SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT ONE: RESEARCH PROPOSAL [BASED ON AN ACTUAL STUDENT PROPOSAL]

FRONT COVER AS SPECIFIED IN ASSIGNMENT SPECIFICATION:

Module Name: KF7028 – Research and Project Management Module Tutor: Becky Strachan/Kyle Montague/Marta Cecchinato Assignment Title: Assignment One: MSc Research Project Proposal Student Name (first name, surname):

University Student ID:

MSc Programme Title: e.g. MSc Computer Science with Advance Practice Name of Supervisor:

Name of Second Supervisor:

Proposed Title of Project: Investigation on how to design a Serious Game that incorporates learner personalisation to effectively support user engagement and their educational journey.

• Background and Literature Review (500-600 words)

Video games have increased in cultural relevance and market share at a steady rate since their inception in the 1980s. In 2021, the expected value of the video games market was estimated at

$178 billion an increase of 14% from 2020 (WePC, 2022). Video games are now a leading form of entertainment and this has led to the idea of using them in other fields too including education (Laamarti et al., 2014).

Serious games (SG) are the idea of games specifically designed for purposes beyond pure entertainment, be that educational, political, security or military (Backlund & Hendrix, 2013). There have been numerous studies of SG implementation for education suggesting gameplay can have a positive effect on learning. For example, Ramic-Brkic’s (2018) study of using educational games with children and their teachers showed that they were positive about both the game design and use of the technology. Higher education has also found SG to be beneficial to students’ learning as exemplified by Morsi & Mull (2015)’s study of a 3D Adventure game to support the teaching of Digital Logic Design. The authors found the game provided an effective learning tool for their students. Further studies into SG implementation have been undertaken in the areas of cultural application (Doukianou et al. 2020; Tsita and Satratzemi, 2019), health and fitness awareness (Martin-Niedecken and Mekler, 2018; Sharifzadeh et al., 2020), crisis management (Hancock et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2020) and learning aimed at those with a physical/mental disability (Carlier et al., 2020; Fitzgerald and Radcliffe, 2020) all concluding that learning concepts in an interactive playful environment can be beneficial. The studies outline the following as main reasons for these benefits: providing opportunities for immediate feedback; problem solving; and application of knowledge to real world examples.

Connolly’s systematic review of SGs (2012) found they could enhance both skills and motivation. Krath et al. (2021) contributed further to this by examining the theoretical foundations for SGs and game based learning research. The team identified the wide variety of theories being adopted to inform their development across three main areas: motivation and affect, behaviour and learning. From this they identified 10 principles for SG design: clear and relevant goals, individual goals, immediate feedback, positive reinforcement; social comparison, social norming, adaptive content, guided paths, multiple options and simplified user experience. The authors called on further research to examine the effectiveness of gamification design based on these theoretical findings.

Personalised learning has been a key area of educational research with Patrick et al. (2013) defining it as tailored “learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests”. Li and Wong (2021) reviewed the research in personalised learning identifying the need to explore the “the use of various technologies and devices for promoting personalised learning in different learning and teaching contexts”.

Language learning is one area of education where the benefits of personalisation have been highlighted. For example, Jitpaisarnwattana et al. (2022) outline how language learners differ in their approaches to learning with respect to their learning goals, needs and styles and that these aspects should be acknowledged and accommodated within their educational provision.

Technology enabled learning has featured in language learning for several years and are often used in conjunction with the teacher in the classroom. In recent years, SGs are now featuring with increasing frequency and are generally seen to be beneficial although further research is still needed to explore this (Zhonggen, 2018).

• Rationale for your Research (150-200 words)

Technology including SGs are being used increasingly within education to support both learners and their tutors. However, researchers have called on further studies to evaluate SGs and their use in practice in different educational contexts (Krath et al. (2021). Personalised learning is also seen to have positive benefits in education, particularly in language learning where learners can often have different challenges and more individual requirements that need to be addressed. This study therefore aims to bring these elements together to examine how to design and develop a serious gaming environment for language learning that can adapt to provide a more personalised learning experience. It is envisaged this should also lead to heightened learner engagement. The study will also ensure that it draws on the considerable existing literature in this area in terms of those elements that are viewed as effective in SG design, such as those highlighted by Krath el al. (2021). The main contribution of this research stems from its ability to provide further insights and understanding into the design and use of SGs in a practical implementation to underpin a more personalised learning approach using the context of language development.

• Research Aim, Scope and Impact (250-300 words)

The main aim of this research project is to investigate if an educational language SG can be designed so it can be personalised to the individual learner and their needs. The SG would need to incorporate good SG design principles such as providing clear goals, immediate feedback and a simple user interface (Krath et al. (2021).

