News

From December 11 to 16, Eric Sanchez was invited by CANOPE and INSPE de la Martinique to take part in edutainment week. The program included :

- a conference for the CANOPE network on the theme of game-based learning , given both in person and remotely. The conference was attended by over 200 teachers and education professionals.

- A hackaton on game design for teachers in Martinique and students in the INSPE Master's program in Education and Training. During this Hackaton, which used the co.LAB platform, prototypes of nearly 20 games were designed on the themes of secularism for secondary education and fractions for primary education. The design also relied heavily on the use of generative AI for the design of graphics and game pitches.

The members of the project were in Brest in June 2023 to take part in the biennial EIAH2023 conference. For this occasion, we proposed a workshop on the theme of conducting collaborative design-oriented research (CDOR) in the field of digital learning games (link to the workshop).

This workshop welcomed 19 participants and 3 facilitators (Estelle Prior, Mariem Jaouadi and Eric Sanchez).

After a few introductory words, we gave the floor to five researchers and doctoral students (Iza Marfisi-Schottman, Gaëlle Guigon, Benoit Martinet, Bertrand Marne and Mathieu Vermeulen) who presented their own methods for designing learning games. This was followed by a time of exchange with the other workshop participants.

In the second part of the workshop, participants were divided into five groups. They discussed the roles of the players involved in the collaborative design of digital learning games, and possible solutions to difficulties identified during the design process. These exchanges took place around a game designed by two students from the Concordia MALTT Master's program (Sébastien Coupez and Ana Rajic), the Ra^Khetep game. A debriefing was then held with each of the groups to discuss the proposed solutions.

Lastly, the co.LAB project platform was presented, with a view to responding to the difficulties proposed in the Ra^Khetep game.

A serious game designed with the co.LAB methodology, with the purpose to train to the pre-triage of victims during major events, was used as part of the SIMCUP during the "Emergency medicine day": Twelve inter-professional teams (doctors, nurses, paramedics) competed in different simulated scenarios.

co.LAB will be at the 8th International Conference on Gamification and Serious Games, with a talk on "How to design effective serious games ?"

https://gsgs.ch/

The co.LAB project was present at the Games & Learning Alliance conference held in Tampere (Finland) from November 30th to December 2nd. 
Estelle Prior presented the analyses conducted on knowledge sharing in the context of collaborative design work. 

Prior, E., Sanchez, E., Mandran, N. (2022). Supporting Knowledge Sharing for the Co-design of Digital Learning Games. In: Kiili, K., Antti, K., de Rosa, F., Dindar, M., Kickmeier-Rust, M., Bellotti, F. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13647. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22124-8_4

The Fall School on Research Methods held in Leysin from November 15 to 18, 2022 was attended by 72 participants. Eric Sanchez's plenary lecture was an opportunity to present the work carried out in the framework of the co.LAB project on design and collaborative research. 
Link to the school website
Ressources (vidéos des plénières)

Our article “Design Principles for Serious Games Authoring Tools”, presenting the design principles that led to the development of WEGAS, is published in the International Journal of Serious Games.

Access

From 5 to 7 July, Eric Sanchez was invited by the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy for a plenary conference during which he presented the co.LAB project.
He also led a workshop on game design for about twenty professors from the faculty. During this workshop, the participants were introduced to the co.LAB framework for designing games to be integrated into their teaching.

The co.LAB project was presented at the symposium "School and learning in a digital world", cluster Romandie, on Friday 24 June 2022. This colloquium brought together many trainers from the French-speaking HEP the theme of digitalisation of school systems. The presentation was made by Estelle Prior in a workshop devoted to the issue of professional development for teachers. She underlined the interest of developing collaborations between researchers and teachers.

co.LAB will be present at the international conference "Standardized Patients and Simulation" (SPSIM), Lausanne 2022, with a communication "The place of Serious Games for the Future Of Legal Education - PRITS".

The issues addressed by the co.LAB project on the evaluation of games for educational purposes were presented at an invited conference during the GAMAE days in Clermont Ferrand.

Sanchez, E. (2022) Evaluer les impacts du jeu sur l’apprentissage. Est-ce la bonne question ? . Conférence invitée pour les Journées GAMAE 2022, Clermont Ferrand (9 juin 2022)

LIP/TECFA (Uni. of Geneva) and LIG (Uni. of Grenoble) launched an autumn school dedicated to research methods for technology enhanced leaning.This event is inspired by the work carried out within the co.LAB project (collaborative and design-based research digital education)
Website: https://methodo-eiah.unige.ch/

The co.LAB project offers an hybrid seminar about digital educational resources (open to researchers and practitioners). The topic of the 4th edition is "open educational resources"
Link to the website and the resources produced by the seminar (videos and bibliography):https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/fr/Co.lab_s%C3%A9minaire

The co.LAB consortium was present at the RJC EIAH 2022 conference to present the research that is being carried out on the design of TSAKD, a game dedicated to learning algorithms and developed in collaboration with ITM North Europ. All papers are available in open access.

The TSADK game developed in the co.LAB project is intended for learning algorithms. A first version of the game was tested in the framework of the computer science courses given at ITM Nord Europe. The players' screens were recorded in order to detect problems in the user experience.

"How might serious games trigger a transformation in project management education ? Lessons learned from 10 Years of experimentations", written in collaboration between co.LAB and university in Agder, is published in the special issue "Digital Education and Learning in a Project Society", Elsevier.

Access

Beginning of a collaboration between the co.LAB project and another NRP77 project, the "Learning analytics dashboards" project at EPFL. 

The collaboration should improve understanding of why and how teachers use serious games dashboards.

Based on the results of the first use test, the use of the "Patients' Rights" serious game is extended to the physiotherapy (40 students) and nursing (80 students) programs.

