Want boost productivity of employees? Let them play video games together for 45 mins
Teams that play video games together reportedly show good performance at work.
By PTI |
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WASHINGTON: Playing video games with coworkers can boost team work and performance at the office, scientists say.
Researchers from Brigham Young University in the US found newly-formed work teams experienced a 20 per cent increase in productivity on subsequent tasks after playing video games together for just 45 minutes.
The study, published in AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, adds to a growing body of literature finding positive outcomes of team video gaming.
"To see that big of a jump -- especially for the amount of time they played -- was a little shocking," said Greg Anderson, an associate professor at BYU.
"Companies are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on team-building activities, and I'm thinking, go buy an Xbox," said Anderson.
Late For Meeting? Hangouts, ezTalks And Other Video-Conferencing Apps To Make Life Simpler
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Making video calls while on the move has never been so easy and inexpensive as it is now. You only need to invest in a decent headset before connecting with your peers, colleagues or business partners. Even for corporates and those requiring reliable services, there are tools that make video conferencing an affordable application.
Sure, Skype is one of the most popular applications that comes with a lot of momentum and popularity. But it is still lagging in terms of video. Only one-to-one communication is allowed, unless there are some thirdparty plugins. Here are some other video conferencing apps that can make video conferencing a cakewalk:
Making video calls while on the move has never been so easy and inexpensive as it is now. You only need to invest in a decent headset before connecting with your peers, colleagues or business partne..
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If you have a web meeting, conference call, whiteboard meeting or online meeting scheduled while you are still travelling, then ezTalks is your app. It lets you share videos, documents, audio and connect with 100 participants, once you integrate it to your company portal. If you land up in a no-internet zone, ezTalks Meetings service also offers a Telephone Dial-in feature to continue with your online meetings.
If you have a web meeting, conference call, whiteboard meeting or online meeting scheduled while you are still travelling, then ezTalks is your app. It lets you share videos, documents, audio and co..
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Don’t let being away from the office slow your business down. The Cisco Webex Meetings app lets you experience productive meetings from wherever you are. It allows screen sharing, chat, and more. Other features include joining a meeting with a single tap, customisable video layouts, and you can schedule meetings directly from the app. While the app itself is a little clunky, the video quality is decent and stable. Pricing varies. You may need to contact Cisco for the exact pricing.
Don’t let being away from the office slow your business down. The Cisco Webex Meetings app lets you experience productive meetings from wherever you are. It allows screen sharing, chat, and more. Ot..
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It is another popular app in the video conferencing space that lets you take your work with you on the road and across the globe. It supports 15 participants in the lowest subscription tier and 25 in the higher tiers. The app lets you join or host a meeting on any Android phone or tablet, share your full device screen with everyone in your meeting, handoff presentation control to other attendees to view presentations, mockups, reports, see all your upcoming meetings and join with a single tap, and receive alerts when a meeting is about to start.
It is another popular app in the video conferencing space that lets you take your work with you on the road and across the globe. It supports 15 participants in the lowest subscription tier and 25 i..
Read More
Tech giant Google gave up on Hangouts as a consumer product. But the application is still popular as a business software (G Suite). Meet takes the headaches out of joining a video call at work. Just set up a meeting and share a link. No worrying about whether teammates, clients, or customers have the right accounts or plug-ins. With a fast interface and smart participant management, multi-person video calls are a breeze here. However, you must be locked into Google’s ecosystem to use this app while most other apps are standalone services.
Tech giant Google gave up on Hangouts as a consumer product. But the application is still popular as a business software (G Suite). Meet takes the headaches out of joining a video call at work. Just..
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The Zoom Cloud Meetings lets you stay connected wherever you go – start or join a 100-person meeting with clear, face-to-face video, and high-quality screen sharing and more. It also comes with audio-only, and text chat feature. The free version is limited, but functional, while the subscription prices are reasonable for the number of participants allowed. The interface is designed to allow collaboration among teams and remote employees, as they can start and join a meeting instantly with just one touch of their mobile devices.
The Zoom Cloud Meetings lets you stay connected wherever you go – start or join a 100-person meeting with clear, face-to-face video, and high-quality screen sharing and more. It also comes with audi..
For the study, researchers recruited 352 individuals and randomly organised them into 80 teams, making sure no participants with pre-existing relationships were on the same team.
For their initial experimental task, each team played in a geocaching competition called Findamine, an exercise which gives players short, text-based clues to find landmarks. Participants were incentivised with cash rewards for winning the competition.
Following their first round of Findamine, teams were randomly assigned to one of three conditions before being sent out to geocache again: team video gaming, quiet homework time or a "goal training" discussion on improving their geocaching results.
Each of these conditions lasted 45 minutes and those in the video gaming treatment chose to play either Rock Band or Halo 4 -- games selected because they are both familiar and require coordinated efforts among players.
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The researchers found that while the goal-training teams reported a higher increase in team cohesion than the video-gaming teams, the video gamers increased actual performance on their second round of Findamine significantly, raising average scores from 435 to 520.
"Team video gaming may truly be a viable -- and perhaps even optimal -- alternative for team building," said Mark Keith, associate professor at BYU.
