NYF Proposal Template

NATIONAL YOUTH FUND (NYF) PROPOSAL TEMPLATE



CONTENTS

Annex A1: Pilot programmes / Capability development / Programme
partnerships ………………………………………………………………………… 2

Annex A2: Youth leadership development ……….……………………………… 7

Annex A3: Research ……………………………………………………………….. 8
Annex A1


NATIONAL YOUTH FUND (NYF)
PROPOSAL TEMPLATE - PILOT PROGRAMMES / CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT / PROGRAMME
PARTNERSHIPS


"ORGANISATION BACKGROUND "
"Mission and Vision of organisation : "
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"Organisation Type: YSO[1], YSE[2], School/IHL[3], Registered "
"Charity, Others (please specify): "
"Brief write-up on executive committee member(s): "
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"Key Programmes: "
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"Beneficiary/ Beneficiaries: "Number of youths/organisations: "
"Number of Staffs: "Number of Volunteers: "
"Income sources (Please attach recent financial statement): "
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"Additional information of organisation: "
"PROJECT DETAILS "
"Project Objectives: "
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"Project Description: "
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"Project Targeted Outcomes: "
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"Venue: "Duration: "
"Target Audience and Outreach Number: "
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"Youths (volunteers, participants & spectators): "
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"Schools/IHLs (please specify): "
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"YSOs/YSEs (please specify): "
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"KEY MILESTONES "
"What is/are the key milestone(s) of your project? "
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"Month of Key milestones "
"Deliverables with quantifiable measures "
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"NEEDS ASSESSMENT "
"How will your project address critical need(s), benefit and "
"contribute to the youth sector? "
"What are the a) youth volunteerism, and/or b) youth leadership "
"development, and/or c) community engagement elements? "
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"VALUE PROPOSITION "
"How does your project demonstrate innovation in approaching and "
"meeting the needs of the youth sector? "
"What is your competitive advantage that differentiates your "
"organisation from other player(s) with the same or similar "
"project? Please provide example(s) of other organisation(s) and "
"their existing projects, if any. "
"What are the collaborations involved (i.e. partnerships/linkages "
"with YSOs/YSEs/Schools/IHLs etc), and what are the synergies that "
"can be derived through it? "
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"OUTREACH & MEDIA IMPACT "
"Will your project reach out to a wide audience and/or community? "
"Please describe the publicity and media plan(s) for your project. "
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"RISK MANAGEMENT "
"How is your project capable of reaching its objectives with the "
"available resources? "
"What are the possible weaknesses and challenges that the project "
"will face? How can these issues be resolved or mitigated? "
"What are some learning points from past projects that can be "
"applied to this project ? Kindly provide details of the past "
"projects mentioned. "
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"SCALABILITY "
"Describe your plans for project growth that will increase outreach"
"and impact for the youth sector. "
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"SUSTAINABILITY "
"Describe plans to sustain the following: "
"a) youth volunteerism, and/or "
"b) youth leadership development, and/or "
"c) community engagement sustained "
"What is the long term plan (e.g. 5 year plan) for your project? "
"What are the considerations (e.g. resources, funding etc) that "
"will allow your long term plan to be realized? "
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Annex A2


NATIONAL YOUTH FUND (NYF)
PROPOSAL TEMPLATE - YOUTH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT


"BRIEF OF ORGANISATION "
"1. What is your organisation about? "
"Please provide details of the organisation (e.g. mission, vision,"
"key programmes, current outreach, staff strength, volunteer "
"strength, sources of income, etc) "
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"BRIEF OF PROJECT "
"2. Training Information "
"What are the training objective, organiser, target participant and"
"curriculum? "
"What is the youth services/situation you want to improve or "
"provide to meet a gap? "
"How will the training programme meet your intended needs? "
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"3. Post-Training Action Plan "
"What is the proposed action plan and what is its expected benefit "
"to the community or any organisation? "
"How will participants/beneficiaries' experiences differ because of"
"your plan? "
"What information will be collected to assess short-term results? "
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"4. Curriculum vitae/ Resume for the youth(s) who will be "
"undergoing the training: "
"Education history, Brief description of volunteer history, Honors "
"or awards, Any other grants received, and Personal particulars "
"(Name, Contact Details, NRIC number, Nationality) "
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"5. The past and current commitments that the youth(s) has with the"
"endorsing organisation "
"Position/Title held, Projects undertaken, and Other contributions "
"if any "
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Annex A3


