Innovations in the video game industry: changing global markets

The paper examines the video game industry in the perspective of being the paradigm of innovation in digital media and content. In particular, it analyses the response to two main factors that have impacted this industry over the last decade. First, it tracks the evolution of its global market and its emerging geography with the rise of Asia. Second, within this global landscape the paper explores how the changes derived from mobile and on-line gaming enabled major transformations of this industry. From here, some conclusions on the lessons from the evolution of this sector for the whole media and content industries are presented.

How to keep a competitive edge in the talent game: Lessons for the EU from China and the US. CEPS Task Force Report, 13 June 2014

This report is based on discussions within the CEPS Task Force on “The Quantity and Quality of Human Capital in Higher Education: Comparing the EU, the US and China", chaired by Jan-Eric Sundgren, Senior Adviser to the CEO of Volvo, and former President of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. It aims to draw salient lessons from the successes and failures in higher education practices in the EU, the US and China by comparing key education indicators and policy trends. Against the background of the profound tectonic shifts affecting the talent distribution around the world, which is fundamentally changing the global ‘brain game’, the authors argue that it is important that the EU as a whole creates ‘virtuous circles’ of talent and innovation to sustain prosperity and growth, as well as to secure the long-term well-being and quality of life in Europe.

Avian flu: the creation of expectations in the interplay between science and the media

This paper examines the emerging cultural patterns and interpretative repertoires in reports of an impending pandemic of avian flu in the UK mass media and scientific journals at the beginning of 2005, paying particular attention to metaphors, pragmatic markers ('risk signals'), symbolic dates and scare statistics used by scientists and the media to create expectations and elicit actions. This study complements other work on the metaphorical framing of infectious disease, such as foot and mouth disease and SARS, tries to link it to developments in the sociology of expectations and applies insights from pragmatics both to the sociology of metaphor and the sociology of expectations.

Aprender a enseñar juegos motores con otros : De saber jugar a intervenir como profesor de Educación Física

Durante la formación inicial, los estudiantes del profesorado de Educación Física construyen conocimientos teóricos y prácticos alrededor de prácticas corporales ya conocidas y vivenciadas. Aprenden sobre lo aprendido. Redefinen conocimientos prácticos en un nivel mayor de complejidad y abstracción asignándoles valor educativo que fundamentará su intervención profesional. Cuando le enseñan a proponer 'juegos no juegos' (actividades o deportes que presenta como juegos aunque no todos pueden jugar) el estudiante de Educación Física dispone de elementos teóricos que fundamentan el uso del juego como un recurso pedagógico (ya sea, como contenido de otros ejes, o como estrategia metodológica para la enseñanza de deportes o habilidades motoras). Sin embargo, cuando le enseñan a proponer juegos populares para divertirse, encuentra dificultad para planificar y justificar su futura intervención. Los resultados finales de una investigación cualitativa, presentada como tesis de maestría, muestran que en Educación Física se enseñan múltiples formas de juego motor con otros pero un solo modo de jugarlos: el no lúdico. Se enseña a subordinar el modo de jugar a la forma de los juegos propuestos por el profesor. Se enseña a moverse en el marco de lo permitido por las reglas del juego, a poner el cuerpo al servicio del juego

Aprender a enseñar juegos motores con otros : De saber jugar a intervenir como profesor de Educación Física

Durante la formación inicial, los estudiantes del profesorado de Educación Física construyen conocimientos teóricos y prácticos alrededor de prácticas corporales ya conocidas y vivenciadas. Aprenden sobre lo aprendido. Redefinen conocimientos prácticos en un nivel mayor de complejidad y abstracción asignándoles valor educativo que fundamentará su intervención profesional. Cuando le enseñan a proponer 'juegos no juegos' (actividades o deportes que presenta como juegos aunque no todos pueden jugar) el estudiante de Educación Física dispone de elementos teóricos que fundamentan el uso del juego como un recurso pedagógico (ya sea, como contenido de otros ejes, o como estrategia metodológica para la enseñanza de deportes o habilidades motoras). Sin embargo, cuando le enseñan a proponer juegos populares para divertirse, encuentra dificultad para planificar y justificar su futura intervención. Los resultados finales de una investigación cualitativa, presentada como tesis de maestría, muestran que en Educación Física se enseñan múltiples formas de juego motor con otros pero un solo modo de jugarlos: el no lúdico. Se enseña a subordinar el modo de jugar a la forma de los juegos propuestos por el profesor. Se enseña a moverse en el marco de lo permitido por las reglas del juego, a poner el cuerpo al servicio del juego