The researcher has experience of the Japanese language and understands the difficulties faced by students particularly those learning it as a second language. Thus, in order to make this project manageable, the SG developed as part of this research study, will focus on the Japanese language and more specifically provide a gaming environment in which to learn the Hirogama characters, one element of the Japanese language.

Throughout the design process, the researcher will be mindful of developing and evaluating design principles that could be adopted more widely. The main potential impact from this research study comes from providing a deeper understanding of how a SG could be designed and developed to include more personalised learning elements. If the design approach is successful, the main impact from this research is that it would provide an approach for designing SGs that can adapt to a

learner’s particular needs, having a more positive effect on the learner and their learning, and ultimately leading to better educational outcomes for that learner. Where elements of the design process are found to not be particularly effective, this would lead to a better understanding of those elements that potentially should be avoided in terms of SG design and implementation.

• SMART Objectives (max 400 words)

The focus of this research project is to produce a SG to assist an individual with achieving an understanding of basic Japanese characters, through providing a more personalised and playful learning environment. An analytics overlay will also be established to assist the learner (and their teacher) with tracking their progress towards the main learning goals. The SG will adopt a role- playing genre. Previous research indicates this is one of the stronger genres for designing a learning environment (Thong, 2014).

In order to achieve the research aim of this study, the following objectives have been defined:

• Gain a deep understanding of the current and recent research on SGs and their effective design, particularly to provide a personalised learning environment and in their application to language development. Also explore pedagogical approaches to language development and their implementation within a technologically enabled educational environment.

Deliverable: A draft literature review chapter that provides an appreciation of where SG research has come from, the main challenges and design principles, approaches to personalised learning and pedagogical models of language development and their incorporation into technology enabled learning.

• Design a SG for learning the Japanese Hirogama characters using a role playing genre that incorporates personalised learning and good design principles drawing on the results of the literature review. Incorporate in the design, the ability to collect data on the learner’s progression and engagement with the SG.

Deliverable: Design documentation for the SG game.

• Develop/implement the SG game using the game engine Unity, viewed as the leading game engine for smaller scope games/one person development teams.

Deliverable: A SG designed to teach the Japanese Hirogama characters using a role-playing genre and that adapts to the individual’s learning preferences.

• Test the SG with a group of users to elicit their feedback on the SG design and approach. Feedback will be through a combination of in game analytics and user feedback. Deliverable: Results from testing the game with a small group of users (5-10) in the form of

game analytics and user feedback.

• Analyse results from the collected data to understand how the SG performed and how effective the SG design was for the learners

Deliverable: Set of analysed results and resulting discussion.

• Disseminate the findings from this research study in the form of a written dissertation and project viva.

Deliverable: A written dissertation and viva that meets the assessment criteria for this module.

• Research Approach (350 – 450 words)

The approach taken to the development of the game will be aligned with the action research method, and seeks to uncover new thoughts and ideas of how SGs can be developed. Action research is an iterative, self-reflective method of research coined by Lewin (1946), who laid out the foundations for the research framework. Action research follows a cylindrical process broken down into a cycle of action stages; evaluation, planning, implementation, and then the process restarts again based on the results found during the previous cycle. The evaluation stage for this project comprises identifying issues within SGs, in this case engagement and personalisation as areas for improvement. This is followed by a plan to address these issues, through drawing on previous work into learning styles, SG design, language acquisition and frameworks designed for adaptive difficulties. This leads to the implementation stage, and embracing the supportive research found during the planning stage. Then the collection of data and results to enable a concrete evaluation of the project, while motivating further planning and implementation to improve on any strengths and

weaknesses found in the design. This approach was taken as it informs a strong basis for the development of video games, which are often an iterative process of implementing mechanical design, followed by user feedback and reassessment of those original theories and mechanics. It will employ convenient sampling to recruit participants to test out the SG in practice.

Hardware Environment: The SG will be designed to be of low fidelity, ensuring that the game can run without performance issues on low-end computers. The SG will require users to have a computer running the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, and should be run like a standard Windows application.

Operating Environment: This SG will be developed using the cross-platform game engine Unity (Unity, 2022). This was chosen based on a study that examined 27 published studies into SGs literature finding that Unity was the most used game engine and best option for small scale SG development (Tomala-Gonzales et al., 2020). Furthermore, due to Unity’s dominance as the most common free-to-use game engine, documentation to assist in the development stage of the game is abundant and easily sourced. At the same time, Unity provides a method of exporting that would allow the SG to run on different operating systems; Android, Windows and Mac OS if that was part of the design.

