Lasse Hakulinen

About

I worked as a Doctoral Candidate in the Learning+Technology research group and defended my doctoral dissertation in May 2015.

I am also the founder of a little Android game sweatshop called Metka Games.

Research

Short version

My research interests involve different gameful approaches to enrich computer science education.

Slightly longer version

Serious games are games that have also other objectives than pure entertainment. They are being used in education but there are still much more we could do to harness the potential of games. When used right, games can be a great motivator for students to learn and practice the educational objectives.

Games can be used in many different ways in computer science education. Programming courses offer a natural environment where games can be put to use. Implementing games or game-agents can be a motivating assignment for CS students. However, games can be used as a motivating way to teach and deepen the players' understanding when students play a game designed especially for certain learning objectives.

Basically I am interested to study different gameful methods that can be used to enrich computer science education, including card games, boardgames, ARGs and applying gamification methods to non-game learning environments.

My thesis research was carried out under the supervision of Professor Lauri Malmi. Ari Korhonen D.Sc. (Tech) also instructed the work.

Greatest Academic Achievements

• Highest number of different anagrams in one publication: 3
• Longest palindrome in a publication: 10 characters
• Highest number of QR codes crammed into one paper: 12
• Number of publications that mention LOLCat Apocalypse: 3

Publications

Doctoral dissertation

Lasse Hakulinen (2015). Gameful Approaches for Computer Science Education: From Gamification to Alternate Reality Games. Doctoral dissertation. Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, 52/2015.

Journal articles

Tapio Auvinen, Lasse Hakulinen and Lauri Malmi (2015). Increasing Students' Awareness of Their Behavior in Online Learning Environments with Visualizations and Achievement Badges. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TLT), Volume 8, Issue 3, pp. 261-273.

Lasse Hakulinen (2015). Using Alternate Reality Games to Teach Computer Science Concepts - Case: Stop Toilworn Diamond. International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE), Volume 31, Issue 3, pp. 771-785.

Lasse Hakulinen, Tapio Auvinen and Ari Korhonen (2015). The Effect of Achievement Badges on Students' Behavior: An Empirical Study in a University-Level Computer Science Course. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 18-29.

Lasse Hakulinen (2011). Survey on Informatics Competitions: Developing Tasks. Olympiads in Informatics, 5, pp. 12-25.

Conference papers

Lasse Hakulinen and Lauri Malmi (2014). QR Code Programming Tasks with Automated Assessment. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education Conference (ITICSE'14), Uppsala, Sweden, 2014.

Lasse Hakulinen and Tapio Auvinen (2014). The Effect of Gamification on Students with Different Achievement Goal Orientations. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTiCE), Kuching, Malaysia, 2014.

Lassi Haaranen, Lasse Hakulinen, Petri Ihantola, and Ari Korhonen (2014). Software Architectures for Implementing Achievement Badges – Practical Experiences. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTiCE), Kuching, Malaysia, 2014.

Lassi Haaranen, Petri Ihantola, Lasse Hakulinen and Ari Korhonen (2014). How (not) to Introduce Badges to Online Exercises. In: Proceeding of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, USA, 2014.

Lasse Hakulinen (2013). Alternate Reality Games for Computer Science Education. In: Proceedings of the 13th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli, Finland, 2013.

Lasse Hakulinen, Tapio Auvinen and Ari Korhonen (2013). Empirical Study on the Effect of Achievement Badges in TRAKLA2 Online Learning Environment. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTiCE), Macau, 2013.

Ville Karavirta and Lasse Hakulinen (2012). Educational Accelerometer Games for Computer Science. In: Proceedings of the 11th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning, Helsinki, Finland, 2012.

Lasse Hakulinen (2011). Using Serious Games in Computer Science Education. In: Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli, Finland, 2011.

Lasse Hakulinen and Ari Korhonen (2010). Making the most of using PeerWise in education. In: ReflekTori 2010 - Symposium of Engineering Education, December 9-10, 2010. Aalto University, Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli, pp 57-67.

Conference posters

Lasse Hakulinen (2012). DSAsketch: Data Structures and Algorithms Drawing Game. In: Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Tahko, Finland, 2012. (Poster as pdf)

Lasse Hakulinen (2012). Alternate Reality Game for University-Level Computer Science Education. In: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Games Based Learning, Cork, Ireland, 2012. (Poster as pdf)

Lasse Hakulinen (2011). Card Games for Teaching Data Structures and Algorithms. In: Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli, Finland, 2011. (Poster as pdf)

Other (non peer reviewed)

Lasse Hakulinen and Ari Korhonen (2011). PeerWise - Yhteisöllistä oppimista verkossa. Tietojenkäsittelytiede, 33, pp. 15-26, 2011. (in Finnish)

Tapio Auvinen, Lasse Hakulinen, and Ari Korhonen (2010) Tackling the challenges of a large course with blended learning. In: Taina Joutsenvirta and Liisa Myyry eds. Blended Learning in Finland. Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki, pp. 126-137.

Lasse Hakulinen (2010) Using Computer Supported Cooperative Work systems in Computer Science education - Case: PeerWise at TKK. Master's Thesis. Faculty of Information and Natural Sciences, School of Science and Technology, Aalto University.

Contact

You can contact me by...

• ...e-mail: firstname.lastname@alumni.aalto.fi
• ...or Twitter: Follow @lhakulin
• ...or
• ...or challenging me for a game of chess, go or triathlon (or any other good game). I may not poll the game sites constantly, so send me a message as well if you want to play.