Search results

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the UK. Black men are in a higher prostate cancer risk group possibly due to inherent genetic factors. The purpose of this paper is to introduce PROstate Cancer Evaluation and Education (PROCEE), an innovative serious game aimed at providing prostate cancer information and risk evaluation to black African-Caribbean men.

PROCEE has been carefully co-designed with prostate cancer experts, prostate cancer patients and members of the black African-Caribbean community in order to ensure that it meets the real needs and expectations of the target audience.

During the co-design process, the users defined an easy to use and entertaining game which can effectively raise awareness, inform users about prostate cancer and their risk, and encourage symptomatic men to seek medical attention in a timely manner.

During focus group evaluations, users embraced the game and emphasised that it can potentially have a positive impact on changing user behaviour among high risk men who are experiencing symptoms and who are reluctant to visit their doctor.

The aim of the Game On project is to adapt and create highly engaging and motivating serious games to teach employment skills to prisoners, ex‐offenders and those at risk of offending (termed offenders). The target audience first trialled existing serious games with work‐based educational content to identify their limitations and to highlight gaps in provision. From this, a development plan evolved for the adaptation of these materials and the creation of new materials using 3D games mods' to teach induction information to prisoners in an accessible format. Games features include an ability to personalise educational content, locale detection for use in a variety of countries, accessibility features including signing tracks and closed captions and accompanying activities for a blended learning approach. Retrial of these serious games and games mods' with trainers and offenders found that they provided positive measures of engagement and effectiveness.

To provide a review of the past studies on use of information and communications technology (ICT) for people with special education needs (SEN) to inform a major research project on using ICT to facilitate self‐advocacy and learning for SEN learners.

Literature review, encompassing academic journals indexed in education, information science and social sciences databases, books, grey literature (including much internet‐based material), and government reports. Information was gathered on the perceived benefits of ICT in SEN, and the use of some specific applications with people having various conditions. A number of usability studies, mainly Internet and web technologies, are also outlined.

Although the literature shows a great number of ICT initiatives for people with all kinds of disabilities, there has been a surprising lack of research into the usability of the various applications developed, and even less concerning those with learning difficulties. The review of existing literature indicates a lack of attention to the application of ICT for people with SEN, compared to the other groups of disabled people such as visually impaired.

Findings highlight the need for more research on usability aspects of current and potential applications of ICT for people with SEN.