Papers by Anastasios Theodoropoulos
ABSTRACT This paper presents the implementation of an eTwinning project carried out between Europ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the implementation of an eTwinning project carried out between European schools of secondary education. Main objectives were to achieve intercultural approach through ICT and the use of virtual worlds. Comics were chosen as the main tool for that purpose. The results of the project are considered as very satisfactory.
The popularity of VR technology has led to the development of public VR setups in entertainment v... more The popularity of VR technology has led to the development of public VR setups in entertainment venues, museums, and exhibitions. Interactive VR CAVEs can create compelling gaming experiences for both players and the spectators, with a strong sense of presence and emotional engagement. This paper presents the design and development processes of a VR interactive environment called MobiCave (in room-scale size), that uses motion-tracking systems for an immersive experience. A user study was conducted in the MobiCave, aimed to gather feedback regarding their experience with a demo game. The study researched factors such as immersion, presence, flow, perceived usability, and motivation regarding players and the bystanders. Results showed promising findings for both fun and learning purposes while the experience was found highly immersive. This study suggests that interactive VR setups for public usage could be a motivating opportunity for creating new forms of social interaction and collaboration in gaming.
Proceedings of the 26th Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics, Nov 25, 2022
Education Sciences
This study proposes a methodological approach that allows educational robotics to be used in orde... more This study proposes a methodological approach that allows educational robotics to be used in order to develop collaboration skills in educational settings. Educational robotics is a promising educational tool that has the potential to become a platform for the development of a range of skills. However, there is a scarce amount of empirical case studies that present detailed information on the way it is implemented within formal primary school education. On the other hand, even though collaboration skills are considered vital for future school graduates, it is rarely discussed as the main focus of educational robotics. Most commonly collaboration or teamwork skills are viewed as a byproduct of the robotics activities. This work views collaboration skills as the main outcome. The methodological approach that this work proposes has been implemented during a period of three years in one pilot and two case studies. This research measures the reflection of the robotics tasks paired with t...
Open Schools Journal for Open Science, 2020
Στο παρόν κείμενο εστιάζουμε στην καταγραφή και περιγραφή της εμπειρίας μας με την εκπαιδευτική ρ... more Στο παρόν κείμενο εστιάζουμε στην καταγραφή και περιγραφή της εμπειρίας μας με την εκπαιδευτική ρομποτική, όπως αυτή αποκτήθηκε στα πλαίσια του 1ουRobotics Workshop που πραγματοποιήθηκε στην Τρίπολη από σχολεία της περιοχής, το Δεκέμβριο του 20171. Μέσα από ένα ταξίδι διάρκειας 12 εβδομάδων, 15 μαθητές από δύο λύκεια της περιοχής της Τρίπολης, καταλήξαμε να παρουσιάσουμε σε 500 μαθητές, έργα ρομποτικής που δημιουργήσαμε επιστρατεύοντας φαντασία, δημιουργικότητα και ομαδική εργασία. Η θεματολογία μας11οRobotics Workshop,τοποθεσία Τρίπολη, διοργάνωση 3οΓΕΛ Τρίπολης& ΓΕΛ Τεγέας, περισσότερα στον σύνδεσμο: https://goo.gl/MA2RWsπεριλάμβανε τεχνουργήματα με αξιοποίηση της πλατφόρμας Arduino καθώς και των Lego Mindstorms και γενικά έργα εκπαιδευτικών χρήσεων και εφαρμογών. Πιο συγκεκριμένα δημιουργήσαμε έργα αυτοματισμού, φωτισμού-ήχου, αισθητήρων-περιβάλλοντος, έξυπνα αντικείμενα, διατάξεις έγκαιρης ειδοποίησης, αυτόνομο όχημα, εφαρμογές ψυχαγωγίας και εφαρμογές ΙοΤ, αξιοποιώντας κυρίως γ...
Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022
Η δυναμική εξέλιξη του πεδίου της Πληροφορικής, εισάγει νέες εκπαιδευτικές και παιδαγωγικές προκλ... more Η δυναμική εξέλιξη του πεδίου της Πληροφορικής, εισάγει νέες εκπαιδευτικές και παιδαγωγικές προκλήσεις, συμπεριλαμβανομένου του σχεδιασμού και της μεθοδολογικής οργάνωσης της διδασκαλίας και της μάθησης. Πώς μπορούμε να διδάξουμε τους μαθητές μας καλύτερα σε ένα πεδίο όπως της Πληροφορικής, το οποίο αναπτύσσεται ταχύτατα και με ιδιαίτερες απαιτήσεις; Επιπλέον, πώς μπορούμε να τους δώσουμε κίνητρα επιτυγχάνοντας ταυτόχρονα καλύτερα μαθησιακά αποτελέσματα; Αυτά είναι τα δύο κύρια ερωτήματα που καλείται να απαντήσει η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή.Οι εκπαιδευτικοί και οι ερευνητές διαθέτουν πληθώρα μεθόδων διδασκαλίας που μπορούν να εφαρμοστούν και οι οποίες στοχεύουν στη μείωση της πολυπλοκότητας και στην υποστήριξη της εκπαίδευσης σε διαφορετικές καταστάσεις στην Εκπαίδευση της Πληροφορικής. Δυστυχώς, αυτές εστιάζουν σε διαφορετικά θέματα και επίπεδα της εκπαιδευτικής διαδικασίας και μεμονωμένα αδυνατούν να παράσχουν ολοκληρωμένες απαντήσεις στα βασικά ερευνητικά μας ερωτήματα. Μια συ...
Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022
International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction
Applied Sciences
In recent years, the use of VR games in cultural heritage has been growing. VR Games have increas... more In recent years, the use of VR games in cultural heritage has been growing. VR Games have increasingly found their way into museums and exhibitions, highlighting the increasing cultural value associated with games and the institutionalization of game culture. In particular, serious VR games have a variety of benefits for educational purposes. There are several studies that deployed VR games to improve visitor experiences in several contexts. However, there are not sufficient studies in the field that examine the benefits and drawbacks of VR gaming. This lack of classification studies is regarded as an obstacle to developing more effective games and proposing guidance on the best way of using them in cultural heritage. This review aims to analyze how VR games are used in cultural heritage settings, to explore the evolution and opportunities of this emerging field, the challenges and tensions these innovations present, and to collectively advance this work to benefit visitor experiences.
International Journal of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation
This paper is a case study on the use of educational digital games to elementary pupils and deals... more This paper is a case study on the use of educational digital games to elementary pupils and deals with games that promote algorithmic thinking as well as the basic principles of programming. The study involved 94 young pupils who worked in pairs (Pair Programming) trying to solve puzzle games from code.org website during their visit to the University of Pelo-ponnese in the context of the European Code Week. Factors such as satisfaction, evaluation of perceived knowledge and willingness to use games in future in the learning process were examined. Furthermore it's discussed whether a short activity like this can result to long term motivation of pupils. The article concludes that: (a) the pupils enjoyed the games and wished to repeat corresponding activities. (b) They considered that by playing, they acquired basic skills and knowledge as far as programming principles were concerned. (c) They preferred Pair Programming and estimated that they could learn better by assisting one another. Finally, it seems that the few hours visit was not enough to motivate most pupils to carry on with the activities at home by themselves.
Frontiers in Computer Science, 2022
In a changing world programming learning is becoming more and more essential in education. And, t... more In a changing world programming learning is becoming more and more essential in education. And, there are many programming environments and teaching approaches that address the learning needs of students in CS education. A single programming tool or a method do not fit all students. Research has focused on gender differences and there is high interest in increasing female participation. Games and especially game-design tend to impact perceived usefulness of programming environments. Moreover, personality traits like cognitive style and emotional intelligence (EQ) seem to correlate with technology and achievement in programming. In this study, the effects of three different programming environments were investigated, in high school settings, by creating games and taking into account gender and personality characteristics. Three groups were formed, group A created games with Scratch, group B used App Inventor and made games for mobile devices, while group C created interactive stories...
