Acceptance of Serious Games to Develop Digital Competencies in Higher Education

Serious games are the focus of the current research agenda. They show promise for allowing students to learn and practice skills. In fewer studies, they are used for the development of academic competencies. Therefore, it is of interest to deepen the research on the benefits of serious games in academic education and training. This article presents a study using serious games aimed at higher education academics’ training for the development of digital competencies. The study was carried out with 56 academics, using the serious game called AstroCódigo. The study analyzed the level of acceptance of serious games using the TAM model and what factors the academics believe affect this acceptance. It is important to know possible barriers that affect the development of actions oriented to the formation of academic competencies through serious games, which can also affect the adoption of games as a resource for teaching situations. None of prior studies have focused on analyzing the technological acceptance of serious games used for the development of academic competencies. The results of this research indicate that participants believe that using serious games can be beneficial to drive digital competencies. However, there are aspects such as the highest academic qualification, work experience, professional development, perceived usefulness, ease of use, and fear of change associated with age rank which can play a negative role in the use and acceptance of digital technologies by academics, particularly serious games. These results may be a clue to the barriers linked to the fact that most of the participants in this study do not use serious games in their classes or for their digital skills training. Additionally, the possibility to try and fail and the increased level of challenges proposed in the serious games, related to enjoyment, were valued by academics, during the sessions with AstroCódigo. These findings open the door to organize strategies for academic training in digital competencies within higher education institutions. They can also impact the design decisions of new serious games.This research work has been partially funded by the Office of International Affairs and External Cooperation (OAICE) of the University of Costa Rica (UCR), Costa Rica, through a supplementary scholarship granted to support studies towards obtaining a Master in Information Technology Applied to Education and a Doctorate in Information Sciences, both at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Also, Project REFORTICCA of the Scientific Research Agency of the Province of Buenos Aires (CICPBA) and RTI2018-096986-B-C31: "PERGAMEX: PERVASIVE GAMING EXPERIENCES FOR ALL" project, partially funded this research.UCR::Sedes Regionales::Sede del Atlántic

Improving Teacher Game Learning Analytics Dashboards through ad-hoc Development

Using games for education can increase the motivation and engagement of students and provide a more authentic learning environment where students can learn, test and apply new knowledge. However, the actual (serious) game application in schools is still limited, partly because teachers consider their use as a complex process. To increase game adoption, the integration of Game Learning Analytics (GLA) can provide teachers a thorough insight into the knowledge acquired by their students and usually presented through a visual dashboard. Although it is possible to provide a useful general metrics and a prefab dashboard, it may not fully cover teachers' expectations. In this paper, we study the ad-hoc adaptation of generic dashboards to increase their effectiveness through three case-studies. In these experiences, we adapt dashboards for teachers to include detailed information for more-focused analysis. With the positive results obtained from these scenarios, we have identified a methodological process to create ad-hoc GLA dashboards and extracted some lessons learned for dashboard development: simple but useful dashboards can provide a higher added value for stakeholders compared with more complex dashboards; teachers and game developers should be involved in dashboard design for better results; and, if possible, ad-hoc developed dashboards should be used as they have proved to be more effective than generic dashboards