We are happy to annouce that Dr. Johannes Breuer will be visiting Chemnitz this week. Dr. Breuer will be giving a talk in our series on “Interdisciplinary Research on Social Technologies” titled “Can smartphones make people smarter? Challenges and opportunities for the design and use of mobile educational games” on December 10th, 9.00-11.00 am in Room 2/N013 (Neues Hörsaalgebäude).

Dr. Breuer will discuss the potential of mobile games for learning in secondary and higher education, based on experiences and first results from a recently started project on the development and use of a mobile quiz game for higher education.

CrossWorlds invites all interested students and university staff to attend the talk. Please spread the word!

You can read the abstract of the talk and a short bio of Dr. Breuer after the jump.

Abstract

The trend towards being permanently online and permanently connected (POPC) that has been identified by communication researchers and media psychologists means that both mobile games and people to play them with are more easily and readily available at all times. The omnipresence of mobile devices also affects educational settings. Aside from being a potential source of distraction in classrooms or lecture halls, mobile devices have the potential to be used for learning purposes. Research on serious games, (digital) game-based learning, and gamification suggests that digital games can be used to increase interest and motivation as well as improve certain learning outcomes. A major obstacle that has hindered the adoption of digital games in education is the necessary (extra) expenditure in terms of time and resources. This, however, is different for the case of mobile games as most students (at least in secondary and higher education) now have smartphones and/or tablets that they also bring to and use in school. This availability of gaming devices and the reduced production costs of mobile games (compared to games for consoles or desktop PCs) is one key argument for the potential that they possess for education. At the same time, however, the use of mobile games for teaching and learning also brings along its own specific challenges. The purpose of this talk is to discuss both the opportunities and challenges in the design and use of mobile games for learning, based on experiences and first results from a recently started project on the development and use of a mobile quiz game for higher education.

Bio

Dr. Johannes Breuer is a postdoctoral researcher in the media and communication psychology group (led by Prof. Gary Bente) at the University of Cologne and the ERC-funded project “Redefining Tie Strength” (led by Prof. Sonja Utz) at the Knowledge Media Research Center in Tübingen. He graduated in media studies and received his PhD in psychology from the University of Cologne. His research interests include the uses and effects of digital games, learning with new media, and the methods of media effects research.