The aim of the research was to study motivations to volunteer, and their relationship with religi... more The aim of the research was to study motivations to volunteer, and their relationship with religious orientation in a sample of volunteers working in a Catholic organization. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 190 volunteers working in a Catholic organization based in a large city in northern Italy and devoted to ending poverty and situations of marginalization through the promotion of social justice. Of these, 160 (90 females, 70 males) agreed to participate. The main result was that all motivations, except Career, increased with the intrinsic religious orientation. The Social and Career functions increased with the extrinsic-social religious orientation. The Protective and Enhancement functions increased with all religious orientations. The result concerning gender differences showed that the creation of a social network through volunteering and the opportunities to create and maintain a positive relationship with others are more important to women than men. Managers could benefit from these findings to improve the recruitment and retaining of volunteers and to think strategically about the mission and the cultural/religious belief of the organization. The impact of two and a half years of Covid-19 policies, however, remains unclear.
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers
This paper presents an ongoing project, PIUMA, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, wi... more This paper presents an ongoing project, PIUMA, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, with the aim to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) move and live within cities.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in people's lives. The Human-Computer Interacti... more The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in people's lives. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community widely investigated technology use during crises. However, commercial video games received minor attention. In this article, we describe how video game play impacted the life transformations engendered by the pandemic. We administered a qualitative online survey to 330 video game players who were living in Italy during the lockdown measures. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic altered the participants' sense of time and space, reshaped both their intimate and wider social interactions, and elicited a wide spectrum of disturbing emotions. Players escaped from this unsatisfying reality into video game worlds, searching for a new normality that could compensate for the unpredictability and dangerousness of the pandemic life, as well as seeking uncertainty in the game environments to balance the flatness of the lockdown everydayness. In doing so, they "appropriated" the gaming technologies, which also led to several unexpected outcomes. Starting from these findings, we propose a model of escapism that points out four ways to escape from reality into video game worlds. Moreover, we outline some design implications that might inspire future strands of research in the field of crisis technologies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
The crowdsourcing paradigm (i.e., people while moving provide data from different places) can pla... more The crowdsourcing paradigm (i.e., people while moving provide data from different places) can play a fundamental role in transforming users in significant actors in society. In the last years, several crowdsourcing services have been developed to allow citizens to collaborate collecting data about urban accessibility, but focusing mainly on physical disabilities. The project Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism (PIUMA) aims to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) move and live within cities by means of a crowdsourced personalized map. The map is populated with comments and reviews by people with ASD and caregivers, in order to highlight places, routes, and activities (e.g. less crowded routes, quiet places, ways to socially behave in different places) for making ASD people’s daily lives more comfortable. Keywords— Crowdmapping, Inclusive Smart City, Autism
Interest in the implementation of service-learning (SL) in university courses in psychology has r... more Interest in the implementation of service-learning (SL) in university courses in psychology has risen in recent years. SL allows the students not only to read and talk about social problems, but also to act upon them and thus to learn from practice as well. The aim of this work is to present the service-learning experienced in psychology courses at the University of Turin, Italy. The experiences—named “The Volunteer's Helpdesk” and “Service Learning: Urban Area Analysis and Proposals for Action”—were analyzed following the Comprehensive Action Plan for Service Learning (CAPSL) model proposed by Bringle and Hatcher (1996) for implementing SL in higher education. The work presented is intended to contribute to laying the foundation for a broader reflection on how to implement SL in university courses in psychology.
The aim of the research was to study motivations to volunteer, and their relationship with religi... more The aim of the research was to study motivations to volunteer, and their relationship with religious orientation in a sample of volunteers working in a Catholic organization. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 190 volunteers working in a Catholic organization based in a large city in northern Italy and devoted to ending poverty and situations of marginalization through the promotion of social justice. Of these, 160 (90 females, 70 males) agreed to participate. The main result was that all motivations, except Career, increased with the intrinsic religious orientation. The Social and Career functions increased with the extrinsic-social religious orientation. The Protective and Enhancement functions increased with all religious orientations. The result concerning gender differences showed that the creation of a social network through volunteering and the opportunities to create and maintain a positive relationship with others are more important to women than men. Managers could benefit from these findings to improve the recruitment and retaining of volunteers and to think strategically about the mission and the cultural/religious belief of the organization. The impact of two and a half years of Covid-19 policies, however, remains unclear.
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers
This paper presents an ongoing project, PIUMA, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, wi... more This paper presents an ongoing project, PIUMA, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, with the aim to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) move and live within cities.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in people's lives. The Human-Computer Interacti... more The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in people's lives. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community widely investigated technology use during crises. However, commercial video games received minor attention. In this article, we describe how video game play impacted the life transformations engendered by the pandemic. We administered a qualitative online survey to 330 video game players who were living in Italy during the lockdown measures. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic altered the participants' sense of time and space, reshaped both their intimate and wider social interactions, and elicited a wide spectrum of disturbing emotions. Players escaped from this unsatisfying reality into video game worlds, searching for a new normality that could compensate for the unpredictability and dangerousness of the pandemic life, as well as seeking uncertainty in the game environments to balance the flatness of the lockdown everydayness. In doing so, they "appropriated" the gaming technologies, which also led to several unexpected outcomes. Starting from these findings, we propose a model of escapism that points out four ways to escape from reality into video game worlds. Moreover, we outline some design implications that might inspire future strands of research in the field of crisis technologies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
The crowdsourcing paradigm (i.e., people while moving provide data from different places) can pla... more The crowdsourcing paradigm (i.e., people while moving provide data from different places) can play a fundamental role in transforming users in significant actors in society. In the last years, several crowdsourcing services have been developed to allow citizens to collaborate collecting data about urban accessibility, but focusing mainly on physical disabilities. The project Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism (PIUMA) aims to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) move and live within cities by means of a crowdsourced personalized map. The map is populated with comments and reviews by people with ASD and caregivers, in order to highlight places, routes, and activities (e.g. less crowded routes, quiet places, ways to socially behave in different places) for making ASD people’s daily lives more comfortable. Keywords— Crowdmapping, Inclusive Smart City, Autism
Interest in the implementation of service-learning (SL) in university courses in psychology has r... more Interest in the implementation of service-learning (SL) in university courses in psychology has risen in recent years. SL allows the students not only to read and talk about social problems, but also to act upon them and thus to learn from practice as well. The aim of this work is to present the service-learning experienced in psychology courses at the University of Turin, Italy. The experiences—named “The Volunteer's Helpdesk” and “Service Learning: Urban Area Analysis and Proposals for Action”—were analyzed following the Comprehensive Action Plan for Service Learning (CAPSL) model proposed by Bringle and Hatcher (1996) for implementing SL in higher education. The work presented is intended to contribute to laying the foundation for a broader reflection on how to implement SL in university courses in psychology.
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Papers by Maurizio Tirassa