Aprender a enseñar juegos motores con otros : De saber jugar a intervenir como profesor de Educación Física

Durante la formación inicial, los estudiantes del profesorado de Educación Física construyen conocimientos teóricos y prácticos alrededor de prácticas corporales ya conocidas y vivenciadas. Aprenden sobre lo aprendido. Redefinen conocimientos prácticos en un nivel mayor de complejidad y abstracción asignándoles valor educativo que fundamentará su intervención profesional. Cuando le enseñan a proponer 'juegos no juegos' (actividades o deportes que presenta como juegos aunque no todos pueden jugar) el estudiante de Educación Física dispone de elementos teóricos que fundamentan el uso del juego como un recurso pedagógico (ya sea, como contenido de otros ejes, o como estrategia metodológica para la enseñanza de deportes o habilidades motoras). Sin embargo, cuando le enseñan a proponer juegos populares para divertirse, encuentra dificultad para planificar y justificar su futura intervención. Los resultados finales de una investigación cualitativa, presentada como tesis de maestría, muestran que en Educación Física se enseñan múltiples formas de juego motor con otros pero un solo modo de jugarlos: el no lúdico. Se enseña a subordinar el modo de jugar a la forma de los juegos propuestos por el profesor. Se enseña a moverse en el marco de lo permitido por las reglas del juego, a poner el cuerpo al servicio del juego

The formation of, and change in, the psychological contracts of graduates entering the Queensland public sector

The workplace is evolving and the predicted impact of demographic changes (Salt, 2009; Taylor, 2005) has seen organisations focus on strategic workforce planning. As part of this, many organisations have established or expanded formalised graduate programs to attract graduates and transition them effectively into organisations (McDermott, Mangan, & O'Connor, 2005; Terjesen, Freeman, & Vinnicombe, 2007). The workplace context is also argued to be changing because of the divergence in preferences and priorities across the different generations in the workplace - a topic which is prolific in the popular culture media but is yet to be fully developed in the academic literature (Jorgenson, 2003). The public sector recruits large numbers of graduates and maintains well established graduate programs. Like the workplace context, the public sector is seen to be undergoing a transition to more closely align its practices and processes with that of the private sector (Haynes & Melville Jones, 1999; N. Preston, 1995). Consequently, questions have been raised as to how new workforce entrants see the public sector and its associated attractiveness as an employment option. This research draws together these issues and reviews the formation of, and change in, the psychological contracts of graduates across ten Queensland public sector graduate programs. To understand the employment relationship, the theories of psychological contract and public service motivation are utilised. Specifically, this research focuses on graduates' and managers' expectations over time, the organisational perspective of the employment relationship and how ideology influences graduates' psychological contract. A longitudinal mixed method design, involving individual interviews and surveys, is employed along with significant researcher-practitioner collaboration throughout the research process. A number of important qualitative and quantitative findings arose from this study and there was strong triangulation between results from the two methods. Prior to starting with the organisation, graduates found it difficult to articulate their expectations; however, organisational experience rapidly brought these to the fore. Of the expectations that became salient, most centred on their relationship with their supervisor. Without experience and quality information on which to base their expectations, graduates tended to over-rely on sectoral stereotypes which negatively impacted their psychological contracts. Socialisation only limited affected graduates' psychological contracts and public service motivation. The graduate survey, measured thrice throughout the first 12 months of the graduate program, revealed that the psychological contract and public service motivation results followed a similar trajectory of beginning at mediocre levels, declining between times one and two and increasing between times two and three (although this is not back to original levels). Graduates attributed these to a number of sectoral, organisational, team, supervisory and individual factors. On a theoretical level, this research provides support for the notion of ideology within the psychological contract although it raises some important questions about how it is conceptualised. Additionally, support is given for the manager to be seen as the primary organisational counterpart to the employee in future theoretical and practical work. The research also argues to extend current notions of time within the psychological contract as this seems to be the most divergent and combustible issue across the generations in terms of how the workplace is perceived. A number of practical implications also transpire from the study and the collaborative foundation was highly successful. It is anticipated that this research will make a meaningful contribution to both the theory and practice of the employment relationship with particular regard to graduates entering the public sector.

