The move beyond edutainment: have we learnt our lessons from the entertainment industry?

Serious games (SGs) have been used in the education of students and professionals for decades, but still have not reached their full potential, despite the large consensus they have gained recently. The entertainment game industry is a rapidly developing phenomenon, with a high market potential, enabled and enhanced by technological innovation. The question examined in this paper is: Did serious game designers learn from Entertainment Game (EG) designers in building a successful game? This paper presents three case study examples of games that have good learning outcomes to explore this question. This paper discusses the salient aspects and the differences between the examples and suggests how SGs could learn more from successful EGs

Exploring gamification approach in hazard identification training for Malaysian construction industry

In recent years gaming products have increasingly been used to enhance learning and training development in academic and commercial sectors. Games have become more pervasive; they have been adopted for use in many industries and sectors such as defense, medicine, architecture, education, and city planning and government as tools for workers development. In Malaysia, it has been reported that the construction industry holds the third highest record of occurrences of accidents at work. Therefore, safety training is inevitable to reduce the alarming rate of accidents on construction sites. However, currently, available safety training approaches are still lacking in terms of delivering hands-on training and are more theoretical- instead of being more practical-based. This is due to the nature of the construction environment itself in which safety training involving certain hazards that cannot be implemented hands-on as it may bring harm to trainers, trainees and the environment. Gaming is an approach that applies technology to provide an almost real experience with interactive field training, and also supporting the theory of learning by doing with real case scenario. The purpose of this paper is to seek and explore the differences in existing gamification genres such as simulation game, role-playing, action game, strategy game and etc. Data were collected through available literature. The findings of the study show that serious game is a suitable genre to be adopted as an approach in hazard identification training for the construction industry in Malaysia

A Theoretical Framework for Serious Game Design: Exploring Pedagogy, Play and Fidelity and their Implications for the Design Process

It is widely acknowledged that digital games can provide an engaging, motivating and “fun” experience for students. However an entertaining game does not necessarily constitute a meaningful, valuable learning experience. For this reason, experts espouse the importance of underpinning serious games with a sound theoretical framework which integrates and balances theories from two fields of practice: pedagogy and game design (Kiili, 2005; Seeney & Routledge, 2009). Additionally, with the advent of sophisticated, immersive technologies, and increasing interest in the opportunities for constructivist learning offered by these technologies, concepts of fidelity and its impact on student learning and engagement, have emerged (Aldrich, 2005; Harteveld et al., 2007, 2010). This paper will explore a triadic theoretical framework for serious game design comprising play, pedagogy and fidelity. It will outline underpinning theories, review key literatures and identify challenges and issues involved in balancing these elements in the process of serious game design

Violin Virtuoso: A game for violin education

This study develops a way to use the technology of video games to help teach people the violin. The unique characteristics of this research are to create a visual representation for music for violinists, to utilize pedagogy for violin education within a video game, and to use the Fast Fourier Transform to process input from an actual acoustic instrument and use the data to track user progress. Music games like JamGuru [9], Rocksmith [19], LittleBigStar [13], and Rock Band [18] have made strides in these areas of research; however, most of these technologies have not been applied to the violin. Expected results are that students' progress rate will increase as a result of playing the game. The input processing used in this research could be applied to areas where sound recognition is important. Furthermore, the concept of an adaptable game can be applied to other academic subjects

A General Framework for Digital Game-Based Training Systems

This dissertation introduces a general framework for developing digital game-based training systems. The framework addresses all aspects of education. In that sense, it involves both teacher and student as game players. A visual review log supports teacher-student-communication. Based on the general framework, a novel digital game-based training system for crime scene investigation training called OpenCrimeScene has been developed and implemented.Diese Dissertation führt ein allgemeines Architekturmodell für die Entwicklung von computerspielbasierten Trainingssystemen ein. Das Architekturmodell spricht alle Aspekte der Ausbildung an. In diesem Sinne bezieht es Lehrer und Schüler als Spieler ein. Ein grafisches Bewertungsprotokoll unterstützt die Lehrer-Schüler-Kommunikation. Basierend auf dem allgemeinen Architekturmodell wurde ein neues computerspielbasiertes Trainingssystem zur Tatortsicherung entwickelt und implementiert

