=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2730/paper22
|storemode=property
|title=Diligo 2.0: a game to assess geometric and emotional competences in preschoolers
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper22.pdf
|volume=Vol-2730
|authors=Federico Diano,Eliana Brunetti,Alessia Rosa
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/DianoBR20
}}
==Diligo 2.0: a game to assess geometric and emotional competences in preschoolers==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper22.pdf
Diligo 2.0: a game to assess geometric and emotional
competences in preschoolers
Federico Diano1, Eliana Brunetti2 and Alessia Rosa3
1 University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanities, Natural and Artificial Cognition
Lab (NAC), 80133, Naples, Italy
2 University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanities, Via Porta di massa 1, 80133 Na-
ples, Italy
3 Indire, via M. Buonarroti 10 - 50122 Florence, Italy
fdrdiano@gmail.com
Abstract.
Transition from kindergarten to primary school is a turning point in children’s
life; as one of the most complex challenges in a child’s life, it needs to be faced
with a set of skills that can be trained in early childhood. Diligo 2.0 is a serious
game developed on STELT platform, built up adopting an Agent-Based Model
approach. It is a monitoring tool to assess, in 5-years-olds, the emotional compe-
tence and the geometric and numerical thinking: two of the competences useful
to children accessing primary school. The tool also assesses the children’s atti-
tude to engage in slow or fast thinking activities. The assessment can be both
normative and ipsative: when normative, it is based on inter-individual compari-
sons; when ipsative, it becomes an intra-individual assessment.
Keywords: Serious Game, Agent-Based Model, Emotional Competence, Geo-
metrical competence, School Readiness.
1 Introduction
Children's transition from kindergarten to primary school is not a single event, but it
can be defined as a complex and long process [16] which has a consistent impact on
their future academic success and personality configuration [11]. Recent studies define
the concept of School Readiness as a set of specific characteristics and skills through
which children become able to learn in school [8]. Beside the pre-academic skills of
literacy, communication and mathematics, several soft skills have been individuated as
a part of early childhood development outcomes fundamental to the School Readiness
[5, 7, 9]. In 2012, Italian National Guidelines for Kindergarten, issued by the Italian
Ministry of Education, recognized those skills and competences as essential achieve-
ments for the 6-years-olds to face their transition to primary school; however, their
teaching is not always included in the national curriculum.
Diligo 2.0 is a normative and ipsative monitoring tool to assess in 5-years-olds two
of the skills part of School Readiness concept, such as the emotional competence and
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
2
the geometric and numerical thinking, and the psychological and behavioral attitude to
engage in slow/fast thinking activities. [10]
In particular, this tool lets teachers and parents assess the specific components of
each competence considered. On the side of the emotional competence, there are:
awareness of the emotions, use and comprehension of emotion-related vocabulary,
recognition of facial expressions and their link to the emotions, comprehension of the
situations that elicit emotions, knowledge of the cultural rules for displaying emotion
and regulation and management of one’s own and others emotions [3, 6, 15, 18]. On
the side of the geometric and numerical thinking, the components are: knowledge of
the geometrical figures, acquisition of big and small concepts, recognition of number
representation, spatial concepts of in-out and up-down, temporal order in terms of be-
fore and after, spatial directions left and right. [4, 14]
The third dimension considered by the tool is the behavioral attitude of fast/slow
thinking; it changes depending on motivation, emotions, environments, situations, etc.
Kahneman [10] describes the human mind as the product of two thinking systems in-
teraction: "System 1", fast, automatic, unconscious, emotional and "System 2", slow,
logical, conscious, effortful. The two systems interact with each other and System 2,
after a long training, can be able to modify and supervisor all the fast thinking activities.
In our fast and interactive society would be helpful to support and motivate children in
school to choose slowness, training them in monitored slow thinking activities. [13]
2 Prototype description
Diligo 2.0 is a serious game developed on STELT platform, Smart Technologies to
Enhance Learning and Teaching [12], and will be available on Android devices.
It is a monitoring tool to assess, in 5-years-olds, the emotional competence, the geo-
metric and numerical thinking and the psychological and behavioral attitude to engage
in slow/fast thinking activities.
The assessment can be both normative and ipsative: when normative, it is based on
inter-individual comparisons; when ipsative, it becomes an intra-individual assessment,
useful to highlight personal strengths and weakness of the single child, while tracing
his/her dynamic developmental profile.
Diligo 2.0 is expressed through a narrative metaphor, and that’s one of its strengths:
narratives are a pervasive feature of human cultural products [1] and they become fre-
quent and early experiences in children life, in the form of dialogues, stories, biog-
raphies [17]. Actually, adults use narrative to introduce the world to the child: it is the
primary and most familiar tool the child has to gradually comprehend reality [2].
As the child access into the test section from the app homepage, s/he is introduced
to the narrative framework of the game and its main character, Leo the Explorer: the
child is actively involved to help Leo, facing several tests. The game is structured in
eight different sections: when the child chooses the one s/he wants to play in, s/he has
the opportunity to select a fast or slow mode. The only difference between the slow
3
mode game and the fast one is a major presence of narrative introductions to each test
in the first one. Every test is a question Leo the Explorer asks to the child and s/he can
answer simply touching specific graphic elements on the device display.
Fig. 1. This picture shows a test about a specific component of geometrical competence. In this
particular section, Leo the Explorer asks the child to find any difference between these two sim-
ilar representations of a cat. As shown, the cats’ bodies are made by basic geometrical shapes;
so, Leo’s question would be: “Can you tell me if their tails are of the same shape?”
The game path is predetermined, to ensure the test validity and not affect the assess-
ment. At the end, when the game session is concluded, a brief report is available with
the assessment of all the skills and competences evaluated during the test. The scoring
is the same for the slow and fast mode: 1 point for every correct answer and 0 point for
every wrong one.
To create an ipsative profile of a child, when s/he starts again a new game session,
Leo the Explorer recognizes the player and lets the supervisor choose to repeat the
same old items or get new alternative ones.
Diligo 2.0 has been built up adopting an Agent-Based Model approach. There are
two main interactive agents: the first one is the user, who plays all the tests trying to
help the main character of the game; the second Agent is “Leo the Explorer”, an artifi-
cial agent who guides the user in the several sections of the app and during the game
through tips, instructions, feedbacks and narrative introductions.
4
3 Conclusions and future directions
Diligo 2.0 is an assessment and monitoring tool which focuses attention on several de-
velopment components, quite overlooked by current national school curriculums.
Providing both normative and ipsative assessment, it represents a tool with a great po-
tential to promote a more sensitive awareness about each child specific educational
needs and to support the teacher monitoring the class group to adjust its educational
path along the way.
In the future, the app could be used also as a training tool to help the children improve
their skills, providing them an entertaining learning experience. In the actual version of
the game, all the tests are based on structured materials; this feature, combined with the
use of STELT platform, makes all the tests replicables in other two ways: a not-digital
mode and a hybrid mode. The opportunity to play the game in different ways and con-
ditions, with or without the peer group or the caregiver, makes it more adaptable to the
specific children or group.
4 Acknowledgment
Diligo 2.0 project is currently being developed by a collaboration between Natural
and Artificial Cognition Lab (NAC) of University of Naples Federico II and INDIRE,
the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research.
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