Story-Telling and Educational Games
First International Workshop on
Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'08) - The power of narration and imagination in technology enhanced learning
http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg08
CALL FOR PAPERS
The STEG workshop is held in conjunction with the 3rd European Conference on
Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL'08 - http://www.ectel08.org/),
Maastricht School of Management, Maastricht, The Netherlands, September
17-19, 2008.=20
CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
Stories and story-telling are cultural achievements of significant relevance
even in modern times. Nowadays, story-telling is being enhanced with the
convergence of sociology, pedagogy, and technology. In recent times,
computer gaming has also been deployed for educational purposes and has
proved to be an effective approach to mental stimulation and intelligence
development. Many conceptual similarities and some procedural correlation
exist between story-telling and educational gaming. Therefore these two
areas can be clubbed for research on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL).
Many facets of story-telling and educational gaming emulate real life
processes, which can be represented either as complex story graphs or as
interleaved sub-problems. This model is congruent with that used for
Technology Enhanced Learning in vocational training. TEL in vocational
training requires learning models that focus more on the process and less on the content.
The main difference between educational games and story-telling lies in the
users motivational point of view. Story-telling aims at reliving real life
tasks and capturing previous experiences in problem-solving for reuse, while educational games reproduce real life tasks in a virtual world in an
(ideally) engaging and attractive process. Nevertheless, educational games
require highly specialized technical and pedagogical skills and learning
processes to cover the topics in sufficient depth and breadth. Imbalance
between depth and breadth of study can lead to producing trivial games,
which in turn can lead to de-motivating the learner.
While the integration of learning and gaming provides a great opportunity,
several motivational challenges (particularly in vocational training) must
also be addressed to ensure successful realization. Non-linear digital
stories are an ideal starting point for the creation of educational games,
since each story addresses a certain problem, so that the story recipient
can gain benefit from other user experiences. This leads to the development of more realistic stories, which then provide the kernel for developing non-trivial educational videogames. These stories can cover the
instructional portion of an educational game, while the game would add the
motivation and engagement part.
In summary, this workshop aims at bringing together researchers, experts and practitioners from the domains of non-linear digital interactive
story-telling and educational gaming to share ideas and knowledge. There is a great amount of separate research in these two fields and the celebration of this workshop will allow the participants to discover and leverage potential synergies.
Workshop topics
* Story-telling and game theorie
* Story and game design paradigms for Technology Enhanced Learning
* Augmented story-telling and gaming
* Story-telling and educational gaming with social software
* Story-telling and educational gaming with mobile technologies
* Cross-media/transmedia story-telling and gaming
* Computer gaming for story-telling (Game design for narrative architectures)
* Multimedia story and game authoring
* Story-telling and educational gaming applications
* User experience and empirical research in story-telling and gaming for TEL
SUBMISSIONS
Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers
(max. 10 pages) or work-in-progress as short papers (max. 5 pages). All
submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by three members of the program
committee for originality, significance, clarity and quality. Accepted
papers will be published online as EC-TEL workshop proceedings as part of
the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN
publication series, ISSN 1613-0073.
Moreover, the two best papers of the workshop will be published in a special
issue of the International Journal of Technology-Enhanced Learning (IJTEL -
http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijtel)
Authors should use the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/lncs).
For camera-ready format instructions, please see "For Authors" instructions
at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
All questions and submissions should be sent to: steg08@dbis.rwth-aachen.de
IMPORTANT DATES
Paper Submission: June 30, 2008
Notification of acceptance: July 15, 2008
Camera Ready Submission: August 20, 2008
Workshop date: September 17,18 or 19, 2007
ORGANISERS
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aaachen University, Germany
Nalin Sharda, Victoria University, Australia
Baltasar Fernandez Manjon, Complutense University, Spain
Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
Marc Spaniol, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Germany
LOCAL ORGANISATION
Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Anna Glukhova, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
PROGRAM COMMITTEE (tbc)
Amanda Gower (British Telecommunications plc, UK)
Anna Glukhova (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
Ansgar Scherp (UC Irvine, CA, USA)
Armin Weinberger (LMU, Munich, Germany)
Bailing Zhang (Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia)
Baltasar Fernandez Manjon (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Dietrich Albert (Unversity of Graz, Graz, Austria)
Daniel Burgos (ATOS Origin, Spain)
Carlos Delgado Kloos (Carlos III University, Spain)
Christian Guetl (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
Georg Thallinger (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
Griff Richards (Athabasca University, Canada)
Harald Kosch (University of Passau, Germany)
Hermann Maurer (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
Irma Lindt (Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany)
Jose Luis Sierra (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Kinshuk (Athabasca University, Canada)
Lionel Brunie (INSA de Lyon, France)
Marc Spaniol (MPII, Saarbrücken, Germany)
Marius Preda (Institut National des Telecommunications, France)
Martin Haller (TU Berlin, Germany)
Mathias Lux (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
Michael Granitzer (Know Center, Graz, Austria)
Michael Hausenblas (Joanneum Research, Austria)
Michael Ransburg (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
Nalin Sharda (Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia)
Pablo Moreno-Ger (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Peter Schallauer (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
Raphael Troncy (CWI, The Netherlands)
Ralf Klamma (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
Richard Chbeir (Bourgogne University, France)
Romulus Grigoras (ENSEEIHT, France)
Stamatia Dasiopoulou (ITI Thessaloniki, Greece)
Stephan Lukosch (Fernuniversität Hagen, Hagen, Germany)
Vedran Sabol (Know-Center Graz, Austria)
Victor Manuel Garcia-Barrios (University of Technology Graz, Austria)
Vincent Charvillat (ENSEEIHT, France)
Vincent Oria (NJIT, USA)
Werner Bailer (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
Werner Klieber (Know-Center Graz, Austria)
Wolfgang Gräther (Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany)
Wolfgang Prinz (Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany)
Yiwei Cao (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)