This work presents a systematic review whose objective was to identify heuristics applicable to the evaluation of the usability of educational games. Heuristics are usability engineering methods that aim to detect problems in the use of a system during its development and / or when its interface is in interaction with the user. Therefore, applying heuristics is an essential part of developing digital educational games. Search sources were articles available in all the databases present in the Capes / MEC / Brazil periodicals portal, in the available languages. The descriptors adopted were "educational games", "heuristic" and "usability" in Boolean search in titles, abstracts and keywords, with AND operator, for publications starting in 2014. The inclusion criteria were: (a) articles with a clear description of the methodology used in the usability analysis; (b) studies presenting primary data and (c) articles whose focus corresponds to the investigated question. Two examiners conducted the searches in the databases and a third the evaluation and general review of the data. Initially, 93 articles were identified, of which 19 were repeated, 5 were literature reviews. Of the 69 that remained, 57 were elected as not eligible with only 12 selected for full studies, of which 6 entered the final review. With this review we can deduce that the field of heuristics and usability for educational games is still little explored, with few specific evaluations validated or in the process of validation, requiring greater investment in the area. Through this review, we found at least one heuristic that meets the usability evaluation of educational software: Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS).
Teaching computational thinking in K-12 as a 21th century skill is becoming increasingly important. Computational thinking describes a specific way of reasoning building on concepts and processes derived from algorithms and programming. One way to teach these concepts is games as an effective and efficient alternative. This article presents SplashCode, a low-cost board game to reinforce basic algorithms and programming concepts. The game was developed in a systematic way following an instructional design process, and applied and evaluated in a Brazilian public school with a total of 65 students (grade 5 to 9). First results indicate that the game can have a positive impact on motivation, learning experience, and students' learning, as well as contribute positively to social interaction, relevance, and fun. Results of this study may assist in the selection of games as an instructional strategy and/or in the development of new games for teaching computational thinking.
The European Commission Science Hub has been promoting Computational Thinking (CT) as an important 21st century skill or competence. However, "despite the high interest in developing computational thinking among schoolchildren and the large public and private investment in CT initiatives, there are a number of issues and challenges for the integration of CT in the school curricula". On the other hand, the Digital Competence (DC) Framework 2.0 (DigCom) is promoted in the same European Commission Science Hub portal. It shows that both topics have many things in common. Thus, there is the need of research on the relationship between CT and digital competence.
The goal of this paper is to analyse and discuss the relationship between DC and CT, and to help educators as well as educational policy makers to make informed decisions about how CT and DC can be included in their local institutions. We begin by defining DC and CT and then discuss the current state of both phenomena in education in multiple countries in Europe. By analysing official documents, we try to find the underlying commonness in both DC and CT, and discover all possible connections between them. Possible interconnections between the component groups of approaches are presented in Fig.
One of the main goals of many educational courses at various colleges, especially those which focus on applied economics and management, is the development of students' entrepreneurship skills. It is usually accomplished through various project-oriented tasks. The development of the students' entrepreneurship skills is also the primary objective of the E-commerce course offered by our Faculty of Economics. This course combines theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Students work on a number of practical exercises with the aim to create a functional e-shop. They have to look for business opportunities, understand economic processes, work within a team, and be able to promote their ideas, strategies, and procedures. Finally, yet most importantly, they must not be afraid to present and defend their solutions. This study examines whether and to what extent this approach contributes to the development of skills which are usually associated with entrepreneurship. The exploration was performed based on students' evaluation. Means-end chain model and hierarchical value map approach were chosen as a research method. The results of this research show that entrepreneurship skills are being developed except for a motivation of students to accept a risky business competitive environment. However, the propensity to take risk is one of the basic traits of successful entrepreneurs. Our future effort will aim therefore at modifying our educational content. Greater emphasis will be placed on how to teach students to accept competitive environment which is risky and mostly unpredictable.
This work investigates the effect of computer use in the memory process in young and adults under the Perceptual and Memory experimental conditions. The memory condition involved the phases acquisition of information and recovery, on time intervals (2 min, 24 hours and 1 week) on situations of pre and post-test (before and after the participants took part on a Basic Computing course), in which the participants studied the map of Brazil during 7 minutes and the estimates of different areas of Brazilian states were performed according to the magnitude estimation method, without the presence of the map. On the Perceptual condition, the estimates were made in the presence of the Brazilian map. The study made possible to verify that the use of a computer, as a new activity enables a differentiation on the memory process in relation to the different experimental conditions proposed and to the time intervals used between acquisition, processing and information recovery, showing that the use of a computer as a pedagogical tool may promote the improvement of the memory process in academic activities.