Pablo Moreno-Ger’s blog

August is finally here, and it was about time I had a vacation!

Last year I was in Boston and that pretty much prevented me from taking a proper long vacation. Although I will not disconnect entirely, this year I’m planning to take the month easy and get some rest, preparing for a very intense start of the course in September (both professionally and personally).

This means that I will not be posting (and probably not tweeting) again until September. In anticipation of this blank period, just a quick reflection on the experiment about increasing my posting rate. Early June I decided to try to publish around a post per week and a tweet per day. That post was 8 weeks ago (and 38 work-days ago). Counting the experiment post and this specific one, I have published 9 posts since then (and 39 tweets).

As I said, I don’t mind whether any of the posts was relevant or any the tweets was read by anyone. the good news is that it seems like I can keep the pace. Let’s just hope I don’t loose the habit after the summer break.

In any case, for anyone reading, have a nice summer and see you in September!

General blogging, reflections

I have already mentioned briefly that we have been working with our colleagues in the Department of Physiology at UCM’s Medical School. This collaboration goes back to around 3 years ago, when I met Lola Comas and Carmen Fernández Galaz at a focus group in the School of Education.

We spoke briefly about <e-Adventure>, the kind of games and simulations that could be created and we decide to meet later to discuss potential collaborations. In the end, we decided to create a brief simulation to rehearse the steps of a practical exercise in which the students have to measure Hematocrit levels in a blood sample. This practical exercise is performed once in the course, using blood samples from sacrificed laboratory rats. For this reason, students are not allowed to recreate the exercise out of the scheduled session.

The key idea of developing a simulation game covering the steps of the exercise is that students would be able to practice the exercise at their own pace before going to the lab, thus becoming familiar with the steps of the procedure and later on getting more profit out of the time-limited lab experience. In addition, the students would later be able to practice the virtual version of the exercise before the exam to refresh the procedure. The result is what we call the HTC game, a virtual practical exercise developed with <e-Adventure> using photographs of the actual workbench at the lab, and that can be directly deployed through the Virtual Campus at Complutense Unversity.

The results of the experience have been very interesting. We conducted an experiment separating the students into an Experimental and a Control Group, letting the former play a few days before the actual session and sending the latter directly to the lab. The students in the EC found the practical exercise easier, demonstrated a better grasp on the concept and even made fewer mistakes.

All in all, a great success that we reported an article submitted to the International Journal of Medical Informatics, which published the final version recently. Here is the full citation:

Pablo Moreno-Ger, Javier Torrente, Julián Bustamante, Carmen Fernández-Galaz, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, María Dolores Comas-Rengifo: Application of a low-cost web-based simulation to improve students’ practical skills in medical education. Int. J. Med. Inform. Vol 79, pp. 459-467, (2010)

The article includes a link to download the game, which can also be found (in English and Spanish) in the <e-Adventure> website. In addition, if you don’t have access to IJMI, our self-archived copy of the draft is also available at the <e-UCM> website repository.

Research articles, educational games, teaching

In my last post I mentioned how, after we released <e-Adventure> v1.0, we split our development in two branches.

The first branch was focused on short-term improvements and on adding new simple functionality to our existing model. This line included GUI improvements, general optimizations and new features such as “Drag and drop”, a revamped conversation system or new exportation profiles. As I said in that post, the result of that line of work is the publication of <e-Adventure> v1.2. We have already published a release candidate, which we expect to make final within the next few weeks.

This version marks the end of this line of work. Version 1.2 will continue to be improved and supported, with minor tweaks and solutions to emerging bugs. However, this also our feature-freeze point, and no new things are expected to make it into that branch.

On the other hand, this allows us to concentrate our efforts in what we internally call <e-Adventure> 2.0, which is our current research & innovation platform/sandbox. Among many things, these are the main lines of work within <e-Adventure> 2.0:

• WEEV: Weev is the ongoing thesis project being developed by Eugenio Marchiori, proposing a new metaphor for game creation and visual languages to “weave” stories without thinking about flags and variables. The story of the game and the state changes can be defined with a high level of abstraction using the visual language, and these settings are automatically converted into an <e-Adventure> game with all the flags and conditions correctly configured.
• Android integration: We already have the engine working in Android phones (see our preview) and the next step is to provide an automatic exportation profile to the editor. <e-Adventure> 2.0 will support reading QR-codes or using GPS data to trigger effects when the games are exported to an Android phone, and the editor will allow the configuration of these aspects (we need to do them manually right now).
• Accesibility: We have already invested a lot of effort in integrating accessibility features into our games. The next step is to make the editor as accessible as possible, and we are working in this line with Technosite.
• Plug-in architecture for the editor and the engine. The key point here is to allow independent development of new features, affecting the engine, the editor or both.
• New integration architecture, with new ideas and protocols for the integration with Learning Management Systems
• New completely revamped GUI: We are working in the development of our own look & feel, giving a unified appearance to all our projects and (hopefully) solving our ongoing cross-platform GUI issues.

Each of these lines of work would deserve its own post describing it. I will try focus on some of them in the next few weeks.

