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eXcellence in Decision-making through Enhanced Learning in Immersive Applications (xDelia)

Funded by: EU Framework 7 Programme

Led by: Professor Mark Fenton-O'Creevy (The Open University Business School)

Background

At the dawn of the 21st century, financial skills have become part and parcel of everyday life in organisations and for ordinary citizens who find themselves obliged to take ever greater responsibility for managing their personal finances. Both competent and expert decision making requires individuals not only to obtain adequate information, but to acquire the right level of proficiency, permitting them to navigate effectively a complex environment in an uncertain future.

There is thus a clear need for actions targeted at traders, private investors, and members of the public that have the potential to bolster the cognitive and emotional skills that are so vital for sound decision making. However, approaches to developing financial decision skills draw heavily on normative-rational models of decision making, undervalue the importance of context, leave learners unprepared for the exigencies of the real world, and, importantly, fail to leverage the full potential of existing and emerging learning technologies.

The xDelia project is a collaboration between eight institutions led by Gilbert Peffer, Centre Internacional de Mètodes Numèrics en Enginyeria, Spain. The Open University part of the project is led by Professor Mark Fenton-O'Creevy.

The other partners are:

  • Forschungszentrum Informatik, Germany
  • Blekinge Tekniska Högskola - Game and Media Arts Laboratory, Sweden
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam - Erasmus Centre for Neuroeconomics, Netherlands
  • University of Bristol - Personal Finance Research Centre, UK
  • Saxo Bank A/S, Denmark

Aims and objectives

The overall objective of the xDelia project is to help members of the public, private investors, and trading professionals to become more competent in making financial decisions in their field of practice, that is personal finances, private investment, and professional trading respectively, and provide a common theoretical and empirical framework within which to build and evaluate technology-enhanced support for effective skill development. The project has a particular focus on understanding the role of emotions and emotion regulation in financial decision-making as a basis for innovations in learning approaches.

Methods

To reach this objective the project will generate the following major research and development results:

  • A comparative study of the role of emotion and emotion regulation in novice vs. expert decision making in both application domains (the particular focus of the Open University Business School team)
  • Multidisciplinary review of theoretical foundations and empirical studies of the two application fields (trading and personal finance)
  • A cognitive framework for game-play that incorporates multi-model feedback
  • Pedagogical framework and extended tool set for game-based training
  • Wearable physiological sensors for cognitive feedback and games
  • Multimodal feedback enabled games to, analyse decision making in financial trading & investment, support deliberate practice development of non-experts in financial trading & investment
  • Multimedia content for cognitive games
  • Domain models and expert benchmarks
  • Methodology for effective, game-based performance elicitation and training intervention
  • Evaluation of impact of game-based training
  • A guideline for the design and implementation of games for expertise development in different application domains
  • A tool-supported participatory evaluation framework

Research team

Links

Publications

Fenton-O'Creevy, M, Soane, E, Nicholson, N, Willman, P  (2011)  'Thinking, feeling and deciding: the influence of emotions on the decision making and performance of traders', Journal of Organizational Behavior, vol. 32, no. 8, pp. 1044–1061. Abstract
Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Hutchinson, S  (2010)  'Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning', Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (LATHE), vol. 4, issue 1, pp. 69-90. Abstract
Willman, P, Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Nicholson, N, Soane, E  (2006)  'Noise trading and the management of operational risk; firms, traders and irrationality in financial markets', Journal of Management Studies, vol. 43, issue 6, pp. 1357-1374. Abstract
Nicholson, N, Soane, E, Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Willman, P  (2005)  'Personality and domain-specific risk taking', Journal of Risk Research, vol. 8, issue 2, pp. 157-176. Abstract
Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Nicholson, N, Soane, E, Willman, P  (2004)  'Traders: risks, decisions, and management in financial markets', Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, pp. 244. Abstract
Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Nicholson, N, Soane, E, Willman, P  (2003)  'Trading on illusions: unrealistic perceptions of control and trading performance', Academy of Management ConferenceJournal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, vol. 76, issue 1, pp. 53-68. Abstract
Willman, P, Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Soane, E, Nicholson, N  (2002)  'Traders, managers and loss aversion in investment banking: a field study', Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol. 27, issue 1/2, pp. 85-98. Abstract
Willman, P, Fenton-O'Creevy, MP, Nicholson, N, Soane, E  (2001)  'Knowing the risks: theory and practice in financial markets', Human Relations, vol. 54, issue 7, pp. 887-910. Abstract

Research themes: