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Cologon: a game to foster communication skills in inclusive education

Published: 26 August 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Inclusive education deals with the participation of vulnerable and marginalised - especially disabled - people in learning and with reducing exclusive aspects within and from education. Communication skills under an inclusive perspective are to be understood as more than spoken or written word. Levels of languages used and alternative modes of communication are to be explored and harnessed.
However, game complexity and technical constraints hamper the seamless integration in real world environments, especially when addressing groups aside from the mainstream. Building on four design challenges, we aim to develop an independently usable, user-friendly and user-oriented, technically low-threshold game called Cologon that fosters communication skills and takes into account the players diverse (dis)abilities, needs, and preferences - in simple terms: an inclusive game.
In this paper we present our iterative participatory design process and the conceptual prototype. The results of an evaluation of this prototype in a participatory game design workshop point to unique insights: participants prioritised visual and audible cues above any use of language and one-device-per-player combined with the choice of roles was a challenge for all participants and created a creative communication experience.

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  • (2025)Future Directions and Innovations in Digital Educational Escape Room GamesDigital Escape Room Designs in Education10.4018/979-8-3693-4219-0.ch008(407-466)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2025

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cover image ACM Other conferences
FDG '19: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
August 2019
822 pages
ISBN:9781450372176
DOI:10.1145/3337722
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 August 2019

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Author Tags

  1. game design
  2. inclusive education
  3. inclusive play
  4. participatory design
  5. serious games

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FDG '19

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FDG '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 46 of 124 submissions, 37%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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View all
  • (2025)Future Directions and Innovations in Digital Educational Escape Room GamesDigital Escape Room Designs in Education10.4018/979-8-3693-4219-0.ch008(407-466)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2025

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