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Researchers also said it does not matter if people are avid video gamers to see the positive effects of gaming together; they observed video game novices established communications norms -- and built working relationships -- even quicker with new teammates so as to learn the nuances of the game.
However, researchers also found that if team members are already familiar with each other, then competitive video gaming may possibly reinforce biases and negative relationships developed from previous experiences.
6 Amazing Augmented Reality Experiences On iPad That Are Free
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Even though augmented reality (AR) apps have been around for a long time, we’re still only beginning to scratch the surface of possibilities. New iPads are among the best way to experience AR thanks to the large screens, faster processors and Apple’s ARkit framework. Here are some genuinely astonishing AR apps that are available completely free.
Even though augmented reality (AR) apps have been around for a long time, we’re still only beginning to scratch the surface of possibilities. New iPads are among the best way to experience AR thanks ..
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Using tape measures is so old school now that you have AR to help. It sounds almost unbelievable but you can actually measure (with a fair degree of accuracy) things like a person’s height, the diameter of a circular table, the length of a sofa and even the height of a building. AirMeasure gives you a point and shoot ruler — just tap to start and move the device along the plane you want to measure. But that’s not all, you can use it to create a floor plan, project a level line (to see whether your painting is hung straight), measure distance to a far away wall (like a laser distance measurement tool) and much more. Our favourite is the virtual furniture — you can place things like tables, chairs, beds, desks, shelves and so on into your room. Then walk around them to see how they look from different parts of the room.
(Image: http://armeasure.com)
Using tape measures is so old school now that you have AR to help. It sounds almost unbelievable but you can actually measure (with a fair degree of accuracy) things like a person’s height, the diame..
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Holo is short for holograms — actual 3D animals and people you can place into your real surroundings. Some of the holos you can download for free include Spiderman, a zombie, tigers, celebrities and even Bollywood dancers. The developer is constantly adding more holos that you can download to your device. Holos are dynamic, which means they’re not static images but accurate, moving avatars. Once you scan a flat surface and place a holo, you can rotate it and scale it up or down in size to match real world sizes. Then you place yourself into the frame and snap a photo or capture a short video. In the right kind of lighting, it can look quite convincing too. Holo is also available for Android.
(Image: https://thisisholo.com)
Holo is short for holograms — actual 3D animals and people you can place into your real surroundings. Some of the holos you can download for free include Spiderman, a zombie, tigers, celebrities and ..
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Learning is a lot more fun in AR and if a complex subject like math can be visually represented in your real world, it might make concepts a lot clearer. GeoGebra places math objects in your world so that you can explore them from different angles. You can place solid objects into your view while little exercises teach you about pyramids, prisms and cubes. More advanced users can look at the impossible Penrose triangle, 3D functions, spiral staircase and Sierpinski pyramid among others. You will have to physically move around the virtual objects to complete the tasks and take the required screenshots.
(Image: www.geogebra.org)
Learning is a lot more fun in AR and if a complex subject like math can be visually represented in your real world, it might make concepts a lot clearer. GeoGebra places math objects in your world so..
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This app is a great example of how AR can help solve problems even in long distance. If you’re tech savvy, you’ve probably been asked for help with common tech issues over the phone. Problem is, over the phone, it’s really hard to explain to someone which button to tap, which menu item to click and which port to use. Vuforia’s Chalk opens up an AR guided private chat between you and the person you’re helping. They can activate their camera and you can doodle with virtual chalk right into their view — making circles, drawing arrows and illustrating as needed. But that’s not even the best part. Whatever you draw on sticks to the item you drew it on, so even if the camera moves around, the instruction stays true and correct.
(Image: https://chalk.vuforia.com)
This app is a great example of how AR can help solve problems even in long distance. If you’re tech savvy, you’ve probably been asked for help with common tech issues over the phone. Problem is, over..
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Imagine seeing an entire, living landscape on your table. You can zoom in, look around and learn more about why free flowing rivers are so important. Through helpful little floating tips, you learn more about the journey of water, how it impacts the area through which it flows, the people it affects and how building dams can cause damage to delicate ecological systems. Place a dam and you can see (in accelerated time) how the river changes and how everything else is affected downstream. This app is the WWF’s concerted effort to educate about how human development can either be harmful or sustainable.
(Image: www.worldwildlife.org)
Imagine seeing an entire, living landscape on your table. You can zoom in, look around and learn more about why free flowing rivers are so important. Through helpful little floating tips, you learn m..
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Graffiti in a public place can help beautify but it can also be an eyesore, with authorities stuck in a never-ending cycle of removing unwanted art.
What if that graffiti only existed in the virtual world and was only visible through an augmented reality app? That’s the idea behind World Brush.
You open up the app, hold it up and start drawing in virtual space. You should do this somewhere outdoors and your art will be geo-locked — this means it’s approximate GPS location is tagged and if another World Brush user comes along at a later date and holds up the app, he/she will be able to see and walk around what you drew. Another similar app without the GPS position (but more brush options) is 3DBrush — Augmented Reality.
(Image: https://itunes.apple.com)
Graffiti in a public place can help beautify but it can also be an eyesore, with authorities stuck in a never-ending cycle of removing unwanted art.
What if that graffiti only existed in the virtual..
