RMIT University's Games & Experimental Entertainment Laboratory (GEElab) is currently offering two 3-year full-time PhD stipends to highly motivated Australians or New Zealanders. The successful applicants will be spending the majority of their stipend at the GEElab Europe in Germany, see the position descriptions below.

UPDATE: Application deadlines for both stipends have been extended to Tuesday, 10 April 2012. Interviews for each stipend will take place between 16 - 20 April 2012 in Melbourne. Please direct all enquires regarding these opportunities by Email to GEElab director Dr Steffen P Walz: steffen.walz@rmit.edu.au.

Both PhD stipends contain an uplift for EU loading and run at AUS$30,000 tax-exempt p.a. each, over the course of three years. With these stipends come one-off relocation allowances as well as funding for an optional German language course if the successful applicants are not proficient in German. In addition, the GEElab will sponsor project cost as well as conference travel given circumstances. It is intended that the successful candidates will commence as soon as possible in Melbourne, and relocate to Germany in May or June of 2012:

3-Year PhD Stipend: Game Design for Future Cities

This stipend supports a doctoral student and is linked to the question how game design methods as well as playfulness can, methodologically and practically, serve as design principles and design results for the city and for citizens of the future, tackling fields such as urban well-being and liveability, citizen engagement as well as sustainability. The successful applicant will be required to spend most of her/his stipend's time on extended field research in the Stuttgart--Karlsruhe high tech industry region in the southwest of Germany, as well as in other RMIT GEElab sites, if necessary.

Please find detailed information about this stipend - including selection criteria and application procedure - here.

3-Year PhD Stipend: Game Design for Popular Entertainment

This stipend supports a doctoral student who will explore, in an applied fashion, under which conditions established forms of popular culture (e.g. sports, music, fashion), or media (e.g. TV, movies, textbooks, museums) can become interactive, enhanced, and potentially co-created entertainment experiences that have been inspired by games, and what social and cultural implications, novel uses and contexts these scenarios render. The successful applicant will be required to spend most of her/his stipend's time on extended field research in the Stuttgart--Karlsruhe high tech industry region in the southwest of Germany, as well as in other RMIT GEElab sites, if necessary.

Please find detailed information about this stipend - including selection criteria and application procedure - here.

With iBook Author, Apple has recently presented a tool that empowers authors to integrate simple interactive content into their textbooks. Not only can it be expected that these new textbooks will be appealing to students equipped with iPads; but also will such an authoring tool become a new pedagogical alternative for teachers.

Our research partner, the English Didactics group at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany educates English teachers as well as investigates how language learning can be made more motivational. Together, we have identified that game design methods can positively affect learning motivation as well as learning itself, and perhaps help bridge the gap between formal and informal learning. To us, it would be interesting to see how this could be done with iBook Author.

Because iBook Author lacks game-like widgets suitable for language learning, in this RMIT Media and Comm Honours team research project (for which we are currently trying to find motivated people), two students – one designer, one programmer – will be expected to plan as well as implement such an expansion for iBook Author, in collaboration with researchers and students from CU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. This will involve (a) to conceptually design and functionally specify a game design-informed learning model for an interactive textbook for bilingual language learning, and (b) to implement and test one or more iBook Author widgets from this model, which will allow teachers to create textbook elements that will contain – potentially networked – game-like elements, supporting specific use cases in language learning, e.g. vocabulary training, and (c) to document and report on the research undertaken via an exegesis. A prototypical textbook that will embed the new widgets will be created by CU and will be evaluated at a real secondary school in Germany, with real students. Please contact Dr Steffen P Walz if you are interested, steffen dot walz at rmit dot edu dot au.

For more information about RMIT Media and Comm Honours, please visit http://vogmae.net.au/thehonours/research/research-topics-2012/.

On 2 February 2012, our research collaborator Oliver Meyer from KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt's English Didactics Group, together with GEElab's Steffen, will be speaking at LEARNTEC in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their joint topic: the gamified textbook on portable devices, and how it will change the future of language learning. Here is the talk's abstract (German language only); see also the background research project, iDidactics.

Something white.

Welcome! GEElab Australia's Chris just arrived at the GEElab Europe for his first longer stay here, and, really, his first ever stay in Europe. To inspire his doctoral researching, the first place we took him to was the Gottlieb Daimler Memorial in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, the reconstructed workshop of Gottlieb Daimler. There, the world's first lightweight high-speed vehicle engine was created, and the garden house thus served as the cradle of the motorcycle, the motorboat, and the motorized four wheel automobile. The only thing that really ain't that great here at the moment is the weather, but Chris says he prefers cold over hot conditions. And that's what you got!

If you happen to be in Shanghai, don't miss out on the ART/DESIGN indiegame exhibition! From 2-4 December 2011, during the Global Education Conference On Creative Industries at Shanghai Theatre Academy, ACT/DESIGN exhibits works from two international events: Lunarcade and Digital Entertainment Jam.

Lunarcade Shanghai brings together, in playable form, seven of the most innovative games designed by independent developers from all over the world. The Digital Entertainment Jam Lite shows a collection of videos of the most original interaction designs and advergames using public spaces.

The list of artists and designers includes: Lexaloffle, Coco&Co, Tarry Cavanagh, Broken Rules, Ed Key, David Kanaga, Coconut Island, Henry Hoffman, Kate Killick, Monobanda, Mr Beam, Karolina Sobecka, Matthias Dörfelt, Timo Arnall, Jack Schulze and more!

This fine event is brought to you by our friends at the Virtual Performing Lab of Shanghai Theater Academy, who have partnered up with Milan Polytechnic's Department of Industrial Design, Arts and Communication and its School of Fashion and Design. The GEElab is an official supporter of the event. The address for the exhibition is:

Shanghai Theater Academy
Huashan Rd 600 (near Wulumuqi Rd)
STA Library, First Floor.