CFP: ECSCW Workshop: Collaboration and Cooperation Through Serious Games for Competence Development in Enterprises

> ************CALL FOR PAPERS***************
>
> Collaboration and Cooperation Through Serious Games for Competence
> Development in Enterprises Workshop
> ECSCW 2009 Vienna, Austria 7 September
>
> www.reachyourtarget.org/moodle/<http://www.reachyourtarget.org/
> moodle/>
>
> Elaine M. Raybourn<mailto:emraybo@sandia.gov?subject=%5bECSCW%20workshop%5d
> >, Sandia National Laboratories
> Manuel Fradinho, Cyntelix
>
> Introduction
>
> In recent years, in particular with the globalization of markets,
> human capital has become a key strategic asset to enterprises,
> irrespective of their size. As poignantly evidenced in the global
> economic crisis, there is a lack of agility in processing new
> knowledge and acquiring new competences to address the challenges
> and exploit emerging opportunities. Mainstream corporate e-learning
> has generally failed to deliver competence development in areas of
> commercial value that contribute significantly to the
> competitiveness, agility, or resiliency of an organization. Examples
> of competencies that lack development include fast commercialization
> of R&D results, or skills associated with keeping a complex IT
> project focused, on time, and within budget. Even in less-demanding
> areas of enterprise competence development such as basic IT skills,
> there are very few cases demonstrating a significant Return On
> Investment (ROI). Instead most cases turn out to be expensive and/or
> inadequate solutions. Therefore interest is growing in innovative
> forms of e-learning such as serious games that may be better suited
> to provide memorable and transformational experiences. However, the
> verdict on the effectiveness of serious games remains uncertain
> albeit the existing body of research. Likewise, the ROI of sustained
> collaboration or serendipitous cooperation in competence development
> though serious games is unclear.
> This workshop especially welcomes empirical studies and work that
> address higher order competence development, such as "sense making"
> and "leadership", which pose interesting challenges derived from the
> modeling or validating of wicked problems dealing with social
> behavior. The difficulties reside not only in terms of capturing the
> competencies within a model that promotes highly engaging gameplay,
> but also in the adoption barriers of serious games within an
> enterprise, and validating a model's intended use and ability to
> accurately represent phenomena.
> This workshop intends to address issues of sustained collaboration,
> workplace serendipitous cooperation, and community building through
> serious games fostering enterprise competency development. We
> welcome position papers addressing the following questions:
> * How are corporate serious games designed for multi-player
> collaboration, community, and how can social interaction be included
> in evaluation metrics?
> * How can the design of cooperative workplace competence games
> inform the design of CSCW systems and motivational environments for
> work settings?
> * Are competence skills applicable in and transferable to
> diverse contexts or intercultural settings?
> * How do compelling game designs sustain player discovery, and
> collaborative competence learning over time?
> * A particular shortcoming of the game research methods to
> date is the lack of medium and long-term longitudinal studies of the
> social effects of gaming: If gamers are developing cooperative
> social or leadership skills, is the skill development lasting? How
> can we tell?
> * How can serious games support intercultural competence
> learning in enterprises?
> Additionally we seek position papers focused on the following topics:
> * Ethnographic studies of organizations using serious games or
> virtual worlds to develop leadership and sense-making competence.
> * Analysis and design of serious games personalized to
> individual users' strengths and weaknesses and dynamically adaptive
> to account for competence development over time.
> * Analysis and design of online virtual worlds such as Second
> Life (and other spin-offs such as RealXtend and Open Sim) that aim
> to develop workplace competencies.
> * Design of mobile devices or interfaces that promote
> community and collaboration, especially for remote workers.
> * Usage studies of workplace-based competence development via
> serious/entertainment games or MMORPGs (e.g. World of Warcraft)
> * Analysis of the impact of social media use and online
> communities (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) on competence development
> coupled with the use of serious games
> * Deployment studies of integrating serious game performance
> evaluation into existing organizations' competence development
> framework.
>
> The workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners and
> designers from several disciplines. Participants will be selected
> based on submitted position papers. Workshop participants are
> invited to submit extended versions of their position papers for
> publication in the journal Interactive Technology and Smart Education.
>
> Important dates
> Deadline for Position papers: June 20, 2009
> Notification of acceptance (early registration end 17th of July)
> July 6, 2009
> Workshop day at ECSCW, September 7, 2009
>
> Submission Requirements
> Participants will be asked to electronically submit the following:
> 1. A position paper of no more than four pages, which should include
> (a) A discussion of interest in creating opportunities for
> competence development and learning by means of collaboration in
> serious games.
> (b) A description of the approach to analyzing, evaluating, or
> designing cooperative competence development opportunities into
> serious games.
> (c) Examples or some discussion on lessons learned for CSCW systems
> by having taken certain approaches to design or evaluation.
>
> 2. A profile of oneself, as an appendix, consisting of:
> (a) A short biography (no more than 250 words)
> (b) The discipline(s) you are situated in
> (c) A brief description of your relevant evaluation and/or design
> work, with references (e.g., URLs)
> (d) A pointer to someone else's design or evaluation (e.g., URLs)
> that you think is interesting.
>
> Please send Position Papers as PDF or Document files to the two
> organizers:
>
> CONTACTS in the US / EUROPE
> Elaine Raybourn
> Sandia National Laboratories
> P.O. Box 5800 MS 1188
> Albuquerque, NM 87185, USA
> Tel: +1 505 844 7975
> emraybo@sandia.gov<mailto:emraybo@sandia.gov>
> Manuel Fradinho
> Unit 101
> NUI Galway Business Innovation Centre
> Upper Newcastle Road, Galway, Ireland
> Tel: +447886698917
> mfradinho@cyntelix.com<mailto:mfradinho@cyntelix.com>
>
>
> Position papers will be presented and discussed during the workshop.
>
> More information
> Please have a look at our webpage at www.reachyour<http://www.reachyour
> >target.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=2 for the latest workshop news.
>