Serious gaming approach framework for construction hazards identification

Construction-related workers are always exposed to occupational hazards ona construction site. Hence, safety training is inevitable to reduce the alarming rate ofaccidents on sites. However, due to the nature of construction environment which ishazardous and harmful current safety training is still lacks hands-on approaches.Training assisted by affordable technology such as serious game would be aneffective tool to improve learning and has become a new approach to trainingdelivery. It offers safer, interactive and entertaining learning environment for theconstruction-related workers. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a seriousgame framework for hazard identification training module. To develop thisframework, the Garris‘s Input-Process-Outcome game model is adopted as thefoundation and five objectives are laid out. The first objective is to determine themost suitable instructional design method and the second objective is to determineserious game attributes to support the effective learning. Through content analysismethods, the findings show that there are 12 attributes of the serious game andGagne‘s Nine Events Instructional Methods Design is able to support an effectivelearning. The third objective is to understand user characteristics. Data wascollected from 319 construction-related workers using questionnaires and analysedusing mean comparison and ANOVA. Findings confirmed that they belong toindependent learners‘ category and inclined to ‗vigilant‘ and ‗brooding‘ types ofdecision-making style. These objectives become the basis for Input phases of theframework. The Gagne‘s instructional method also laid out the learning expectationfor Outcome phase i.e. skills, cognitive and affective learning. The fourth objectiveis to design the process of hazard identification. Through content analysis,Recognition-Primed Decision making model (RPD) is chosen and merged withhazard identification process and hierarchy of control to establish the Process phaseof the framework. All the findings are incorporated to achieve the fifth objectivewhich is to develop the serious game framework. The framework is validated bythree experts specialised in education, construction safety, and informationtechnology. They agreed that this framework would be able to enhance learning interm of skills, cognitive and affective learning. Finally, this serious game frameworkwill provide a safer, more affordable and interactive as well as entertaining forhazard identification training delivery in the construction industry

Prodigy Game and Third-Grade Mathematics Achievement in an Urban Setting

Students in Urban District 1 were not meeting grade level learning outcomes in mathematics on state- and district-administered benchmark assessments. The purpose of this study was to determine if including a specific educational video game (EVG), Prodigy, in mathematics instruction with third-grade students would influence students’ math achievement as measured by the districts quarterly Star Math benchmark assessments. The research question looked at the difference in students’ benchmark assessment scores for mathematics between third-grade users and non-users of the video game learning software Prodigy during the 2017–2018 school year. The use of EVGs as an instructional strategy was examined through the theoretical foundation of the technological pedagogical and content knowledge framework which is used to understand how to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. Using archival scaled scores, this causal–comparative study was conducted to compare achievement scores of students who were in a classroom that used Prodigy and those in a classroom that did not use Prodigy. A total of 2,350 scores were collected in the study. Because data violated the assumptions of an independent t-test, a Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the data. The findings showed no statistically significant difference in benchmark assessment scores between Prodigy users and non-users. Further study recommendations include conducting an experimental study to gain a full picture of the potential use of Prodigy in a classroom setting. Potential implications for positive social change from the findings include encouraging that policies and programs on EVG use are drafted to fit the needs and capabilities of students to help learning be fruitful for all learners

Perceptions of Failure in Education: Changing the Fear of Failure Through Gamification

The purpose of was study is to examine the perceptions in higher education of failure and the use of gamification to address the fear of failure. The perceptions of students about failures and successes in learning through gamification were explored. The research design for the proposed study was a survey comprised of qualitative and quantitative questions. The survey explored how students in formal education view failure in games and in learning, how failure strategies are viewed in higher education lesson plans and if failure strategies can be used to promote learning in games. During the summer of 2014 and during the fall of 2014 both undergraduate and graduate students participated in the survey. Results of this research demonstrate that students in a higher education classroom feel that failure can be a positive learning strategy when followed by thoughtful feedback following the failure experience and when it is applied as part of a trial and error process