E-Guess: Evaluación de usabilidad para juegos educativos

Usability is a relevant aspect in the analysis of the human-machine interface, as it concerns the dialogue established between subjects, artefacts and quality of use, and interaction allowed by the system. This work presents a specific heuristic for evaluating educational games, created from Game User Experience Satisfaction (GUESS) and, concomitantly, Nielsen's assessment tools. To this purpose, applied research using a quantitative-qualitative approach - with the participation of 3 specialized users and 4 potential users in an educational game used as a case study. The choice of GUESS as a starting point was due to a systematic review of the usability literature. Based on the model, users were invited to operate the educational game and present their impressions. From the selected results, a new use assessment tool, called E-GUESS, was formulated. With Educational-GUESS, we introduced changes aimed at pedagogical issues and educational content that also seeks to elucidate important points in the development of an educational game by allowing insights that are easily ignored during the design phase to overcome the alleged bipolarity between "fun" and "educational" in educational software games. Another contribution of the research was the usability analysis performed for the educational game used in data collection. This game, which deals with the theme Periodic Table of Chemistry and is in the validation phase, received valuable contributions for adjustments in its gameplay.Usabilidad es un aspecto relevante en el análisis de la interfaz hombre-máquina, ya que se trata del diálogo que se establece entre sujetos, artefacto y calidad de uso e interacción que permite el sistema. Este trabajo presenta una heurística específica para la evaluación de juegos educativos, creada a partir de Game User Experience Satisfaction (GUESS) y, concomitantemente, las herramientas de evaluación de Nielsen. Para ello, se realizó una investigación aplicada con un enfoque cuantitativo-cualitativo - con la participación de 3 usuarios especializados y 4 usuarios potenciales en un juego educativo utilizado como estudio de caso. La elección de GUESS como punto de partida se debió a una revisión sistemática de la literatura sobre usabilidad. Según el modelo, se invitó a los usuarios a operar el juego educativo y presentar sus impresiones. A partir de los resultados seleccionados, se formuló una nueva herramienta de evaluación de uso, denominada E-GUESS. Con Educational-GUESS, introdujimos cambios dirigidos a temas pedagógicos y contenidos educativos que también busca dilucidar puntos importantes en el desarrollo de un juego educativo al permitir percepciones que son fácilmente ignorados durante la fase de diseño con la intención de superar la supuesta bipolaridad entre "divertido" y "educativo" en los juegos de software educativo. Otro aporte de la investigación fue el análisis de usabilidad realizado para el juego educativo utilizado en la recolección de datos. Este juego, que trata sobre el tema Tabla Periódica de Química y se encuentra en fase de validación, recibió valiosos aportes para ajustes en su jugabilidad

Designing Serious Games for Education: From Pedagogical Principles to Game Mechanisms

International audienceSGs represent an important opportunity for improving education thanks to their ability to compel players and to present realistic simulations of real-life situations. The scientific community is aware that we are just at the beginning of a proper use of gaming technologies for education and training and, in particular, there is a need for scientific and engineering methods for building games not only as more realistic simulations of the physical world, but as means that provide effective learning experiences. This requires an ever closer cooperation among the various actors involved in the overall SG life- chain, putting pedagogy in a central role, given the educational target of the SGs. This paper addresses the till-now inadequate integration of educational and game design principles and proposes techniques, methods and mechanisms that allow designers with different background to dialogue among each other and to define games that are able to integrate - by design - entertainment and educational features. In particular, the paper follows a design path that starts from the definition of reference frameworks and then analyses the typical categories of design patterns, before focusing on the user-interaction modalities - seen from a pedagogical point of view - given their relevance for the end-users. In the end, we discuss the sandbox serious game model, that looks suited to implement - by design - joint pedagogical and entertainment features. We believe that the indications provided in this paper can be useful for researchers and stakeholders to understand the typical issues in SG design and to get inspiration about possible solutions that take into account the need to implement tools that are effective both as an entertainment medium and as an education tool