a proposal for integrating serious games made with unity3d into moodle coursesfrank poschner, dieter...

Integrating Serious Games made with Unity3Dinto Moodle courses

Frank Poschner

Department of Computer Engineering

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

University of Kassel

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Agenda

• Serious Games – a short overview

• Motivation

• Technical background

• An approach for an integration

• User assessment

• Summary

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Explanation on Serious Games

• Games already exist for a very long time

• Reasons to play:

– Entertainment

– Profit

– Acquirement of skills

• Training games for consolidation of knowledge

• By having fun at games and repetition

→ easier gathering of knowledge

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Explanation on Serious Games

Learning Games, Serious Games:

– Games with serious background

– On the computer: simulators and computer games

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Explanation on Serious Games

• Fields of application:

– Medicine

– Health care

– Military applications

– Safety

• Different kinds of games

→ in our case: training in virtual environments

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Training simulations

• E.g. firefighters and cycling simulations

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Training simulations

• E.g. firefighters and cycling simulations

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Training simulations

• Motivation of firefighters:

– Saving time of presence

– Training of scenarios that would be difficult to train in reality

– Preparation of firefighter training on the computer

– Time-independent practice

• Communication and Cooperation via network

→ Decentralised learning

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Theory in Moodle

• Theoretical basis of fields of application

– Experts can define rules and exercises

– Knowledge provided by education or literature

• Example: Working rules for firefighters

– Theoretical content

– Tests with questions

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Theory in Moodle ( German example )

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Link to Moodle

• Features of Moodle are also useful for Serious Games:

– User profiles

– roles (teacher, student)

– Results and Grader report

– Etc.

→ Why not combining theory content and training simulations in Moodle?

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Game development (Unity3D)

Elements of a game:

– 3D models

– Logic (scripts / programming)

– Avatars

– AI

– Physics, particle systems etc.

– Important: Export as web player application

→ for use in a browser

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Requirements

• Game can be started out of Moodle

• Game is treated like an activity or question type

• User date should be known in the game

• Storing the player's result in Moodle

• Teacher can review the results

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

An approach for an integration

Using the SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) – model for submitting the data

Specified by the ADL ( Advanced Distributed Learning) Initiative

Moodle Docs:

„SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a collection of specifications that enable interoperability, accessibility and reusability of web-based learning content. SCORM content can be delivered to learners via any SCORM- compliant Learning Management System (LMS) using the same version of SCORM. “

Examples: Camtasia, iSpring

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

SCORM overview

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

SCORM and Unity3D

• Using the standard in the game's code

• Manager-entity collects data from the LMS or for sending it to the LMS

– GetLearnerName()

– SetBookmark(location)

– SetNormalizedScore(score)

– SetSatisfaction(success)

• Awarding of points, aborting the game etc. must be included in the game code

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

SCORM and Moodle

• Teacher gets the game as a package

• Creates a new activity: SCORM package

• Some necessary settings have to be set

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Game communicating with LMS

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Assessment in / for Moodle

• Assessment: points-based in Moodle

• How to assess the player?

– Reached the goal: full score

→ only important to reach the goal

– Single actions correct

→ maximum reached when all actions were correct

– Wrong actions

• Abortion and new start in the game (points?)

• Abortion of the whole simulation

– Time-based (Abortion or less points)

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

An example application

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

An example application

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

An example application

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Outlook

• Multiplayer for learning in groups

• Own question types for game packages

• Further evaluation functions for evaluating player behavior and mapping in Moodle

→ GameAnalytics

• Teachers can create own scenarios and even own games

( modules )

Frank Poschner / Integrating Serious Games into Moodle courses

Contact

Thank you for your attention!

Frank Poschner

poschner@uni-kassel.de