wp 8: support and services

GenovaDecember 6-7 2011

European Commission Information Society and

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1st Review Meeting

GaLAGame and Learning Alliance

The European Network of Excellence on Serious Games

WP 8: Support and services

Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge

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WP 8 Objectives

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1. Provide support and services for the different research, integrating and outreach activities

2. Offer tools and services for collaboration between internal and external partners reducing the fragmentation

3. Set-up, implement and maintain Virtual Research Environment (VRE) able to support effective international and multi-disciplinary

4. Set-up of a pan-European SG Living Lab Network (SGLLN).

5. Application of different social network analysis tools



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WP 8 Achievements

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Task 8.1

Task 8.3 WP8

START END

M6 Gala Social Network analysisapproach

M8: GaLA VRE Requirements M12: LL Requirements

M12 GaLA VRE Release

Task 8.2

Main result: MS 28- VRE release ( (T8.1) 14):

Result: VRE(14) and LL requirements (14) Gala Social Network analysis approach(9)



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Virtual Research Environment (VRE) Requirements (Del. 8.1)

ELIOS Lab – DIBE – University of Genoa

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Objectives

• The VRE is the technological platform of the GaLA Virtual Research Center (VRC), a major long-term target of the project– Close collaboration and integration among the actors that

represent excellence in Serious Game (SG) research in Europe• Open to cooperation also by third parties

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State of the art (I)

• Thematic VREs– TextGrid, ArcheoGrid, Esad, MemRE, VeRSI

• Scientific workflow management– Probably the most important application for scientific VREs

• Typical domains: climate modeling, structural biology, chemistry, disaster recovery simulation

– Kepler, Galaxy, OpenWetWare, NanoHub

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SoA (II) - Tools and systems for VREs

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TOOL/SYSTEM MAJOR FEATURE

MyExperiment Support for social networking in a research environment

Microsoft RIC Commercial virtual research environment integrated with MS Office and SharePoint. Focus on project management

eSciDoc Open source VRE, with specific services for scholars (in particular, publication management)

Sakai Open source e-Learning system with project management facilities

Enterprise Content Management systems

Flexible and powerful tools to build highly customized VREs. IBM FileNet Content Management is the most diffused, MS SharePoint is integrated with MS Office, Alfresco is open source.

Semantic MediaWiki

Help users to find more information in less time, and improve the overall quality and consistency of the wiki. Particularly useful to enhance existing contents in Wiki format.



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SoA (III) - Tools for research on SGs

• Basic approaches to support de-fragmentation• 1- Classification of SGs

– serious.gameclassification.com (2300+ featured games)– Imagine and Engage Learning EU databases

• 2- Design Patterns– Design Patterns in SGs: a problem-oriented design approach– Stellar’s GEL Theme team

• Integration, cognition, presentation, social, teaching, engagement

• 3- Ontologies– Zagal et al., Game Ontology Project– Top branches: interfaces, rules, entity manipulation, goals

• 4- Blogging to understand games– Game Set Watch (Gamasutra), Semionaut’s Notebook, Terranova– Zagal et Al., GameLog project

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http://serious.gameclassification.com/

http://www.gameontology.com/index.php/Main_Page

http://www.gamelog.cl/



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GaLA user requirements survey

• Early feedback on the existing GaLA collaboration area– Early release less than one month before (january 2011)– Limited features

• WP and Task management• Document repository• Mailing lists• Forum for WPs and tasks• Calendar • Researchers’ contacts with pictures

• Online survey– 36 respondents

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User requirements results (I)

• Project management– Key functionalities: document repository and contact

management– Assessment of the first release (January 2011)

• Useful system• Not high assessment

– System not complete and low user familiarity• Features suggested (and implemented)

– Collaborative editing (Wiki)– Support for surveys– Meeting management– Support for social networking (included in the Young Academy)

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User requirements results (II)

• Collaboration tools– Need for tools for specific SG research (definition of the SG field)

• Databases for games and related research, ordered repository of SGs and use cases

• Social networking– Key functionality

• Group management– Other important

• Interest management and sharing, support for online events, support for presence and exchange and, finally, showcasing

– Low rating for parameteres typical of social VREs• reputation management, IP management and ownership, crediting,

attribution

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Overall need

• Researches in the SG field have to work to shape the knolwedge in a young and complex field

• Need to focus on the creation of a common vocabulary (e.g. taxonomies, data, standards and metadata) that allows researchers from different fields (pedagogy, psychology, computer science, game design, etc.) to understand each other and develop a common understanding

• Build an operationally exploitable network of knowledge– Link among games, mechanisms, pedagogical theories,

assessment methods, deployment modes, development tools, business models, research papers, etc.