Evaluation of the quality of the game by students, as well as analysis of its impact on learning, is underway.

The theme of the third edition of the co.LAB seminar will take place on 4 February from 9:00 to 11:30. The topic is "Collaborative design: models and tools". The guest speaker is Jean-Marie Burkhardt (LaPEA, Univ. Gustave Eiffel). Elsa Paukovics, Estelle Prior and Simon Morard, PhD students at TECFA, will present their work on the sharing of tools dedicated to collaborative design.

Registration to the seminar is free of charge:
https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/fr/Co.LAB/Edition_3

The serious game developed in the framework of the use case "Patients' rights and innovative teaching strategy" is used at HESAV, in an educational context, by more than 150 students in "Année propédeutique de santé".

First validation of the co.LAB framework is published in the journal JMIR Serious Games.

Jaccard D, Suppan L, Bielser F. Contribution of the co.LAB Framework to the Collaborative Design of Serious Games: Mixed Methods Validation Study. JMIR Serious Games 2021;9(4). [doi: 10.2196/33144].

Full text access

For her PhD work, which is part of the co.LAB project, Estelle Prior is developing a model of collaborative game design. This model focuses the issues of knowledge transfer and the decision-making processes within the design team. This model feeds the reflection that is carried out on the co.LAB platform and, more broadly, on interdisciplinary work of the design-oriented research type.

La seconde édition du cycle de séminaires organisé dans le cadre du projet co.LAB et intitulé “Co-conception, co-développement et co-évaluation des ressources numériques éducatives" a été consacrée à des travaux qui s’intéressent à conceptualiser la question de la conception collaborative.

Our serious games design framework is published in the journal JMIR Serious Games.

Jaccard D., Suppan L., Sanchez E., Huguenin A., and Laurent M., The co.LAB Generic Framework for Collaborative Design of Serious Games: Development Study, JMIR Serious Games, 2021, doi: 10/03/2021:28674.

Full text (open access)

co.LAB will be present at IEEE Serious Games for Health, Dubai, with a long paper and a presentation "A serious game for patient' rights education", D. Correia, F. Bielser, D. Bonnard, S. Yavavli, D. Jaccard

co.LAB will be present at the International Conference on Gamification & Serious Games (GSGS’21), with:

a presentation "Gamification & Patients’ Rights: a Serious Game for students in Healthcare", D. Correia, F. Bielser, D. Bonnard, S. Yavavli, P-B. Monaco, A. Huguenin, S. Monnier, D. Jaccard

a keynote "Learning through play. Myth or reality?" E. Sanchez

La première édition du cycle de séminaires organisé dans le cadre du projet co.LAB et intitulé “Co-conception, co-développement et co-évaluation des ressources numériques éducatives" a été consacrée à des travaux qui s’intéressent à conceptualiser la notion de ressource éducative.

MIMMS is a large-scale project aiming at the development of a serious game that will prepare health professionals to manage exceptional events.

The project team, which includes researchers, medical doctors, emergency medical staff, instructors, IT specialists, graphical designers and serious games experts, has opted for the co.LAB framework as a guideline for the serious game design.

On Monday 19 April 2021, the first symposium on patients’ rights will be held on the theme “Practical challenges and teaching in the digital age”. The symposium will be organised by a multidisciplinary team from the Haute Ecole Santé Vaud (HESAV) in partnership with AlbaSim, HEIG-VD. 

PRITS, the first serious game developed with co.LAB methodology, will be the focus of several talks.

Web page of the first serious game currently in development with the co.LAB framework.  Patients' Rigths and Innovative Teaching Strategies (PRITS) is an interdisciplinary project that aims to facilitate the learning of patients' rights for heatlh professionals. The project team involved trainers, engineers and researchers from health, law, design, education and computer sciences.

PRITS project is a partnership between AlbaSim, MEI (HEIG-VD) and the Haute Ecole de Santé Vaud.

This workshop is specifically dedicated to digital learning game authoring tools, with topics as:

• The existing Wegas platform 
• UX and UI aspects
• Concept of the co.LAB platform
• Usage traces analysis

The workshop is attended by project team (UniFr and HES-SO) and Nadine Mandran (CNRS, Grenoble University).

Workshop includes discussions on practical implication of ethics and data protection aspects for digital learning games.

The workshop is attended by project team (UniFr and HES-SO), Nadine Mandran (CNRS, Grenoble University) and Mathieu Vermeulen (IMT Lille).

Workshop includes discussions on digital learning games design methodology, design process and collaborative processes.

The workshop is attended by project team (UniFr and HES-SO), Nadine Mandran (CNRS, Grenoble University) and Mathieu Vermeulen (IMT Lille).

The co.LAB framework is tested by the AlbaSim team in the Patient’s Rights & Innovative Teaching Strategy (PRITS) project.

This project, in partnership between AlbaSim and Haute Ecole de Santé Vaud (HESAV), aims at developing a Serious Game whose purpose is as much to support students in learning the legal rules applicable in the field of heath, as to broaden the pedagogical options of teaching and learning.

First use of the "learning game project description model" at Bern University. The model is used in order to define a serious game project at veterinary faculty.

The model was used to guide discussion of a multidisciplinary team including the clinic director, a veterinary student, a veterinary doctoral student, a computer scientist and a serious game designer. The model enable to have a project description and proposal at the end of the 3 hours meeting.

During the meeting, foundations of project management are defined. A first outline of the elements of the co-creation methodology is elaborated.

The co.LAB project (A Digital Lab for the co-Design, co-Development and co-Evaluation of Digital Learning Games) has been elected for a four-year grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in the frame of the NRP 77 programme “Digital Transformation”.