NATIONAL YOUTH FUND (NYF)
PROPOSAL TEMPLATE - RESEARCH

"BRIEF BACKGROUND OF STUDY "
"1. What is the basis of your study? Provide a brief background of "
"the research problem. "
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"Video games are interactive and dynamic systems that are "
"actualised only when the players start to manipulate and interact "
"with them. A core feature of video games is that they are "
"activities and intended for play. To investigate how the players "
"interpret the video game narrative during their cognitive "
"formulation based on the multimodal semiotic resources, and to "
"understand how players make sense of the gameplay to support "
"and/or hinder the cognitive formulation of the narrative and vice "
"versa, it is important to understand the game as both artefact (as"
"an actualised product) and activity (as a process occurring "
"through the player's interaction). Doing analyses of games by "
"seeing them as structures and systems solely from a structuralist "
"perspective has therefore only limited value in research. The need"
"to study actual players and their comprehension and subsequent use"
"of specific game features is therefore crucial in investigating "
"the ludonarrative relationships in video games by understanding "
"how players interpret the game features during the interaction. "
"The empirical research proposed involved the video recording of "
"the players' gameplay with audio recordings using think-aloud "
"protocol which is accompanied by the researcher's observation of "
"the players' gameplay activity. This is then followed by the "
"researcher's interview of the player after the gameplay activity "
"by reviewing the video recording of the gameplay together with the"
"player. This empirical research serves to complement the "
"researcher's main approach of discourse analysis of the video game"
"by triangulating the other players' interpretation with the "
"researchers' own findings based on theory. By studying other "
"players, the researcher is able to understand their gameplay "
"activities in context that also provides the researcher with the "
"other players' own descriptions and interpretations. "
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"LITERATURE REVIEW "
"2. Provide details of the articles, publications and other "
"resources that you referred to in developing the framework for "
"your study. "
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"The core aspect of this research focuses on the multimodal "
"discourse analysis of video games where I am proposing a "
"ludonarrative model for video games to understand the players' "
"multiple pathways taken in the narrative and gameplay. The "
"multimodal discourse analysis approach builds on the framework "
"from my published article in Social Semiotics journal, Volume 24, "
"Issue 1, 2014, titled " A multimodal framework for tracking "
"Sesshomaru's character development in an anime movie – Inuyasha: "
"Swords of an Honourable Ruler – an appraisal and gestural "
"perspective". In the game study, I will be applying the multimodal"
"discourse analysis approach to analyse the different types of "
"gestures used by the characters in the video game together with "
"the language used to understand the different relationships "
"between the player character and the NPCs depending on the "
"narrative choices that the player makes when playing the game. "
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"To understand the gameplay choices that the player makes when "
"playing the game, I am developing a model to analyse gameplay in "
"video games. I build on and integrate Fabricatore's game mechanics"
"model (2007) and Manninen's strategic actions (2003) in "
"multiplayer games into Sinclair and Coulthard's exchange structure"
"(1975) to account for player gameplay events. To analyse the "
"system's response or instructions to the player, Halliday and "
"Matthiessen's speech functions (2004) are combined with Martin and"
"Rose's exchange structure (2007) to account for system gameplay "
"events. "
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"The final part of the framework for the study is the ludonarrative"
"model which is aimed at understanding the relationship between "
"narrative and gameplay modes of video games. I build on Dena's "
"(2010) preliminary model which has been used to describe the "
"meaning-making processes of polymorphic fiction. "
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"The empirical part of the game study aims to study the video game "
"players in action. The data collected is used to support the "
"ludonarrative model to better understand the internal workings of "
"video games and to construct ludonarrative models for different "
"types of video games. For the empirical study's methodology, I "
"draw upon Jørgensen's qualitative interview methods where she "
"conducts in-depth focus group interviews of video game players to "
"understand their game playing habits in the Massively Multiplayer "
"Online Game (MMOG), World of Warcraft. "
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"References: "
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"Dena, Christy. 2010. Beyond Multimedia, Narrative, and Game - The "
"Contributions of Multimodality and Polymorphic Fictions. In Ruth "
"Page (Eds). New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. "
"Taylor & Francis. "
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"Fabricatore, C. 2007. "Gameplay and game mechanics design: a key "
"to quality in videogames". In Proceedings of OECD-CERI Expert "
"Meeting on Videogames and Education, Santiago de Chile, Chile, "
"2007. [online] Available from "
"http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/17/39414829.pdf (Accessed: 24 June"
"2014). "
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"Halliday, M.A.K, & Matthiessen, C. M.I.M. 2004. An Introduction to"
"Functional Grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold. "
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"Jørgensen, K. 2012. Players as Coresearchers: Expert Player "
"Perspective as an Aid to Understanding Games. Simulation & Gaming,"
"43(3), 374-390. "
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"Manninen, Tony. 2003. Interaction Forms and Communicative Actions "
"in Multiplayer Games. Game Studies - The International Journal of "
"Computer Game Research. Vol. 3, Issue 1, May 2003. "
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"Martin, J.R., & Rose, D. 2007. Working with discourse: meaning "
"beyond the clause (2nd ed.). London and New York: Continuum. "
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"Sinclair, J., and Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of "
"discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. "
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"Toh, Weimin. A Multimodal framework for tracking Sesshomaru's "
"character development in an anime movie - Inuyasha: Swords of an "
"Honourable Ruler - an appraisal and gestural perspective. Social "
"Semiotics. Vol. 24, Issue 1, 2014. Publication Date: 5 Nov 2013 "
"(Online). "
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"OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT "
"3. What is the purpose of your study? What are you hoping to "
"achieve or learn through this study? "
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"The aim of the study is to construct different ludonarrative "
"models for different types of video games based on the empirical "
"data gathered from the participants of the game study. After the "
"data is gathered, the data will be analysed using the multimodal "
"discourse analysis framework to find out the multiple pathways "
"that the player takes during their gameplay activities. These "
"different pathways of the player reflects the subjective "
