what the future of educational games may bring to us - lessons learned from a 2-year research...
DESCRIPTION
More info: http://www.iminds.be/en/research/overview-projects/p/detail/g-at-s-2 "Although no one would dispute that effective educational games are complicated design undertakings, it is often overlooked that it takes more than reconciling great game design talent with the skills of designing an effective learning tool. In this presentation, we report on an interdisciplinary project on next-generation educational game platforms, i.e., the Belgian iMinds-funded project Games @ School (G@S). In recent years, commercial and academic interest in educational uses of video games has grown significantly. Due to their systematic and self-motivational nature, games are often seen as an important future aid in primary and secondary school education. Nevertheless, the development of enjoyable, challenging games and the integration with tailored, effective learning content require a complex and expensive process. This is one of the reasons why available content is currently still limited. The G@S project aimed to overcome this problem by creating a platform that supports easy creation and distribution of user-generated educational game content. The challenges in creating such a platform are numerous, and require expertise in various domains. They include authoring, adaptive content and feedback, user and market insights, and legal and distribution issues. To succeed and innovate in these areas, the initiating project partners, game developer Larian Studios and educational publisher die Keure, composed a consortium of industrial and academic partners with complementary expertise. In the presentation, the interdisciplinary game design and research project will be described. The focus will be on how the design process benefited from this interdisciplinary collaboration and how it contributed to the state-of-the art on the best practices regarding the design, development, implementation and validation of educational games. Examples from the G@S design and research process will be used to illustrate the innovations. For instance, in order to enable common users such as teachers to create inviting game content, the G@S project contributed to the development of a new generation of game authoring tools, with a suggestion framework for supervised and more user friendly level generation. In order to allow storage and exchange of educational game content, an open, non-proprietary data specification with powerful compression was developed. Furthermore, to achieve optimal learning combined with a satisfactory game experience, the G@S consortium invested in gathering in-depth insights into the user needs, capabilities and usage context, researching a powerful adaptive content and feedback framework as well as extensive testing of the effectiveness of the games. Finally, the distribution aspect was analysed in depth, dealing with the educational, legal and business issues that come along with the implementation of a platform for educational game content.TRANSCRIPT
THEMONKEY TALESSTORY
1. GAME DEVELOPMENT
“The development must be cost-effective to be able to compete with non-educational games”
2. GAME DESIGN
“Iterative & multi-stakeholder design processes yield more successful outcomes”
3. EFFECTIVENESS
“The most effective educational game is one that balances challenge to both learning & gaming skills”
Game exercises
Paper exercises
No extra exercises
4%
2%
30%
30%
10%
6%
Accuracy Calculation speed Motivation
4. LAW
“Law discourages tapping into UGC as content source”
5. BUSINESS MODELS
“Pay for access+ browser based+ worldwide B2C focus”
@biekezaman
Slideshare: http://
www.slideshare.net/biekezaman
Project-video: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?
v=RXSlm29rMzk
PublicationsVandewaetere, M., Cornillie, F., Clarebout, G., & Desmet, P. (2013). Adaptivity in Educational Games: Including Player
and Gameplay Characteristics. International Journal of Higher Education 2(2). http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/2761
Castellar, E.N., Van Looy, J., Szmalec, A., & de Marez, L. (2013). Improving arithmetic skills through gameplay: Assessment of the effectiveness of an educational game in terms of cognitive and affective learning outcomes. Information Sciences. Online first http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020025513006725
Vissers, J., De Bot, L., Zaman, B. (2013). MemoLine. Evaluating long-term UX with children. Proceedings of the Interaction Design and children conference, ACM Digital library.
Hollemeersch, C., Pieters, B., Demeulemeerster, A., Lambert, P., Van de Walle, R. (2012). Combining Texture Streaming and Run-Time Generation. Proceedings of the UROGRAPHICS 2012, CGF Vol 31, No 2
Hollemeersch, C., Pieters, B., Demeulemeerster, A., Lambert, P., Van de Walle, R. (2012). Texture-size-independent address translation for virtual texturing. Poster presentation at SIGGRAPH 2012 conference.
Maertens et al. (2013). The added value of adaptivity for providing challenge in serious math games. Presented at the EARLI-conference.
Maertens et al. (2013). It's all in the game. Assessing the difficulty of math exercises in an educational game. Presented at the EARLI-conference.
Maertens, M., Cornillie, F., Desmet, P., & Vandewaetere, M. (2013). Adaptive and adaptable gameplay. An instructional design approach for individual differences. Presented at the EDEN-conference.
Maertens, M., Cornillie, F., Desmet, P., & Vandewaetere, M. (2013). Adaptive and adaptable gameplay for children_challenges and pitfalls. Presented at the CHI conference.
Ranaivoson, H., Bleyen, V., & Braet, O. (2013). Business Models for Educational Video Games. Presented at the EMMA Conference: Digital Transformations and Transactions in Media Industries.
Ranaivoson, H., Bleyen, V., & Braet, O. (2013). Business Models for Educational Video Games. An exploratory analysis. Ranaivoson, H., & Bleyen, V. (2012). Modèles économiques du jeu vidéo éducatif. Presented at the Journée d’études sur le Serious Game, MSH Paris Nord Labex ICCA (Industries de la Culture et Création Artistique)
+ several publications status: submitted. This list will be updated.