International Journal of Gaming and Computer Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS)
SPECIAL ISSUE ON: Assessing Human Capabilities in Video Games and Simulations

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: June 2nd, 2014

Guest Editor: Richard N. Landers

INTRODUCTION:
In video games and computer mediated simulations (GCMS), instructional designers and human resources professionals can develop virtual situations and environments that enable people to exhibit a wide range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs; “O” includes a diverse set of constructs such as personality, preferences, interests).  Often, direct measurement of these KSAOs outside of a computer-mediated environment is difficult, confounded, or costly. For example, in the instructional context, children may be more enthusiastic to demonstrate their mathematical fluency in a video game than on a paper-and-pencil test.  When training firefighters, performance in a computer simulation may be used to assess job proficiency without the expense or risk of a live simulation.

In this issue, we plan to collect rigorous theoretical and empirical explorations of KSAO measurement using GCMS.  Quantitative approaches, especially those containing concurrent or predictive validation data, are the highest priority, although any rigorous examination of KSAO measurement in GCMS will be considered. Read more on Call: Assessing Human Capabilities in Video Games and Simulations – Special issue of IJGCMS…

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

“Architectural Space and Interaction” – Workshop on space in interaction

Two-day workshop at CHI 2014, April 26th or 27th in Toronto, Canada

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 10th 2014, via E-Mail to n.dalton@open.ac.uk

SUBMISSION FORMAT: 2-4 page position papers, formatted according to ACM SIGCHI Publications Format (not anonymised)

NOTIFICATION: February 1st, 2014

INFORMATION & NEWS: http://interactioninspaceworkshop.blogspot.com

From the earliest two-dimensional graphic user interface, through to games & virtual reality, and now emerging into mobile computing, urban computing, ambient computing, tangible computing and ubiquitous computing, our awareness of space and its role in the interaction process is becoming more distinct. This workshop will bring together many fields of expertise in space to foreground the role of space’s role in the interaction CHI community. The aim is to bring together a community of researchers and designers who are creating interactive technologies in spatial settings to present and discuss design and research projects that have a theoretical foundation in architecture; to share and discuss concepts and prototypes that have been designed to explore ubiquitous computing and space; and to identify fundamental differences, similarities and synergies between design and research approaches that use space in different ways in HCI.

This workshop will be running over 2 days. The first day will consist of interventions to or observations & analysis of a space. The second day will present findings and identify a research agenda by asking the following questions:

• How will digital media change the spatial experience?
• How will interaction change to adapt to space?

Participants are welcomed from a range of disciplines including architecture, environmental psychology, computing, HCI, interaction design, digital arts, geography and cognitive science. Read more on Call: “Architectural Space and Interaction” – Workshop on space in interaction at CHI 2014…

Call For Proposals
10th annual Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference
June 11-13, 2014
Madison, Wisconsin, USA

http://glsconference.org/2014/call-for-proposals/

The Games+Learning+Society Center and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is excited to announce that the 10th annual Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference will be held June 11-13, 2014, with pre-conference activities on June 10 including the GLS Playful Learning Summit and the GLS Doctoral Consortium.

The GLS Conference is the premier event in the field of videogames and learning. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, this grassroots “indie” event continues to be one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for serious discussion about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. Our event is well known for its exceptionally high quality of content yet “community event” feel – one attendee called GLS “what happens if an all-inclusive Sandals Resort met a typical educational conference and landed in Wisconsin.” Each year, we foster in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business. Our continued commitment is to reinvent learning both in and out of formal school environments through the promise of games and simulations. Read more on Call: 10th annual Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference…

CARs@HRI: Workshop on Culture Aware Robotics at HRI, Bielefeld University, Germany, 03 March 2014
http://cars.e-hci.org/?page_id=8

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) 2014: http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2014/

Culture is not the first aspect that comes to mind when discussing human robot interaction. But our cultural upbringing does to a large degree influence our patterns of behavior and interpretation. Thus, culture is present in the development of robotic systems right from the start, unconsciously influencing how robots look, what we envision with them to do, and how they are programmed to interact with the user. Thus, culture significantly shapes how we interact with each other and with other social entities such as robots, and a better understanding of cultural differences and commonalities will have significant scientific, design, and societal implications. This workshop aims at improving awareness on the topic and facilitates communication among researchers from different cultures and those interested in culture as a factor in interacting with robots. The scientific focus of the activity is directed to culturally-aware robotics, which refers to a brand-new area in social robotics and human robot interaction and is closely related to the emergence of the field of culture aware computing in computer science and related disciplines. The main focus is on understanding the influence of culture on many human processes that affect human-robot interactions be it directly or indirectly. Culture aware robots can thus be defined as robotic systems, where culture-related information has had some impact on its design, runtime or internal processes, structures, and/or objectives. Read more on Call: Workshop on Culture Aware Robotics at HRI (CARs@HRI)…

INTELLIGENT NARRATIVE TECHNOLOGIES SEVEN — (INT)7

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

http://int7.westphal.drexel.edu/

KEY DATES:

• (INT)7 SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 3, 2014
• Tentative Date & Location: June 18, 2014, Milwaukee, WI
• ELO main conference submissions (not required for INT participation):
  • Abstracts for normal submissions: December 6, 2013
  • Virtual Festival of E-Literature First Encounters: February 1st, 2014

The Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT) workshop series aims to advance research in artificial intelligence for the computational understanding, expression, and creation of narrative. Previous installments of this workshop have brought together a multidisciplinary group of researchers such as computer scientists, psychologists, narrative theorists, media theorists, artists, and members of the interactive entertainment industry. From this broad expertise, the INT series focuses on computational systems to represent, reason about, adapt, author, and perform interactive and non-interactive narrative experiences.

(INT)7, the seventh workshop in the series, will highlight both the computational and aesthetic aspects of narrative systems and the narrative experiences they create. It will be co-located with the 2014 Electronic Literature Organization Conference (ELO 2014) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. ELO is the most significant international organization and conference series for creators and scholars of interactive fiction, poetry, and drama. By co-locating with ELO we hope to create an opportunity for greater awareness between the two communities. INT work can be strengthened by awareness of the challenges and goals of authors creating a wide variety of computational literary works, as well as the models being developed by scholars of this work. The ELO community can be strengthened by greater awareness of the types of basic research undertaken and experimental systems created by the INT community, broadening conceptions of the field and imaginations of its possible futures. It is possible that co-location may even result in identifying potential collaborations between members of the two communities. Read more on Call: 7th Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT) Workshop…