Background. Despite the continuous and abundant growth of the game market the uptake of serious games in
education has been limited. Games require complex technologies and are difficult to organise and to
embed in the curriculum.
Aim. This article explores to what extent game templates and game authoring processes can be designed that can
be easily adopted and adapted by teachers while only using openly available tools.
Method. It discusses the design and first evaluation of two game platforms: ARGUMENT, based on a wiki, and
ARLEARN, a toolkit based on openly available Google technologies. ARGUMENT is a text-based
game challenging students to take a position on a given topic. ARLEARN offers an explicit mobile and
virtual gameplay environment and a defined authoring process to create game scripts.
Results. ARGUMENT and ARLEARN have been evaluated in four small-scale studies, where educators
designed game scenarios and students played the resulting games.
Conclusions. The results indicate that both tools are useful instruments that can be operated by teachers to build
games and game-alike educational activities and, additionally, are a valuable step to gain experience
with serious games.SURFnet/Kennisnet (ARGUMENT, StreetLearn, ARLearn), UNHC