• This requires exploiting lower-level tools and systems to build key specific modules for a SG VRE

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1- Project management

• Joomla-based GaLA website– Shared calendar, definition of WPs, tasks and

milestone, assignment of responsibilities to users (e.g. WP coordination); definition of timing (e.g. WP deadlines); shared repository of documents; communication channel (e.g. forum and news feed on call for papers, projects and publications); list of contacts; online surveys; meeting management.

• Additional tools are taken off-the-shelf– Skype for call-conference and Mendeley for reference

management– Standard choices in GaLA, in order to avoid confusion

across tasks, as required by partners

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2- Support for communities

• The wiki and forums comply with the UGC requirements for Social Networking, as requested in Del. 8.8

• The SN part of the VRE is developed in the context of the Young Academy (YA) network – Del 5.1– Elgg technology– Database of people with profile; possibility of friendship and

following;• Smart presence on popular Social Media (WP9)

– Integrated in the GaLA website– Tools for cross-posting

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3- Support for SG field definition

• The most innovative and important part of VRE, developed to support the community of SG researchers

• A repository of SGs described in a multidisciplinary way• Implemented through the WikiMedia engine

– Knowledge structured according to the WPs, functional to the partners’ needs

• Upgrade: Knowledge Management Engineering (KME)– Knowledge Management System

• Off-the-shelf or ad-hoc– Semantic MediaWiki

• Build a system as a network of entities– Hierarchical ontologies with descriptions and examples

• Texts, keywords and other multimedia assets deemed as useful– Links among entities

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Six views on the world of SG research

• Description/classification of SGs• Analysis of game components (TC Mechanics)• Pedagogy (TC pedagogy and WP1 Metrics)• Deployment (WP6 and WP7)• Application domains (WP3 SIGs)• Technologies and tools (WP2 TCs)

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GALA VRE Release

Riccardo Berta, Francesco Bellotti, Alessandro De GloriaELIOS Lab, DIBE, University of Genoa

www.elios.dibe.unige.it

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Structure

According to the D8.1(VRE Requirements) document, the VRE has been organized in three parts:

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GALA VREGALA Web Site

Login

Collaborative knowledge (Wiki)

Project ManagementEvents Management

Survey Support

Support for collaborationand project management Support for SG field definition

Young Academy

Support for communities

Social Net Integration

Work in progress: knowledge engineering system

User Profile and Connections



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A mash-up approach

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CMSWiki Engine

Social Network Engine

GALA VRE

Project Management

Voting System

User Profiles

Events management

Form editorExtensions

Core Technologies



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Project Management

• The Project Management (PM) section offers a complete set of tools for the management of the project activities, with the following main features:– work packages and tasks support– milestones– time tracking– file management– discussion– calendar

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Events Management

• In the context of GALA, several events will be realized – project meetings, alignment schools, summer schools, etc.

• To support the management of these types of events, the VRE features a generic booking system for events

• The booking system provides the user with the possibility of – watching the

current events– his booking

status – publishing new

events as well • subscribed

GALA users only

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Voting System

• The management of a network of researchers needs also tools to support the democratic decision making process

• The VRE has a tool to manage voting among GALA members:– Creating voting pages– Checking votes and results– Online voting interface

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Survey support

• Several GALA tasks need to collect information from GALA members (e.g. about activities) and from several type of user (e.g. stakeholders opinions).

• The VRE feature a tool to support researchers in collecting information through online questionnaires– Create a survey– Connect to a DB table– Publish and online page

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User Profile

• To support GALA users’ involvement and collaboration, the VRE features an extended user management tool by – personalize profiles with personal information (e.g. about

research interests).– connect with each other

• We are in the starting phase in collaboration with Task 8.3 (CommunityNurturing)

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Young Academy (YA) network

• A social site which provides a support to friendship and following aimed at – promoting SG studies– people interested in SG studies also outside the GALA

partnership• Described in the D5.1 (Report on the SG education 1)

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Collaborative writing (GALA Wiki)

• A VRE area that allows the creation and editing of interlinked pages by using the simplified mark-up language used by Wikipedia

• It is used by the GALA members to collaboratively write documents – deliverables, working documents

and scientific papers• The structure is organized with:

– one main page for each WP, TC, SIG– from these top pages, each team

can setup pages, links and contents In a collaborative way

– a special section with several tools to manage the structures and administrate the growing set of pages.

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Work in progress: the KES

• The VRE has been online since three months after the beginning of the project– incrementally evolved according to the continuous requirements

of the GALA partners. • The collaborative editing tool (GALA Wiki ) is functional

to GALA members for their cooperation, but of relatively limited impact outside the consortium.

