This paper presents findings from a thinking-aloud protocol exploring mental models in 28 elementary school math teachers during their initial attempt at composing and testing trigger-action rules for a smart tangible educational device. In the study, two sets of event-driven primitives were implemented in an End-User Development platform for guiding teachers with no programming experience in defining new functions of the device: "concrete", based on actual actions performed on the device, and "abstract", based on general definitions of events/actions. With a thematic analysis, we identified three different metaphors that drive participants’ interaction with the device. We discuss how the metaphors influenced performance and how the order of exposition to the two primitive sets impacted their grasping of the trigger-action logic. Our findings suggest the importance of guiding teachers in assuming effective metaphors for performing End-User Development tasks, to empower them to adopt an active role toward digital devices in education.

Gamification has been widely applied in educational contexts to enhance students' motivation and engagement. Its effectiveness has been shown to vary based on individual user preferences, such as age, gender, and player type. This study investigates the relationship between player types and user experience in StandByMe, a gamified educational platform designed to raise awareness about gender-based violence. A total of 61 high school students used the platform for about 35 minutes and completed a user experience questionnaire and the Hexad scale for player types. Results indicate that Free spirits reported higher motivation and overall user experience, while Achievers exhibited lower engagement, possibly due to a lack of clearly structured challenges. Socializers and Disruptors showed no significant relation with user experience. Additionally, demographic factors such as age and gender were related to participants' fun levels and perception of challenge. These findings highlight how users' player type predicts the user experience of a gameful system and should be considered during the design phase. Future research should explore adaptive gamification approaches and specific design modifications to enhance user experience across all player types, both within the StandByMe platform and, more broadly, in gameful systems for the education of sensitive topics.

Gamification, commonly described as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, is frequently adopted to enhance users' motivation, engagement, and happiness while supporting them in reaching different objectives, related to learning activities and behavioral changes. Despite being a widely used approach, several studies show that the final outcomes following gamification use are not always positive. To face this problem, we developed a tool called GamiDOC composed of different features aimed at facing the existing problems in the gameful systems design process and, at the same time, guiding designers and practitioners in the design and evaluation of gamified solutions. In this paper, we present the elements that make gameful systems design a challenging process, the state of the art in gamification design, and the issues that are still open in the design of gameful systems. Finally, we provide a detailed description of GamiDOC and why the tool stands as a valuable solution to guide users across all the stages of gameful systems design, development, and evaluation. Finally, we present a usability evaluation of GamiDOC and a use-case scenario.

Virtual Reality (VR) technologies offer compelling experiences by allowing users to immerse themselves in simulated environments interacting through avatars. However, despite its ability to evoke emotional responses, and seeing 'through the eyes' of the displayed other, it remains unclear to what extent VR actually fosters perspective-taking (PT) or thinking about others' thoughts and feelings. It might be that the common belief that one can "become someone else" through VR is misleading, and that engaging situations through a different viewpoint does not produce a different cognitive standpoint. To test this, we conducted a 2 (perspective, first-person or third-person) by 2 (perspective-taking task or no task) to examine effects on perspective taking, measured via audio-recordings afforded by the think-aloud protocol. Our data demonstrate that while first-person perspective (1PP) facilitates perceived embodiment, it has no appreciable influence on perspective-taking. Regardless of 1PP or third-person perspective (3PP), perspective-taking was substantially and significantly increased when users were given a specific task prompting them to actively consider a character's perspective. Without such tasks, it seems that participants default to their own viewpoints. These data highlight the need for intentional design in VR experiences to consider content rather than simply viewpoint as key to authentic perspective-taking. To truly harness VR's potential as an "empathy machine," developers must integrate targeted perspective-taking tasks or story prompts, ensuring that cognitive engagement is an active component of the experience.

Personalized learning methods have revolutionized education by allowing tailored teaching approaches to meet individual students’ needs. This approach, supported by educational technologies, aims to engage learners with diverse expertise levels by adapting content and methods accordingly. This demo introduces an End-User Development system that empowers teachers to create and define interactive behaviors of educational tools using Trigger-Action Programming (TAP). The system facilitates the creation of "vocabularies" specific to each learning subject and translates them into verbal primitives for trigger-action rule definition. These rules are then used in the customization of interfaces. This demo presents examples using a tangible device and a web-based educational game aimed to enrich education activities in elementary schools. Future directions include studying teachers’ appropriation of the use of TAP to customize learning material as well as adaptation in new domains and with different devices.

Gamification and tangible user interfaces have been shown to enhance pupils’ engagement and their learning experiences. This study presents an evaluation of a simple gamified version of a tangible Internet of Things device (SMARTER) to support math learning. Twenty-one elementary school children participated in a workshop, interacting with the system and providing feedback. Results indicate good usability and a positive attitude toward the system. Children generally liked all the aspects, although the focus on mathematics was slightly lower appreciated. The study highlights the potential of integrating tangible user interfaces and gamified systems to enhance pupils’ engagement in education.

Gender-based violence is widely recognized as a significant societal issue, necessitating a concerted effort to raise awareness about its manifestations and consequences. Serious games have been often used to address the topic, particularly among the younger population. On the other hand, the use of gamification (i.e., integrating game elements to enhance user engagement with the subject) to raise awareness of gender-based violence remains unexplored. To address this gap, we developed a gamified platform aimed at raising awareness of gender-based violence and in particular of the role of gender stereotypes, in young adults. This paper presents the findings of our preliminary mixed-methods evaluation and a comparison between two versions of the platform: one employing cooperative gamification, and the other one based on an individual game modality. While the quantitative results indicate that the current platform may not be sufficient to have a positive effect in participants’ awareness of gender-based violence and attitudes toward bystander behavior, qualitative analyses yield crucial insights into participants’ positive evaluation of the cooperative mode. These analyses provide valuable information for future developments of the platform, and contribute to the exploration of gamification applied to sensitive topics.

In the current Work in Progress we present the SmartGame, a gamified web-app designed to support children in learning math and connected to an already existing tangible IOT device called SMARTER. Through introducing a cooperative modality and the union of digital and tangible advancements in technology, we also aim to foster interpersonal relationships in children from primary school, who suffered a lack of social interactions in person due to the recent pandemic. In the current project, we will study different possibilities of cooperation within the SmartGame, along with the ways in which teachers can personalize the activities and the gamification design based on students’ needs. Finally, we will test the web-app usability, user experience, effectiveness in supporting students’ education, and outcomes in fostering interpersonal relationships.

Modeling is an essential and challenging activity in any engineering environment. It implies some hard-to-train skills such as abstraction and communication. Teachers, project leaders, and tool vendors have a hard time teaching or training their students, co-workers, or users. Gamification refers to the exploitation of gaming mechanisms for serious purposes, like promoting behavioral changes, soliciting participation and engagement in activities, etc. We investigate the introduction of gaming mechanisms in modeling tasks with the primary goal of supporting learning/training. The result has been the realization of a gamified modeling environment named PapyGame. In this article, we present the approach adopted for PapyGame implementation, the details on the gamification elements involved, and the derived conceptual architecture required for applying gamification in any modeling environment. Moreover, to demonstrate the benefits of using PapyGame for learning/training modeling, a set of user experience evaluations have been conducted. Correspondingly, we report the obtained results together with a set of future challenges we consider as critical to make gamified modeling a more effective education/training approach.