demonstrated with the creation of widgets for forums, messaging, vote, and Google maps which are provided for users within the context of their role and activities in a Unit of Learning. Authoring and administration are described, showing how the system is both extensible and portable.

Dialogic learning and interactive groups have proved to be a useful methodological approach applied in educational situations for lifelong adult learners. The principles of this approach stress the importance of dialogue and equal participation also when designing the training activities. This paper adopts these principles as the basis for a configurable template that can be integrated in runtime systems. The template is formulated as a meta-UoL which can be interpreted by IMS Learning Design players. This template serves as a guide to flexibly select and edit the activities at runtime (on the fly). The meta-UoL has been used successfully by a practitioner so as to create a real-life example, with positive and encouraging results.

The OpenDock project is introduced, and the approach to supporting the sharing of online educational resources outlined. The functional requirements for the OpenDocument repository are stated, and their significance discussed. The system which is currently being implemented is described. This is a light weight, open source, peer to peer system. The peer nodes are the users web presence, rather than their own computer, reducing the infrastructure requirements for small institutions and individuals. Support for IMS Learning Design is provided, with Content Packages being unzipped and stored as a hierarchy, and a parser provided to analyse the manifests and represent the UoLs. The effectiveness of the system in supporting sharing will be established in trials and demonstration activities in the OpenDock project.

This paper discusses PlanetDR, whose architecture supports very large federated educational digital repositories. It is based on the implementation of current open specifications for interoperability (such as IEEE Learning Object Metadata and IMS Digital Repositories Interoperability, in its Edusource Communication Language version), and its integration with the workflow of eLearning production in the context of the Reload Learning Design editor. This integration should support better re-use of resources; some open problems for enhancing further this re-use are also discussed.

This paper reflects on the implications for pedagogy and infrastructure of the move from paper based resources to digital learning resources. A model of production of paper based educational resources is proposed, and the way in which the move to electronic educational resources has altered this process is outlined. Some of the negative implications of these changes for pedagogy are explored. Some approaches available to resolve the interferences are identified. IMS-LD is identified as a key technology, and drawing on the work of the UNFOLD project the concepts underlying the exchange of chunks of pedagogy, and institutional policy regarding copyright are discussed. Conclusions are offered summarising the most promising approaches and the issues to be addressed.

The IMS-QTI, and other related specifications have been developed to support the creation of reusable and pedagogically neutral learning scenarios and content, as stated by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. In this paper we discuss how current specifications both constrain the design of assessment scenarios, and limit content reusability. Key issues regarding reusability such as granularity, localization and self-contained-ness are analyzed from the point of view of current eLearning specifications. We also suggest some solutions to overcome these limitations. The paper is based on our experience developing and testing an IMS QTI Lite compliant assessment authoring tool, QAed. It supports teacher centering, which is quite neglected when designing such tools. In the paper we also discuss how to make compatible standards support and user centering in eLearning applications and provide some recommendations for the design of the user interfaces.

In this paper we report work in progress on éTui, a prototype of a computational educational toy meant to facilitate young children's reflection upon learning. The interface of this type of devices is quite nonstandard and two of its closely interrelated elements are appearance and behaviors. We describe their design and our results in the context of achieving the educational goal. The importance of appearance has been emphasized by Microsoft's researchers on ActiMates Barney (Strommen, 1998) and (Strommen & Alexander, 1999); and commercial successes such as Furby also demonstrate it. We discuss our approach to emotional engagement through characterization while seeking to minimize gender bias, and avoiding appearances, which are deceptive with respect to behavior. Our final design is a moving toy which has an insect-like appearance. We also describe how we have implemented our methodological approach which is co-design with the children. The movements of the toy are of the type of autonomous robots and we are exploring whether these autonomous behaviors provide a richer (or different) motivation for reflection upon learning, differing from more traditional approaches which follow Papert's work on Logo (Papert, 1980), and more recent and evolved robotics approaches such as, Lego Mindstorms (Martin, Mikhak, Resnick, Silverman, & Berg, 2000), Crickets...