• So, our plan is that the final version of the VRE will feature also a Knowledge Engineering System (KES)– a more structured, searchable and machine-readable knowledge

environment able to manage a network of semantically defined knowledge entities

– The KES will be interoperable with some of the most relevant databases for SG research

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Work in progress: the KES

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Conclusion

• We have presented the release of the VRE– the technological infrastructure of the Virtual Research Center

• The target is to provide an online support to GALA researchers – and also beyond GaLA, in the future.

• According to the D8.1 requirement document, the VRE has been organized in three parts:– project management and collaboration tools– support for communities– support for SG field definition

• Technical viewpoint: mash-up approach • Future plan: add a Knowledge Engineering System

– is a more structured, searchable and machine-readable knowledge environment

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D8.4 SGLL requirements

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The living lab concept

• “Living Labs are environments for innovation and development where users are exposed to new ICT solutions in (semi)realistic contexts, as part of medium- and long-term studies targeting evaluation of new ICT solutions and discovery of innovation opportunities” Folstad

(2008, p 116) .

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Pan-European SG Living Lab Network (SGLLN)

Objective– support the innovation within the development and application– offer researchers the possibility to test and evaluate their games

on a larger scale as well as to support collaborative research.– bringing the developers and application users together– increase the joint multi-disciplinary research– focusing on the integration– Supporting collaboration

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Potential stakeholders

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source: iDATE



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Living Lab management

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Source Apollon



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Requirements local SGLL

• An open result

• participative process based on mutual trust

• good diversity

• governance: rules focused on the process rather than on the result, with a good margin of freedom for the attendees

• A transparency of the process

• Agreement on the use of specific software, tools and programming language

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Project preparation

service

Prototype creation

Meeting place

Testing and evaluation of games

Game development

Meeting place

LL methods



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Requirements virtual SGLL

• Tools that replace and support– Face to face meetings

(aural, visual) (Social media)

– Black- or whiteboards– Sheets and pencils– Document sharing– Possibility to show things

each other– Versioning tools– Tracking and tracing

possibilities– Environment for

collaborative development.

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Social Network Analysis Approach (D8.8)

Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge, BIBAYulia Bachvarova, Stefano Bocconi, Cyntelix

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WP 8 D8.8 Objectives

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1. Describe the theoretical foundation of SNA as well as to explain how SNA can be used in the different stages of the VRE and LL community building.

2. Describes how Social Network Analysis can support the nurturing of the GaLA online community.

3. Serves as input for the requirement analysis of the VRE and LL.



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Approach for SNA in GaLA

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Community lifecycle



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• SNA for the Potential Stage- Connect people with similar interests- Check how the different stakeholders are represented and take

adequate measures- Support engagement by motivating sharing

• SNA for the Coalescing Stage- Detect clustering and subgroups and the level of

communication between these- Use collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation

to enhance engagement by recommending suitable contacts and content



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• SNA for the Active Stage- Measure engagement by keeping track of the quantity of

members’ contributions (blog posts, comments, rating) and the rate of information flow

- Detect the ‘central’ people and support them in case the burden of managing the network increases

- Use content analysis to study the relation between the content generated and the relation between content authors

Data needed:• User profile• The social links (friend/follower) • All user-generated content

- Blog posts- Comments- Rating- Tagging



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WP 8 Work in progress

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1. The VRE is put into operation, with the help of SNA, the use will be analysed in order to find how it can be improved

2. Analysis carried out at the moment in the VRE based on the user profiles1. Riccardo’s Twitter network2. TCs relations based on common members (threshold of 5 members)3. People with common interests (threshold of 9 interests)4. Mail network (from Riccardo’s GaLA mails)( threshold of 25 mails)

3. Same mechanism will be used in the virtual SGLL, but taking privacy concern into account



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WP 8 Next step

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1. The VRE is now established- it needs to be used – depending on users’ feedback, the tools and the VRE will be upgraded so that it can foster the internal collaboration, esp. for co creation and discussion.

2. More tools are in the pipeline, especially merging different data sources:• For example, mails as sign of activities instead of TC membership for

TC connections• Data needs to be meaningful and accessible• Analysis needs to be related to domain experts experience

3. Launch the SGI SGLL as our first SGLL

4. Establish the other local living labs

5. Establish the virtual SGLL

6. Common plan of events taking the specific needs of each node into account.



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Deadlines and Milestones 2. year

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MS29 LL Deployment 21 MS30 Community Metrics 24

D8.9- Community metrics report-metrics and the periodic snapshots of communities



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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

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wp 8: support and services

Documents

european network of

media1st review meetingsoa

media1st review meetingstate

different research

gala vre requirements

serious game sg research

vre release t8

ms office