Sara de Freitas
 Sara is Director of Research and Professor of Virtual Environments at Coventry University. She was responsible for setting up the Serious Games Institute, which offers education and training, and a newly established Masters Programme and Doctoral School.
Sara currently holds Scientific Coordination of a European-Union funded Network of Excellence in serious games with 31 partners including NATO. She chairs the IEEE Serious Games and Virtual Worlds conferences (VS-Games) and has chaired 7 international conferences. She is on the Programme Committee of 38 international conferences and workshops, as well as giving over 100 conferences talks, keynotes and workshop presentations.
She has been a leading academic developing the new field of Serious Games and has published widely in the fields of pedagogic modelling, game-based learning, social media and e-learning. The books she has authored/co-authored include: The e-Learning Reader, Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age, Digital Games and Learning, Interdisciplinary Advancements in Gaming, Simulations and Virtual Environments: Emerging Trends. Her new book Education in Computer Generated Environments will be published in 2013.
Relevant web links:
- The Serious Games Institute: http://www.seriousgames.org.uk
- Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415875431/
- Digital Games & Learning: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=157255&SubjectId=940
Will Gamification and Games Transform our World?
Synopsis:
The talk will outline a ‘new learning’ emerging that is more focused upon open educational resources, open access to education and reducing costs for lifelong learning. Based upon my new book, Education in Computer Generated Environments published by Routledge, the presentation will provide examples of computer generated learning environments indicating how the future of learning will be gamified and focus upon playful and social interactions.
The talk will also introduce the idea of gMOOCs, massive open online courses that use game mechanics to reduce dropout rates, a major concern for MOOCs which currently have a low 10-20% completion rate at present. With the Digital Revolution affecting education and other sectors, a transformation of the delivery mechanisms of learning content towards web-based and mobile aware devices and platforms are transforming us so we are all becoming lifelong learners. What will this mean to education as a sector?
The presentation will conclude with reflections on the current use of games and gamification for solving other social issues beyond education and into training and real world practices such as emergency management response. Can games be used to change behaviour and save lives?
Intended audience: Students, educational practitioners, managers, policy makers, NGOs and researchers.
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