Two types of data will be collected from user testing: in-game analytics and feedback from the users themselves via a questionnaire. These will be analysed using narrative inquiry to follow each user’s journey through the SG in terms of both their engagement and their language development.

• Project Plan (1 side of A4)

Objective (and any subtasks/resources)		Deliverable	Start Date/End Date	Timescale
Objective 1: Gain a deep understanding of the current and recent research …. Subtask1: Research on SG design Subtask2: Research on personalised learning for SG/TEL Subtask 3: Research on pedagogy for language development and tech enabled learning		Draft Literature Review Chapter	Week 1 – Week 3	3 weeks (one week per sub task)
2. Design a SG for learning the Japanese Hirogama characters using a role playing genre		Design documentation for the SG game.	Weeks 4 – 5	2 weeks
3. Develop /implement the SG game using the game engine Unity Subtask 3.1 Design main game		Implementation of SG Game with draft methods chapter	Weeks 6-8	3 weeks (2 weeks for main game, one week for learner analytics)

Subtask 3.2 Implement learner analytics withing game Resources: Unity Engine
4. Test the SG with a group of users to elicit their feedback on the SG design and approach. Subtask 4.1: design and pilot user testing Subtask 4.2 Carry out user testing Resources: group of test users		Test results – in game analytics and user test results	Weeks 9-10	2 weeks
5. Analyse results from the collected data Subtask 5.1. Analyse in game analytics Subtask 5.2 Analyse User feedback Subtask 5.3 Triangulate data		Draft Results and Discussion chapter	Weeks 11-12	2 weeks (split evenly across the 3 subtasks)
Disseminate the findings Subtask 6.1 Write draft of dissertation Subtask 6.2 Produce final dissertation Subtask 6.3 Prepare for viva		Dissertation submitted, viva taken place	Weeks 1-15 + week 17 (for viva)	Writing starts in Week 1. Week 13 submit draft for feedback from supervisor Week 15: submit final version Week 17: viva held

• Ethics, Risk and Related Issues (600-750 words)

Ethics: The main ethical considerations for this research project stems from its requirements to have a small group of participants play the SG and provide feedback on their experience.

Participants will be given an information sheet with a full overview of the aims of the research and what data will be collected by the SG and from themselves in person and how it will be analysed, stored and used before they agree to join the study. They will need to provide their consent and will be able to opt out of participating at any time. The game design will ensure that the game clearly outlines its main goals at the outset to those playing it and what data it is gathering in the background. No personal data will be recorded from participants and all data will be anonymised at point of storage.

Risk: In terms of risk the researcher may have difficulty recruiting suitable participants but will use their existing networks to recruit participants from, thus minimising the risk as participants will feel some level of responsibility to support the researcher in their studies. Also participants will be asked to play for a minimum amount of time to ensure there is sufficient game experience for the

analysis aspects but this could take place over several sessions to ensure participants only play the game for the length of time they feel comfortable with. This will be highlighted in the instructions to the users. There is little risk around the development of the SG as the researcher has experience on code and game development and design and is using standard software and hardware to complete this work.

Legal: This project will be using software to produce the game itself so will need to ensure that it adheres to any software licence requirements. In addition, there are plans to evaluate the software with participants and collect data on participants through the game, thus the researcher will need to comply with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and with university regulations for students and research. In particular, this means safeguarding the data and ensuring that it is anonymised before storing to prevent keeping any sensitive and personal data which is not appropriate to keep for this particular research study.

Social: The data collected from participants are based only on the factors needed to understand their experience and engagement with the game. The analytics system will be tracking the time spent playing the serious game, time taken to answer specific questions, the play journey through the game and the time of day and date they’re playing. Participants will be instructed on this before they opt into the project. No personal or sensitive data is required for a participant to join the project as a player, and any questionnaires they answer post serious game will only be asking for feedback on their interaction with the game and ideas for further improvements.

Security: The serious game will be programmed using the Unity game engine, and will request no private data from the user’s computer, or any requirement for an email or log in details. The xAPI and Learning Locker will only gather the data it has been programmed to and any other options will be disabled during testing. Data will be held on the university’s protected U drive and transportation of the data to and from the U drive will be in a password protected folder on an encrypted flash drive to ensure no mishandling of the data can occur.

Professional: The researcher will aim to be honest and open with the participants and answer any questions with the aim of keeping the integrity of the project to a high standard. Participants will be treated with respect and dignity at all times. The game will be designed to a professional standard with the caveat that it is a prototype development for the purposes of this research study and not intended to be to professional working production standards.