<e-Adventure> educational games, projects

For the last year, <e-Adventure> development has been split in two main branches. On the one hand, we kept working on the current <e-Adventure> platform, solving bugs, adding a few new features and tweaking some things that we learned could be improved. On the other hand, we started a new development branch, which we internally call <e-Adventure> 2.0.

I will elaborate on what’s brewing for 2.0 in a future post, but today I would like to announce the first line has finally seen the light as <e-Adventure> 1.2. We have published a Release Candidate online and, as usual, we would like to hear some feedback about it. Among the major changes, I think that the “Drag & Drop” feature is the most novel, and covers an often requested improvement. We are excited about the potential uses for this new interaction.

Also, after our experiences with users at the Lab of Computer Science, we have added a new layer of flexibility to the conversations, and it is now possible to configure aspects such as waiting for a user click before changing text lines or having the option to display/hide the last line before a branch (so that we can ask questions and let the question remain onscreen while the student thinks about the answer).

Less prominent would be our new icon set, the performance improvements (both for the editor and the engine) and a reduced installation (which also translates in smaller applets when exporting for the web). Oh! And we also have community-contributed translations to Portuguese and German!

All in all, it is a great improvement, and we would like everyone to try it out. You will not be disappointed. Once we have gathered some feedback, we will release version 1.2 “proper”.

<e-Adventure> educational games

Yes, with a 7-month delay. In January 2009 I published a post summarizing my research activity in 2008. It ended with a question to myself: Would I be able to pull out another year as intense as 2008?

Well, let’s see…

• The growth of the <e-Adventure> platform continued at an even higher pace. The incorporation of brilliant programmers like Eugenio or Ángel (and Javier, who had already been working with the platform) accelerated our development speed. We published version 0.9 with a ton of changes and then finally 1.0. During the year we reached an average of 150 downloads per month (with more than 300 in November and December).
• After some key publications, <e-Adventure> was well very well received by the local media and we were interviewed a few times.
• I completed my first year of full-teaching duties, and used it to play some educational games in the classroom and to promote game programming among my students.
• We finished a first iteration porting the <e-Adventure> engine to Java-based mobile devices, and started a second iteration focusing on the Android platform.
• We collaborated a lot with the school of medicine at UCM, creating educational simulations with <e-Adventure> to complement practical exercises, performing tests with students and publishing the results. Summary: Playing provided a better understanding of the practical exercises and better grades.
• We opened new lines of research within <e-Adventure>, focusing on accessibility, new game-writing methodologies and new software and plugins for version 2.0 (more on this on a later post).
• I went to the Lab of Computer Science in Boston again. This time I went there for six months thanks to a grant from Real Colegio Complutense. I worked with Carl in new types of game-based learning, including a rather interesting game about how to properly package hazardous materials for shipping.
• I participated in 14 research publications (including journals, conferences and workshops)
• I attended only one conference: MatDidac 2010. I was invited to give one of the keynote sessions.
• Most importantly: I secured a tenured Associate Professor position at Complutense University.

Again, a pretty intense year. 2010 is also looking good so far, with my tenured position and increasing involvement in different projects. The diversification of e-Adventure as a test-bed for different lines of research is exciting and seems to be yielding interesting results.

I will let you know once the year finishes. I just hope I will remember to do my yearly report in January this time.

Research reflections

I am sitting in the lobby of the Palace Hotel in Bari, where the ISIE 2010 confernece is taking place. This is a huge conference (700+ attendees), most of them Electrical or Industrial Engineers. It feels weird to attend a conference in which most people are specialized in topics I only know shallowly (from my first years in college).

Then you may be thinking, “and what are you doing there?” Well, presenting a paper, of course.

This is the complete reference (no page numbers, the physical proceedings are not ready yet):

Roberto Tornero, Pablo Moreno-Ger, Javier Torrente, Baltasar Fernández Manjón (2010). CS Training: Introducing Mobile Educational Games in the Learning Flow. In proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Engineering (ISIE 2010). July 2010, Bari, Italy.

In this article we describe a line of research we officially opened about one year ago, working on the use of the Nintendo DS game console as an educational tool. We gathered ideas from Brain Training and created a game for practicing Computer Engineering exercises, named CS Training.

We have developed 10 mini-games related to different subjects in the computing curricula, and joined them together in a game similar to Brain Training (aka Brain Age, Train your Brain, etc.). These games can be practiced on the Nintendo DS anywhere and anytime, without pressure or limitations.

However, things start getting interesting when we use the “Evaluation mode”. This mode allows each student to take a measured challenge once a day. When the student starts the challenge, we use the console’s Wi-Fi connection to start a session on a Moodle server (entering user name and password on the console) and download a list of CSTraining-enabled courses. The student selects the course and the game begins!

In this mode, the DS will query the Moodle server to check which games should be presented to the student. The student completes the challenges, the game computes a final score and submits the score to Moodle. The coolest part? You can make these scores public and let the students compete for the best score.