Heritage, 2018
Social media usage is affecting peoples’ views through opinion sharing, a fact that has started t... more Social media usage is affecting peoples’ views through opinion sharing, a fact that has started to attract cultural institutions, as it is possible that this procedure can possibly be a part of a museum experience. As the main goal of a cultural institution is the maximization of senses stimulation, the device that is offered to the visitors’ hands everyday and every moment, becomes an important tool for the art spaces. In this notion we perform research on issues that can be of great importance for the museum’s online presence and attraction. We focus on establishing the personality of influencers related to culture, as well as the characteristics of qualitative discussions on the social media. Crosscult Project is an EU funded project, that aims to spur a change in the way European citizens appraise History, and sets that basis of our research as the experiments are conducted within its scope of. Through the experimental procedure, we collect information in order to define the cha...
Educating Engineers for Future Industrial Revolutions, 2021
Learning basic programming principles is the main process to acquire computational thinking skill... more Learning basic programming principles is the main process to acquire computational thinking skills, which comprise an essential capability for education worldwide. The game-based learning approach is a very promising learning strategy towards that direction. Digital games help learners become active and engaging in the acquisition of knowledge. Though, the learning process is not always clear through serious games that teach programming. Personality characteristics like cognitive style, seem to affect how efficiently and effectively learners perceive the knowledge. Cognitive style deals with the way learners perceive information and is a significant feature in improving programming learning. Thus, in order learners to achieve better performances through serious games that teach programming concepts, we need to investigate how cognitive style can be incorporated into the design of game-based learning environments. This article proposes a framework for adaptive gameplay that can support and encourage researchers and game designers to properly identify the concept of cognitive style when designing game-based learning environments for programming learning. The framework models an ontology that searches personality traits and enables personalised decision-making learning activities.
Educating Engineers for Future Industrial Revolutions, 2021
HCI-VR lab in Short. The Human-Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality Lab, at the Department of... more HCI-VR lab in Short. The Human-Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality Lab, at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of Peloponnese, aims to conduct high quality research in areas related to the analysis, design, development, and evaluation of HCI and VR systems and applications, and in parallel to support the teaching requirements of the department in the respective field. Over the last years the HCI-VR lab particularly focuses on Cultural Heritage and develops technologies primarily for spaces of cultural heritage that cover the diverse needs of heterogeneous audiences providing holistic visitor experience. The HCI-VR lab is actively participating in National and European projects on Cultural Heritage, such as FP7 Experimedia (https://hci-vr.dit.uop.gr/experimedia), H2020 CrossCult (www.crosscult.eu) and multiple projects from the National Strategic Reference Framework.
Proceedings of the 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, 2018
There is a growing interest in physical computing to be used in school contexts to teach Computer... more There is a growing interest in physical computing to be used in school contexts to teach Computer Science. This study aimed to assess whether students' attitudes towards Computer Science and their self-efficacy with programming changed after engaging with robotic activities. Findings show that after completing a 10-week period with the Arduino robotics environment, students' positive attitudes towards Computer Science increased along with feelings of coding self-efficacy. In other words, students report liking Computer Science more and report feeling that they are more able to learn programming. These findings imply that using physical computing activities within the right context could change student attitudes towards and self-efficacy in Computer Science.
Research Anthology on Developments in Gamification and Game-Based Learning, 2022
The objective of this chapter is to explore the evolution and opportunities of the emerging field... more The objective of this chapter is to explore the evolution and opportunities of the emerging field of digital games for programming learning, the challenges and tensions that they present, and how educators may be able to collectively advance this work to benefit student learning. This work summarizes previous empirical evidence concerning the positive impacts and outcomes of digital games in computing education, or even impacts that do not let games to spread. Hence, a systematic literature review is carried out in this context to provide a comprehensive overview of works carried out towards incorporating digital games in order to acquire CT skills or learn basic programming concepts within P12 education. The chapter discusses on the range of indicators and measures used in the 44 selected studies, together with methodological limitations and recommendations for further work in this area.
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Papers by Anastasios Theodoropoulos