Christina Steiner-Stanitznig

The Interview Simulation for Police Officers (ISPO) is a serious game developed to train police officers in communication competencies related to the interview of victims, witnesses and suspects. It was developed by Gameware Europe in collaboration with the Portuguese Police (Policia Judiciaria) within the RAGE project. The ISPO serious game was created using the modern methodologies and practices that are used in real-life police interviews. The focus of the game is on the training of communication competencies regarding gathering information from both victims and offenders. In order to evaluate the training effectiveness of the game, we conducted a study with 194 participants where general subjective learning effectiveness, using the Perceived Competence subscale of the IMI questionnaire, and domain-specific subjective learning effectiveness using the Police Interview Competency Inventory (PICI) were measured. Overall, ISPO improved the self-perceived competence of its players. Additionally, participants changed their opinion about the attitude to conduct a successful interview. Participants’ level of importance attributed to being dominant diminished and the level of importance attributed to being more benevolent and communicative during police interviews increased. Effects were stronger in inexperienced users leading us to believe that the game is an added value for use in a police officer school.

Ontologies play an important role as knowledge domain representations in technology-enhanced learning and instruction. Represented in form of concept maps they are commonly used as teaching and learning material and have the potential to enhance positive educational outcomes. To ensure the effective use of an ontology representing a knowledge domain it needs to be validated. In this paper a previously presented validation methodology for concept maps is exemplified. Two different types of concept map validity are distinguished, referring to the correctness of the concept map’s content (content validity) and to the applicability of the concept map for its designated purpose (application validity), like its use in intelligent tutoring. To demonstrate the usefulness of the two validation types and approaches, they are illustrated by an empirical study. The content validity of a concept map on elementary geometry has been investigated by comparing it with empirically collected criterion maps through similarity measures. To demonstrate application validity an approach utilising methods of Knowledge Space Theory for predicting problem-solving behaviour has been applied. The obtained results show appropriate content validity as well as application validity for the given concept map and argue for the practical relevance of the proposed validation framework.