R - Teses de Doutoramento / Doctoral Theses
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- User-generated game design for creativity in education : audio-visual and tangible user interaction modelsPublication . Abreu, Filipa Cordes Aniceto Martins de; Barbosa, Álvaro Manuel MendesThis dissertation explores how the use of multimodal digital games can be implemented in the educational environment of Macau S.A.R., particularly in Kindergarten levels. Today's children need innovative skills to be productive, and creativity and collaboration are two essential pillars in their learning development. Solutions involving technology can now form a bridge between Humans and their natural needs, through immersion in digital environments, which are vibrant with physical objects. Knowledge and information are changing rapidly, and digital interactive experiences are progressively being studied and used as tools to address several physical and emotional difficulties during the learning process. Humans grow by tackling necessary physical manipulations as part of their natural learning development. During our research studies, we encouraged the use of digital games in school environments, and we encountered resistance when trying to establish the benefits of this practice, both in the teaching and learning environments. To overcome this challenge, we created and completed experimental studies in several schools, by introducing multimodal digital games in the three kindergarten levels of Macau's educational system. With this in mind, we created a framework with multimodal experiences based on flexible design patterns that exploit essential visual, audio, and tangible elements. Children, from three to six years of age, learn and play through fun activities and subsequently trigger creative behaviors following User-Centered design approaches. We used out-of-the-shelf commercial game platforms (for learning) that have been implemented in learning environments and educational curriculums around the world. We gathered data from these studies, giving us insight into how children interact with digital devices and physical objects in a learning environment sparking the aforementioned creative behaviors. We also confirmed that these platforms can have a significant impact on engagement when used in a collaborative environment and that creative behavior arises once freedom is given to children in a specific dynamic environment. Multimodal Digital Game Design Models: Fostering Creativity in Macau’s Educational System The collaborative engagement was observed and strongly supported when games were used in this context. When exposed to new exciting, fun, and challenging environments, children create different solutions for the task at hand. The study leads to the conclusion that the cooperative and social nature of digital and tangible experiences is a vital and challenging behavior integrated into the learning development of a child. Multimodal and augmented reality interfaces combine both the digital and physical worlds to guide actions and behaviors, providing opportunities for users to develop new and old concepts and skills. Through game-based learning, at an early stage, children effectively develop their character and ideas by being exposed to new ways of interaction and physical flexibility. The outcome of this doctoral research project resulted in a framework to support creativity in schools with multimodal digital games in learning environments. The said framework has User-Centered Design and Human-Computer Interaction for children, in consideration, as well as the incorporation of multimodal experiences based on flexible design patterns. Our future work will consist of implementing a strategy for the large-scale application of this framework in schools in Macau S.A.R. and the encouragement of creative thinking in other more complex scenarios. Future game designs focused on multimodal digital games are also planned to be developed, having into account the findings of interactivity and creativity published in this Doctoral Thesis.