Right now it is fully playable on the Nintendo DS, and we are working on a new and improved version including an editor. It is a very exciting project, I hope the community will like it.

Research articles, conferences, e-learning, educational games

e-Adventure was born with the objective of reducing the barriers for game-based learning adoption. As such, it was a platform that attempted to make it simpler for small development teams, or even individual instructors, to create their own educational adventure games without any programming knowledge.

Five years later, I believe we have been successful, and I’m proud of how e-Adventure is maturing as an open platform, at a rate of 300 monthly downloads, and with new features and usability features added on every release.

In the past three years we have been organizing courses at different Spanish education institutions, such as universities or high schools, with one clear objective: To teach teachers how to teach with e-Adventure.

So far the reception has been great. Teachers like the courses, enjoy using the platform and always give us back positive and valuable feedback.

The organization is simple: For two entire days (or three days with half-day sessions) we walk the participants through the constructions of a complete game using the e-Adventure platform. We usually start with a short motivation and context lecture, and then one of my colleagues (usually Javier or Ángel) go step by step through the construction of the game, while I walk among the participants bringing anyone who lags behind up to speed. This method works great, as it allows us to impose a reasonably high pace without being concerned (or interrupted) by people getting lost in the process. The pace of the class is enough to keep advanced students engaged, while the support by the second instructors is a relief for those who sometimes loose pace.

The course is very complete, and the by the end of the second session, the students have mostly completed the Fire Protocol Game (available at the e-Adventure website). The last day we give the students an empty version of the 1492 game, with all the scenes, characters and conversations, but without any connections or behaviors. That last day is usually fun and engaging. There is no new content (just a review of previously used features) and the students appreciate the rapid progress in the creation of the game (it feels like those books in which children can paste stickers to create their own stories).

Right now Javier and myself are in Puerto Real, having just completed the first day of the course. The participants seem interested and motivated, and rather capable from a technical perspective. I think this is going to be a great course…

<e-Adventure> educational games, game design, teaching

I also remembered that there was an ancient photo album section in the blog. I have not uploaded a single photo in 3 years to that one…

I think I should definitely close that one down and move on to a modern web service, that album is old and I don’t really like the software. I’m wondering whether to use an online service or host my own albums…

Suggestions?

Personal blogging, photography

Dear blog,

It has (again) been months between posts, and in these months I have been thinking about blogging, tweeting, facebooking and other forms of online presence.

I am registered in most web-based social forms of communication, but I am not really committed to any of them, all for different reasons.

For instance, I started this blog as a way of putting my research on the web, giving it some exposure, and keeping a log of our research activities (mostly focused on the e-Adventure project). However, maintaining this blog has a curious psychological effect: even though I do not have a lot of readers, I do feel a pressure to write witty and interesting posts. Unfortunately, I rarely find the time (or the mood) to write elaborate posts, and as soon as my workload increases, I leave the blog unattended for months.

I also write in another blog, in which we share stories of all flavors, usually with a geeky perspective. Write? Wrote. My last post there was more than a year ago.

On the other hand, there is twitter. I opened my twitter account a few months ago, because it is another important form of online presence and because I was interested in following twitter content. I do follow a lot of interesting sources of tweets from friends, researchers and media, but I rarely contribute content.

The case with twitter is different: it is not that I do not have the time (140 chars!). The point is that when I do something interesting, it just doesn’t occur to me to tweet about it.

So, if I were to maintain an online presence to expose my research activities, I should develop a tweeting habit and find the time and energy to post on the blog. Or I could just quit both activities, and focus on my articles and classes, which are the activities that they actually pay me to do.

I have been thinking about those two options. Archiving the blog and forgetting about twitter is obviously easier, and will give me more time and less pressure for my other activities. On the other hand, I think I could have fun maintaining an online presence if I could reduce self-imposed pressure.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to do a little experiment on myself. I’m going to try to commit to at least one blog post per week and a tweet per day. I’m going to pretend that no one reads them (let’s be honest, few people actually read them) and just focus on getting the posts and tweets published, without a pressure for quality.

Once I slip back into one of these non-writing lapses (it will happen), I will check back and try to reflect on whether I’m happy with what I posted and rethink what it means to maintain an online presence.

Personal blogging, reflections

After completing a 4-month process in mid-october and nearly another month of paperwork, my promotion to Associate Professor is now complete. More specifically, I am now a “Profesor Contratado Doctor” and it is a tenured, non-civil servant position, with teaching and research duties.

Obviously, this promotion means a lot for me. After many years in which I have sustained myself through short-term grants and temporary contracts as a lecturer, this is a great change. It is the confirmation that I can devote the rest of my life to research and teaching, which are my real passions (in fact, my main research area is actually education). From this foundation, I now have the freedom to pursue new projects and ambitious objectives without being constrained by short-term requirements. It is a dream that has come true. This is what I wanted to do in my life, and having this work secured for life seems like the most significant step in my career so far.

My only regret is that this had to be achieved through a competitive process against some colleagues and friends from my department. I really wish them the best luck in the future so that they can also feel this relief.

General reflections, teaching