This site provides publications and resources relating to a three year research project (2010-2012) jointly carried out by seven European organisations (with core research or business interests). The project's main objective was to develop "technology enhanced learning approaches that help improve the financial decision making of investors who trade frequently using an electronic trading platform." (Peefer and Creevy p6)
"The project uses and also evaluates the potential of games, game technologies, and sensors as components in learning support environments, and as tools to conduct experimental and field research. " (xDelia, 2012)
Given its European remit, the project was able to obtain input from over 100,010 participants including access to a BBClab initiated online survey: the ‘Big Money Test’ which attracted over 100,000 responses. (This highlights the power of online research in its ability to considerably broaden a sampling frame.)
The xDelia website states that its research methodology and 'learning path' outcomes are 'innovative'. I would agree with this conclusion given that the project, as Peffer and Creevy's final report attests, focuses for the first time on the importance of emotional influence on decision making (Peefer and Creevy p7). It does this by utililising the above interventions as both measuring and learning tools.
In terms of my own definition of innovation this project appears to be unique, have applicability and relevance.
As mentioned previously, its innovation lie in the creation of a number of learning approaches that constituted a 'learning pathway'. The second stage of the project, as identified in the image below, (xDelia, 2012, p6) was designed to aid traders in their future decision-making activities at work. The learning in level 2 aimed to build and strengthen the traders skills of emotional regulation whilst trading.
In level 2, traders would be asked to play digital games, the games were designed to respond to the player's emotional and physiological state which meant that as traders were able to increase self control over their thoughts and emotions they would have more control over the outcomes of the games. Thus the trader's awareness of personal emotional triggers plus experiencing the skills required to alter their mental states provided them with the necessary skills to enhance their decision making capabilities back in the workplace.
A quick trawl around the web suggests that this is a unique project with a unique set of outcomes. I found this particularly interesting because of its links to the workplace and its use of games as learning tools. Clearly by the end of the project there were unanswered issues which the project authors see as driving the next phase of research in the future.
References
xDelia website (2012) [Online] Available from: http://www.xdelia.org/ (Accessed 12/02/2012)
Peffer, G. and Fenton O'Creevy, G. (Eds) (2012)"Xdelia emotion-centred and financial decision making and learning" xDelia consortium, Available from: http://www.xdelia.org/wp-content/uploads/FR_Publishable_summary_6.pdf, (Accessed 12/02/2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment