GTEL&S 2017 - Conference on Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S)

The idea and concept of learning with instructional and communicational technologies reached a new milestone in recent years with the rapid development of digital and non-digital games and toys. These immersive and interactive technologies are reshaping what we know about learning and teaching, bringing opportunities unimaginable two decades ago.
In 2003, James Paul Gee published his seminal book “What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.” Today, game-based learning, joyful learning, and gamification have become popular terms for practitioners and well-known research areas around the world. Learning fostered by games and toys is one of the most exciting and fascinating research areas in the 21st century education.
Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S) has been a popular and highly competitive research theme for the ICCE conference. As a research community, GTEL&S attracts well-known researchers around the world to join the annual conversation organized by the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education. Each year, researchers explore cutting-edge technologies, novel pedagogical concepts, and groundbreaking design with a single purpose?to reform and transform education. Cloud computing, big data, flipped classroom, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), gamification, makerspace, embodied cognition are some of the ideas zealously discussed in recent years. Without question, we will continue this endeavor in innovating learning with games, the concept of games, and toys.
Enhancing learners’ motivation for learning has driven research on games and toys in the past decade. It remains crucial today. However, there is a greater challenge for education today. The world has grown into a “flat” new world while constant changes have become the new normal. Reengineering and redesigning education for the new normal, such as inquiry, knowledge production, innovation, collaboration and creativity?is not a lofty goal, but a must. Games and toys are not just for fun; they embody learning processes that foster collaborative problem-solving, deep thinking, team work, decision-making and inquiry. They are fun and they can play a pivotal role in transforming learning mechanisms?from a drill and practice model to one that encourages inquiry, knowledge production, global citizenship, collaboration, and creativity.
As a research community, we are driven by questions pertinent to how games can be designed to foster intrinsic motivation, to restructure thinking, to alter discourse patterns, to transform classroom-learning practices and to reform a teacher-centric learning culture. We are looking for the marriage of learning theories, technologies, humanistic design, and practices. We seek for research that reveals the results and processes of the above. In the era of the big data, we are looking for research that shed lights on how students’ activity and performance can be documented for the purpose of learning and teaching. We are eager to unpack the learning processes involving the use of toys, games, and game-like activities with or without digital technologies. Any other topics about games, toys and education are also welcome.
This sub-conference invites people from all fields who are interested in learning with games and toys to submit your manuscripts. Business communities are welcome, too, as the dialogue among researchers, educators, and industry partners is a must for fostering the use of games and toys in education.
Scope
Topics of interest to the GTEL&S conference will include but not be limited to the following:
Advanced learning technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, personalization, adaptive system, cross-platform gaming mechanism, augmented reality, etc.)
Applying learning analytics in game-based learning
Big data applied to learning with games or gamification
Case studies and exemplars
Collaboration and community-based learning
Comparison of learning with games vs traditional schooling
Design of learning activities pertinent to the concept of games
Effectiveness and processes of learning with games and toys
Empirical and formal evaluations
Enactment of game-based learning in informal and formal settings
Engagement, emotion, and affect
Entertainment robots and digital toys for education
Game and toy use in classrooms
Game attitude and perception
Game narrative
Games that foster high-order skills (problem-solving skills, creativity, etc.)
Gamification
Identity and role-play
Interaction techniques for learning with games and toys
Interface design
Learning foundations and design theory around games and toys
Location-based games and ubiquitous technologies
Mobile, casual, and online games
Multiplayer and social games
Multi-sensory interfaces
Natural user interface
Naturalistic studies
Pedagogy informed by games and learning
Play and enactment
Physical interactions and embodiment through games and toys
Simulation and animation
Social and cultural dimensions of learning
STEM education
Sustainable and scalable cases of learning with games
Theories on learning with games in general
Use of social media
Virtual world (characters, avatar representations, etc.)
Virtual storytelling
Wii-like somatic forms of learning, including in sports and training contexts