GALA Overview

GenovaGenovaDecember 6-7 2011December 6-7 2011

European Commission Information Society and

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11stst Review Meeting Review Meeting

GaLAGame and Learning Alliance

The European Network of Excellence on Serious Games

GALA Overview

Prof. Alessandro De Gloria

Università di Genova - DIBE

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Education

• Education is a fundamental pillar for a society that has in information and knowldge the main vehicles for development and competition.

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• 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.



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Serious Games and Technology Enhanced Learning

• New technologies provide powerful 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:

Occupy leisure time

Improve their knowledge

– Either k-12, higher education, and lifelong education can benefit from serious games

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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.

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European Union

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

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Serious Games

• Serious game design calls upon vastly wider range of expertise and roles.

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Michigan State University



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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

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GALA Goals

• GaLA covers the entire pipeline of SG research, production and deployment

• For each one of such activities GaLA intends 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

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The NoE

• GaLA collects excellence researchers on SG in Europe– 31 partners– 17 countries– Universities, Research Centres, Companies

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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)

• Since SG is a very interdisciplinary field, we have delivered tutorials to grasp the basic knowledge from each one of the disciplines involved in SG development and deployment

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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• Experiments will be carried out on user interfaces, attention studies, collaborative working, game

assessment, etc.



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Seed Projects (Cross-WPs)

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APP1 APP2 APPn



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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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GALA Overview

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