"experiences of the players and will reveal what attracts different"
"players to play the different video games in the game study. "
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"RESEARCH PROBLEM / QUESTION / HYPOTHESIS "
"4. List the research questions/hypothesis that you will be aiming "
"to answer and/or test respectively. "
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"i. What are the findings pertaining to the meanings of the "
"linguistic texts in the narrative based on Martin and White's "
"appraisal analysis (2005) and what conclusions concerning the "
"meanings of the visual texts in the narrative can be drawn using "
"the gesture framework (Toh, 2013)? "
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"ii. What is the distinctive meaning in the video game narrative "
"which arises from the interplay between the linguistic and visual "
"modes in the narrative? "
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"iii. What are the findings pertaining to the analysis of the "
"player's interaction with the gameplay and the system's response "
"to the player's actions? "
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"iv. What is the distinctive meaning in the selected video game "
"texts due to the interaction between the narrative and gameplay "
"modes? "
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"v. What are the similarities and differences of the ludonarrative "
"relationships in different genres of video games and what "
"implication does this have for video game developers when "
"designing video games to reduce video game addiction? "
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"vi. How does the player select a narrative and/or gameplay choice "
"based on decisions made from the different multimodal afforances "
"and ludonarrative relationships in different video games? "
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"vii. How does the player's prior game experience affect his "
"decision when making a narrative and/or gameplay choice? "
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"SAMPLE SIZE / PROFILE "
"5. How many respondents/participants (interviewees, survey "
"respondents, focus group participants, etc) will be involved in "
"this study? "
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"24 participants are involved in this study. 4 participants are "
"allocated to play each of the 6 video games in the game study. "
"There are 4 pc games, i.e. Bioshock, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect"
"and The Witcher 2 and 2 PS3 games, i.e. The Last of Us and Beyond "
"2 Souls. "
"6. Provide a brief description of their profiles. "
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"The participants are mostly recruited from NUS but also includes "
"the researcher's friends. The lowest age of the participants is 19"
"and the highest 33. The participants have game playing experience "
"of more than 5 years. "
"RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, DATA COLLECTION (ATTACH SAMPLE "
"QUESTIONNAIRE) "
"7. Provide a detailed description of the research methodology and "
"data collection method that you will be employing for this study. "
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"The empirical method for the game study includes observation of "
"the players' gameplay, think-aloud protocol, post game reflection,"
"post-game interview and questionnaire. "
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"There are a total of three sessions for the PC game study and five"
"sessions for the PS3 game study. "
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"During the first session for the PC game study, the participants "
"will be asked to play from 2 - 3 hours the first level of the "
"respective video games. These include the first level on Eden "
"Prime for Mass Effect, the first level of Bioshock where the "
"player rescues the first two little sisters before they take the "
"Bathysphere to the next level, the tutorial and prologue for The "
"Witcher 2, and The first episode for The Walking Dead. The "
"researcher will be observing the participants' gameplay on a "
"monitor nearby the participants. The participants' gameplay will "
"be recorded using the Fraps software which is provided to them in "
"the first session. After the gameplay is completed for the first "
"session, the researcher will interview the participants with the "
"game review questions to understand their gameplay habits and "
"narrative and gameplay choices. This interview also helps to "
"introduce the player to the second session's gameplay. During the "
"first session, the participants are also trained to use "
"think-aloud protocol, i.e. to talk about what they think when they"
"play the game. The think-aloud protocol will be used when they "
"play at home during the second session. Participants who do not "
"feel comfortable talking when playing the game will be allowed to "
"do post game reflections and add in their audio commentary after "
"they have finished the games by watching the video recordings they"
"made of their gameplay using Fraps. "
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"During the second session for the PC game study, the participants "
"are asked to play a minimum of 14 hours of the 4 selected pc games"
"in the game study at home or if they wish, in the NUS CNM's lab. "
"They can choose to finish the entire game. After they have "
"finished the game, they upload the video recordings to the "
"researcher using cloud storage, external hardisks, thumbdrives, "
"DVDs and so on. The researcher will spend a few days reviewing "
"their video recordings of their gameplay and formulate further "
"clarification questions to ask the participants in the third and "
"final session. Then the researcher will arrange a date to "
"interview the participants during the third session held in NUS "
"CNM's lab. "
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"During the third session for the PC game study, the researcher "
"will administer a questionnaire and interview the participants. "
"The interview will be audio recorded. The interview is intended to"
"clarify any doubts the researcher has about the participants' "
"gameplay in the second session. "
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"The five sessions of the PS3 game study will be conducted in the "
"NUS CNM's lab. Each session lasts about 3 hours. Similar to the pc"
"game study, the participants are trained to use think aloud "
"protocol, i.e. they verbalise what they think when they play the "
"game. Participants are allowed to use post game reflections if "
"they do not feel comfortable talking when playing the game. The "
"researcher will record the PS3 gameplay on a PC nearby connected "
"using a PS3 game recorder. He will also be able to observe the "
"players' gameplay at the same time. At specific moments, he will "
"prompt the participants to explain their gameplay and narrative "
"choices/actions. At the end of the first session, the researcher "
"will interview the participants to find out their experience of "
"the ludonarrative relationships in the video games and how these "
"relationships influence their decision-making when playing the "
"game. "
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"For the remaining sessions 2 - 5, the participants will play the "
"game in the lab and their gameplay footage will similarly be "
"recorded on the PC using the PS3 recorder. They will also use "
"think-aloud or post game reflections. "
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"In the final session, the researcher will administer a "
"questionnaire to the participants and ask them further interview "
"questions to understand their gameplay in the previous sessions. "
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"** Attach a copy of the survey questionnaire. "

