GALA Overview

1. GALA Overview Prof. Alessandro De Gloria Università di Genova - DIBE

2. Education • Education is a fundamental pillar for a society that has in information and knowldge the main vehicles for development and competition. • Education has to be shaped to be attracting for young people and for workers in a life long perspective as well • Traditional ways for administering education are to be complemented by other methods closer to the new generations and more suitable also for continuos learning.

3. Serious Games and Technology Enhanced Learning • New technologiesprovidepowerful means for teaching. • Virtual reality, web, hypertext, simulators • Are viable means • Serious Games • Provide a notable improvement • They use the language of the young people • They entertain, i.e. they can be used as a double scope by adults: Occupyleisure time Improve theirknowledge • Either k-12, higher education, and lifelong education can benefit from serious games

4. USA are already advanced in Serious Games • Clark C. Abt introduced the term «Serious Games» in ’70s • M. Pensky since 2000 promove Serious Games at education and industry level. • DARPA and Navy developed the concept of • Education Dominance: reduce the time to become an expert in a technical domain • Department of Energy: Power House game to reduce 10% energy consumption • DARPA: funded the development of a Game Foldit, it turns one of the hardest problems in molecular biology into a game somehow inspired from Tetris • Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. 

5. European Union • SGs are a key field for the EU, that aims at strengthening its competitiveness by supporting information and knowledge

6. Serious Games • Serious game design calls upon vastly wider range of expertise and roles. Michigan State University

7. SG status in Europe in 2010 • Presence of several institutions that deal with SGs at a high level • EU already promoted study and implementation of SGs: • 80 Days, DynaLearn, TARGET, xDELIA, ROLE, IntelLEO, ELEKTRA, SCY, eCircus, GRAPPLE, ELU, iClass, MATURE, mGBL, LeActiveMath, L2C, PlayMancer ,VitalMind, mEducator,, eVITA, TravelInEurope • Main problems: • Fragmentation (due also to the multidisciplinary nature of SG) • Lack of integration of tools/competences/researchers/business-academia dialogue • Lack of a common roadmap • A Network of Excellence was needed to create and support a community of SG researchers, developers and users

8. GALA Goals • GaLAcovers the entire pipeline of SG research, production and deployment • For each one of such activities GaLAintends to identify and support interest groups and organize meetings and develop proper tools for cooperation and knowledge/best practice development/sharing • Special attention will be devoted also to education for the preparation of experts in the field and to professional training and technology transfer, for a concrete application and exploitation of the research results

9. The NoE • GaLA collects excellence researchers on SG in Europe • 31 partners • 17 countries • Universities, Research Centres, Companies

10. Key NoE Actions • Start to know each other and share common knowledge: • 4 Meetings per year • Genova – Kick Off • Barcelona • Bremen • Genoa – Review Meeting • 2 alignment schools in the first 2 years (1st edition held in Edinburgh) • SinceSG is a very interdisciplinary field, wehavedeliveredtutorials to grasp the basicknowledgefrom eachone of the disciplinesinvolved in SG development and deployment

11. Associate partnership • The network has defined a framework for associated partnership • Submission forms • Evaluation procedure • Benefits and duties • At present, we have 4 APs applications submitted and several contacts in progress

12. Common research activities • TCs: Technical Committees on the different SG S&T research fields • SIG: Special interest group on the different SG application domains • Seed projects: a tool for putting in practice the results of the TC and SIG activities and for enlarging the network

13. Technichal Committes (WP2) • TCs are an instrument for • Monitoring the research • Define research trajectories • Aggregate, systemize and synthesize the knowledge and research activities in a field • Addressing within-area possible fragmentation • Pinpointing solutions, highlighting hot-themes, best practices, critical situations, etc. • TCs are dynamical, a TC can be created or cancelled according to the actual trends • A new TC has been added: Gamification • It is very important since through gamification Serious Games strengthen their impact considering real-world issues

14. Special Interest Groups (WP3) • SIGs monitor and critically assess commercial and prototype SGs in several application domains • Business and management, engineering and manufacturing, health and fitness, security and safety • SIGs survey stakeholders and users to understand, for each domain: • what the barriers and facilitators are for the adoption of SG • what needs are already addressed and what are overlooked • SIGs are dynamical, a SIG can be created or cancelled according to the actual trends

15. Living Labs (WP8) • Living Labs are an emerging tool for user-centered design • The SG Living labs will serve two large groups of users • First it will provide general users and stakeholders an access to several different games in an easy way • Second, it will serve as a large test bed for feedback on games • Experiments will be carried out on user interfaces, attention studies, collaborative working, game assessment, etc.

16. Seed Projects (Cross-WPs) APP1 APP2 APPn

17. Society on Serious Games • Target: long-term sustainability • Continue the GaLA aims and activities also after the EU funding • Define a common flag • Through the society we can involve other partners at the same level of the GALA partners. • We have a means for: • publishing books, journals • Organizing conferences • Organizing courses • All the constitution documents prepared in the first year • Ongoing discussion about the name of the society • The qualification of the society as European • The «serious games» attribute as the only one • This is related to the future of SGs as foreseen by the NoE

18. GaLA as a reference in the field • Defragment and harmonize the research in Europe and become a reference in the field • Journals, Books, Masters, Conferences • Demonstrate the application of Serious Games in educational contexts: • Formal education in schools • Life long learning courses in industries

19. Networking with other NoEs and groups • GALA operates synergically with researchers in Technology Enhanced Learning • In particular, STELLAR, the reference NOE for TEL • Actions have been and will be performed together for reinforcing the TEL research landscape • Joint events and projects • GALA has been and will be present at the main conferences in the field

20. Provide reference online tools for SGs • Website for information and social interaction • Virtual Research Envinronment • Technological infrastructure to: • Allow the management of the project • Support social networking among the partners • Provide tools for collaborative SG research

21. First year balance • All the results planned for the first have been achieved • With the exception of the Society • It is a very important milestone • It is expected to last for many years and will be a significant outcome, with an important impact for EU • For these reasons, we believe it is worthwhile to go more in-depth with the discussion about its oganization and name, in order to make the tool as powerful as possible • The NoE members have reached a good degree of reciprocal knowledge and confidence • The first collaborations among members have started, and at every meeting, new groups are freely shaping around new projects • We are becoming a reference point • We are collecting several external partners • A yearly conference will be managed by the NoE • I can see a lot of enthusiam by the partners • People work more than promised and budgeted in the DoW