Sustainability: The game and development software/devices used for its design, development and implementation, and for the analysis of the data all use energy and resources contributing to the climate emergency. The researcher will be cognisant of this and only require participants to play for a minimum time necessary to ensure suitable engagement with the game. The researcher will only use resources necessary to complete their research in a timely and professional manner. It is not seen to be practical to provide any further mitigation to the sustainability issues for this project.

• References (max 1 side of A4)

Backlund, P. and Hendrix, M., 2013, September. Educational games-are they worth the effort? A literature survey of the effectiveness of serious games. In IEEE 2013 5th international conference on games and virtual worlds for serious applications (VS-GAMES) (pp. 1-8).

Carlier, S., Van der Paelt, S., Ongenae, F., De Backere, F. and De Turck, F., 2020. Empowering children with ASD and their parents: Design of a serious game for anxiety and stress reduction. Sensors, 20(4), p.966.

Connolly, T.M., Boyle, E.A., MacArthur, E., Hainey, T. and Boyle, J.M., 2012. A systematic literature review of empirical evidence on computer games and serious games. Computers & education, 59(2), pp.661-686.

Doukianou, S., Daylamani-Zad, D. and Paraskevopoulos, I., 2020. Beyond virtual museums: adopting serious games and extended reality (XR) for user-centred cultural experiences. In Visual Computing for Cultural Heritage (pp. 283-299). Springer, Cham.

Fitzgerald, M. and Ratcliffe, G., 2020. Serious games, gamification, and serious mental illness: a scoping review. Psychiatric Services, 71(2), pp.170-183.

Hancock, P., Saunders, J., Davey, S., Day, T. and Akhgar, B., 2019. ATLAS: Preparing Field Personnel for Crisis Situations. In Serious Games for Enhancing Law Enforcement Agencies (pp. 189-193). Springer, Cham.

Jitpaisarnwattana, N., Darasawang, P. and Reinders, H., 2022. Delving into Personalisation Behaviours in a Language MOOC. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 21(1).

Krath, J., Schürmann, L. and Von Korflesch, H.F., 2021. Revealing the theoretical basis of gamification: A systematic review and analysis of theory in research on gamification, serious games and game-based learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 125, p.106963.

Laamarti, F., Eid, M. and El Saddik, A., 2014. An overview of serious games. International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2014.

Lewin, K., 1946. Action research and minority problems. Journal of social issues, 2(4), pp.34-46. Li, K.C. and Wong, B.T.M., 2021. Features and trends of personalised learning: a review of journal publications from 2001 to 2018. Interactive Learning Environments, 29(2), pp.182-195.

Martin-Niedecken, A.L. and Mekler, E.D., 2018. The ExerCube: participatory design of an immersive fitness game environment. In Joint International Conference on Serious Games (pp. 263-275). Springer, Cham.

Morsi, R. and Mull, S., 2015, October. Digital Lockdown: A 3D adventure game for engineering education. In

2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-4).

Patrick, S., Kennedy, K. and Powell, A., 2013. Mean What You Say: Defining and Integrating Personalized, Blended and Competency Education. International Association for K-12 Online Learning.

Ramic-Brkic, B., 2018, September. Enhancing Progressive Education through the Use of Serious Games. In IEEE 2018 10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games). Sharifzadeh, N., Kharrazi, H., Nazari, E., Tabesh, H., Khodabandeh, M.E., Heidari, S. and Tara, M., 2020.

Health education serious games targeting health care providers, patients, and public health users: scoping review. JMIR serious games, 8(1), p.e13459.

Smith, J., Sears, N., Taylor, B. and Johnson, M., 2020. Serious games for serious crises: reflections from an infectious disease outbreak matrix game. Globalization and Health, 16(1), pp.1-8.

Thong, L.P., 2014. Situated learning with role-playing games to improve transfer of learning in tertiary education classrooms. In IEEE 6th Intl Conference on Games & Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications Tomalá-Gonzáles, J., Guamán-Quinche, J., Guamán-Quinche, E., Chamba-Zaragocin, W. and Mendoza- Betancourt, S., 2020, June. Serious Games: Review of methodologies and Games engines for their development. IEEE 2020 15th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies

Tsita, C. and Satratzemi, M., 2019, November. A serious game design and evaluation approach to enhance cultural heritage understanding. In International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance (pp. 438-446). Springer, Cham.

Zhonggen, Y., 2018. Differences in serious game-aided and traditional English vocabulary acquisition. Computers & Education, 127, pp.214-232.

Get expert help for KF7028 – Research and Project Management Module and many more. 24X7 help, plag-free solution. Order online now!