"TIMELINE (MILESTONES) "
"8. Provide details of the expected time-line for the completion of"
"the study (in table form or an attachment) "
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"Date "
"Game Study "
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"Mar 2014 "
"Pilot Study "
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"April to August 2014 "
"PC Game Study "
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"July to August 2014 "
"PS3 Game Study "
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"August 2014 - August 2015 "
"Analysis of gameplay data and writing of the remaining PhD thesis "
"chapters. "
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"RELEVANCE AND EXPECTED USE OF FINDINGS "
"9. Who can benefit from the findings of this study? Provide "
"details on how the findings of this study will be relevant to the "
"youth sector, respective government agencies or anyone with a "
"stake in youth affairs. "
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"The knowledge we can gain from the research on the empirical study"
"of players can be helpful in many ways. With the data from the "
"study, we will be better able to understand what are the players' "
"experiences when playing different genres of video games. The data"
"collected from the video recordings will provide evidence on which"
"parts of the video game are addictive in terms of the "
"ludonarrative relationship. We can use this information to "
"implement guidelines for game designers on how they can design "
"games that will be less addictive by knowing specific textual "
"aspects of video games that attracts players to keep playing the "
"games continuously. "
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"From the caregiver's perspective, knowledge gleaned from the "
"findings of the study will enable parents who have not played "
"video games to understand why their children become addicted to "
"video games by knowing specific aspects of video games which are "
"addictive. With this knowledge, parents or caregivers will be "
"better able to communicate with their children by shaping their "
"responses to the children more effectively. Effective "
"communication is enabled when they are able to discuss the video "
"game addiction by understanding the internal workings of the video"
"games in terms of the ludonarrative relationships. With knowledge "
"gained about the internal workings of video games and how players "
"interact with video games, parents or caregivers would be able to "
"engage in a constructive dialogue with their children to convince "
"them of the negative impacts of addiction. Consistent "
"understanding of video games from the caregivers' perspective "
"offers one way to open a communication channel between parents and"
"their children to reduce the incidences of cases where the "
"children plays the game on their own or with their peers leading "
"to addiction. "
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"ANY OTHER INFORMATION "
"10. Any other relevant details in favour of the application. "
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[1] Youth Sector Organisation is a non-profit organisation whose core
business focus is youth work or in running programmes for youth.
[2] Youth Social Enterprise is a social enterprise whose business primarily
focuses on engaging and developing youths for the community and initiated
by youths.
[3] School/ Institute of Higher Learning are institutions whose core work
revolves around innovating and promoting programmes to spur active
citizenry in youths