Bridging Education and Employment: Intelligent Middleware for Job Matching
This e‑portfolio highlights research on a middleware platform that integrates academic data from learning management systems with company information from professional networks to create verified student profiles and match them intelligently to employers. The three‑layer architecture connects APIs from platforms such as Canvas and Glassdoor to fetch coursework records and job requirements, generates comprehensive profiles with validated skills, and uses a machine‑learning scoring system that weighs skill compatibility, cultural fit, and learning potential. By reducing mismatches and shortening time‑to‑hire, the proposed solution aims to bridge the persistent gap between academic achievement and career opportunities while offering subscription and freemium revenue models for recruiters and students.
Funded by Ole Goethe.
Gamification in Crisis and Leadership Training in Health and Social Care
The project's goal is to develop methods that use gamification to improve the effectiveness of leadership and crisis management training, as well as higher education. This initiative is carried out through close collaboration between university educators and professionals in the healthcare and social care sectors. The aim is to enhance preparedness and response capabilities for future crises and emergencies.
Designing and Developing Gamification and Serious Games in XR Environments
The project aims to explore and establish best practices for designing and developing gamification and serious games in extended reality (XR) environments. The initiative is conducted through project-based collaboration among the universities TU Wien, MDU, IPCA, and Nord.
Data-Informed Gamified Onboarding – Volvo CE [DIGO-CE]
Institution: Health Sciences, Innovation & Design
Faculty: FTH
Project leader: Adam Palmquist, PhD.
1. Background and Rationale
Employee onboarding in production-intensive industries such as automotive is both resource-intensive and strategically critical. Human Resources (HR) departments invest significant time coordinating the familiarisation of newly recruited employees with safety procedures, production workflows, digital systems, and organisational standards. In environments characterised by technical complexity, high maintenance demands, and distributed operations, onboarding quality is directly linked to safety compliance, operational continuity, and production stability. When employee onboarding processes lack structure or transparency, organisations face prolonged time-to-productivity, role ambiguity, reduced employee confidence, and avoidable early turnover. Digital gamified onboarding initiatives have previously produced promising outcomes, providing an engaging employee onboarding process through their gameful design. At the same time, advances in learning analytics and process mining now make it possible to use behavioural data from digital onboarding systems not merely to monitor participation, but to optimise design and reduce administrative overhead iteratively. Within Volvo, there is an opportunity to pilot a gamified data-informed onboarding initiative that simultaneously reduces HR workload, strengthens new employee engagement, and accelerates operational integration during the early employment phase.
2. Project Objective
The objective of this pilot is to design, implement, and evaluate a structured digital onboarding module that reduces HR coordination time per recruit, accelerates completion of mandatory onboarding tasks, improves clarity regarding roles and responsibilities, increases transparency for managers, and enables continuous, data-informed optimisation. The pilot will be conducted within a selected Volvo CE production unit and designed as a controlled, measurable initiative with defined gate reviews and operational performance indicators.
3. Deliverables
Onboarding Optimisation Dashboard (Refined Version)
Design Adjustment and Improvement Report
Cross-Unit Scalability Assessment
Strategic Research & Innovation Roadmap
Draft Grant Concept / Pre-Proposal to the Swedish Knowledge Foundation
Final Gate Review: Decision on (1) broader Volvo CE implementation pathway and (2) joint submission of large-scale co-funded research proposal.
4. Expected Value for Volvo CE
This initiative delivers direct operational value by reducing HR's administrative burden, increasing transparency into onboarding progression, accelerating integration into production workflows, strengthening safety compliance, and improving employee confidence and role clarity. By improving early alignment and traceability, the initiative also reduces early attrition risk and enhances production stability. Beyond the immediate pilot, the project establishes a data-informed onboarding capability within Volvo CE, enabling structured continuous improvement rather than static implementation. The result is not merely a digital tool, but a measurable onboarding optimisation framework tailored to production-intensive environments.
5. Strategic Collaboration Impact
The project strengthens the MDU–Volvo CE partnership by providing access to specialised competence in digital onboarding design and data-informed optimisation while establishing a transferable framework for production-oriented onboarding innovation. The pilot serves as a controlled, low-risk demonstrator with potential long-term strategic impact across production units and lays the foundation for future collaborative initiatives.
Izabella is a PhD student at the Faculty of Education, Arts and Culture at Nord University in Norway. Under the supervision of Robin Isfold Munkvold and Adam Palmquist, she has co‑authored several academic publications on gamification, learning technologies, and inclusive design in digital environments.
Google Scholar
In HCI International 2020 - Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Learning and Games. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12425. Springer.
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Behaviour and Information Technology, 43(12), 2717-2749.
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In HCI International 2020 - Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Learning and Games. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12425. Springer.
Find Out More
Behaviour and Information Technology, 43(12), 2717-2749.
Find Out More
28 March 2025
In the Proceedings of the Annual International GamiFIN conference 2025, vol.9.
8 July 2025
Chapter in Research Handbook on Information Systems and Society. Elgar Edward Publishing.
The following is a list of project that our lab offers that can be expanded into e.g.a master thesis or an internship at the lab.
Gamification Lab is open to master’s thesis and internships on Large Language Models in selected topic such as: knowledge augmentation and editing in language models, multi-modal generation for social robots, moral and ethical reasoning.
Strong knowledge of PyTorch and Language Models is required. Willingness to purse a publication is an advantage.
For more information: [email protected]
The following is a list of project that our lab offers that can be expanded into e.g.a master thesis or an internship at the lab.
Gamification Lab is open to master’s thesis and internships on Large Language Models in selected topic such as: knowledge augmentation and editing in language models, multi-modal generation for social robots, moral and ethical reasoning.
Strong knowledge of PyTorch and Language Models is required. Willingness to purse a publication is an advantage.
For more information: [email protected]
Lux Miranda co-organized the 3rd version of the Workshop: Robo-Identity: Designing for Identity in the Shared
learn moreLux Miranda co-organized the 3rd version of the Workshop: Robo-Identity: Designing for Identity in the Shared
learn moreNatalia Calvo Barajas was recognized as an “outstanding reviewer” based on her contributions to the peer-review process of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2023.
learn moreLux Miranda co-organized the 3rd version of the Workshop: Robo-Identity: Designing for Identity in the Shared
learn moreLux Miranda co-organized the 3rd version of the Workshop: Robo-Identity: Designing for Identity in the Shared
learn more