Giving According to Preferences: Decision-Making in the Group Dictator Game

We study the decision process in a group dictator game in which three subjects can distribute an initial endowment between themselves and a group of recipients. The experiment consists of two stages; first, individuals play a standard dictator game. Second, individuals are randomly matched into groups of three and communicate via instant messaging regarding the decision in the group dictator game. In contrast to former studies our results show that group decisions do not differ from individual decisions in the dictator game. Furthermore, the analysis of the chat history reveals that players make proposals according to their preferences as revealed in the single dictator game and that these proposals in groups drive the final allocation.

"Well, now I'm upset": Moral and social orders in the playground

There is much still to learn about how young children’s membership with peers shapes their constructions of moral and social obligations within everyday activities in the school playground. This paper investigates how a small group of girls, aged four to six years, account for their everyday social interactions in the playground. They were video-recorded as they participated in a pretend game of school. Several days later, a video-recorded excerpt of the interaction was shown to them and invited to comment on what was happening in the video. This conversation was audio-recorded. Drawing on a conversation analysis approach, this chapter shows that, despite their discontent and complaining about playing the game of school, the girls’ actions showed their continued orientation to the particular codes of the game, of ‘no going away’ and ‘no telling’. By making relevant these codes, jointly constructed by the girls during the interview, they managed each other’s continued participation within two arenas of action: the pretend, as a player in a pretend game of school; and the real, as a classroom member of a peer group. Through inferences to explicit and implicit codes of conduct, moral obligations were invoked as the girls attempted to socially exclude or build alliances with others, and enforce their own social position. As well, a shared history that the girls re-constructed has moral implications for present and future relationships. The girls oriented to the history as an interactional resource for accounting for their actions in the pretend game. This paper uncovers how children both participate in, and shape, their everyday social worlds through talk and interaction and the consequences a taken-for-granted activity such as playing school has for their moral and social positions in the peer group.

Harnessing assessment and feedback in the first year to support learning success, engagement and retention

It has been argued that intentional first year curriculum design has a critical role to play in enhancing first year student engagement, success and retention (Kift, 2008). A fundamental first year curriculum objective should be to assist students to make the successful transition to assessment in higher education. Scott (2006) has identified that ‘relevant, consistent and integrated assessment … [with] prompt and constructive feedback’ are particularly relevant to student retention generally; while Nicol (2007) suggests that ‘lack of clarity regarding expectations in the first year, low levels of teacher feedback and poor motivation’ are key issues in the first year. At the very minimum, if we expect first year students to become independent and self-managing learners, they need to be supported in their early development and acquisition of tertiary assessment literacies (Orrell, 2005). Critical to this attainment is the necessity to alleviate early anxieties around assessment information, instructions, guidance, and performance. This includes, for example:  inducting students thoroughly into the academic languages and assessment genres they will encounter as the vehicles for evidencing learning success; and  making expectations about the quality of this evidence clear. Most importantly, students should receive regular formative feedback of their work early in their program of study to aid their learning and to provide information to both students and teachers on progress and achievement. Leveraging research conducted under an ALTC Senior Fellowship that has sought to articulate a research-based 'transition pedagogy' (Kift & Nelson, 2005) – a guiding philosophy for intentional first year curriculum design and support that carefully scaffolds and mediates the first year learning experience for contemporary heterogeneous cohorts – this paper will discuss theoretical and practical strategies and examples that should be of assistance in implementing good assessment and feedback practices across a range of disciplines in the first year.