Research & Innovation
@ Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education
Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education, licensed by the National Commission for Further & Higher Education (NCFHE) is a Recognised Teaching Institution for the University of London, offering undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications open to Maltese and international students. Apart from research projects undertaken by students as a requirement for their respective degree, academics pursue their own interests through further research and innovation initiatives.
Department of Computing
Virtual Reality
The Academics from the Department of Computing have focused on the use of creative computing techniques — gamification, user experience, augmented and virtual reality, background and character development and story-telling including transmedia — to develop experiences of cultural heritage sites.
The Institute is in a collaborative agreement with Heritage Malta, the curator of national heritage sites in the Maltese Islands. Through this collaboration, academics and students have researched how mixed reality may offer enhanced user experience to visitors of cultural sites that may have limitations imposed on visitation.
The Institute has developed a VR experience of the Saint Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat, Malta and a VR experience of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum at Paola, Malta an underground UNESCO HERITAGE SITE dating back to 3500 BC. This latter experiences provides an immersive virtual reality environment that assists in answering certain specific questions that have challenged archeologists and students of this underground temple for many decades.
Filming in 360°
A group of academics have carried out research on 360° filming and editing such film into a VR experience. A re-enactment of the first skirmish involving a squadron of knights of the Sovereign Order of Saint John accompanied by Maltese Dejma footmen against an advance scouting party of the invading Ottoman invaders dated May 13th, 1565, at Mellieha Bay.
(https://medium.com/@stmartinsedu/saint-martins-institute-of-higher-education-malta-robotics-olympiad-2019-e3d56a1a36d5) (https://medium.com/@stmartinsedu/startmyinspiration-793b95d17b8f)
The Institute was also a key motivator to digitise and include in the Google Cultural Institute a number of major Heritage Malta sites and digitised artefacts.
(https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/domus-romana) . Saint Martin’s Institute also used the Google Trekker to include some main heritage sites as part of Google Street Maps with the intention to highlight how built heritage may be presented to the world. (https://medium.com/@stmartinsedu/making-built-heritage-accessible-to-the-world-a054d253dffd) Saint Martin’s staff managed the project that spanned 12 weeks in total.
Publications
Academics from the Department of Computing have published peer reviewes papers and book chapters in this particular genre;
Mr Jonathan Barbara
Barbara, J. (2018). The Narrative Consistency of the Warcraft Movie. International Journal of Transmedia Literacy (IJTL), 4, 19–41.
Barbara, J. (2015). Measuring User Experience in Multiplayer Board Games. Games and Culture, 1555412015593419.
Barbara, J. (2014). Measuring User Experience in Board Games. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS), 6(1), 64–79.
Conference Participation
Barbara, J. (2019) Narratively Consistent Virtual Reality Interactive Narratives in Cultural Heritage Experiences Geographies of Interactive Digital Narratives, RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, UK
Barbara, J. (2018, December). Narrative Consistency across Replays of Pro-social Interactive Digital Narratives. In International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (pp. 154–159). Springer, Cham.
Barbara, J. (2016) The Narrative Consistency of the Warcraft Movie, Expanding Universes International Conference, Krakow, Poland
Barbara, J. (2015). Towards Measuring Consistency Across Transmedial Narratives. In International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (pp. 243–250). Springer International Publishing.
Barbara, J. (2015). Generating Consistent Game Levels. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (pp. 451–456). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2810301
Barbara, J. (2015). The Challenge of Transmedia: Measuring Consistency. In Games User Research Design Tool Jam Workshop. ACM CHI Play, London.
Conference Attendance
Game Tales: Game Writing Workshop, Valletta (2017)
Philosophy of Computer Games conference, Valletta (2016)
DIGRA Games Conferences: Turin (2018), Luneburg (2015), Utrecht (2011)
Games and Literary Theory Conference, Valletta (2013)
