Query: serious games

title: Lessons learned applying learning analytics to assess serious games
abstract: Serious Games have already proved their advantages in different educational environments. Combining them with Game Learning Analytics can further improve the life cycle of serious games, by informing decisions that shorten development time and reduce development iterations while improving their impact, therefore fostering their adoption. Game Learning Analytics is an evidence based methodology based on in game user interaction data, and can provide insight about the game based educational experience promoting aspects such as a better assessment of the learning process. In this article, we review our experiences and results applying Game Learning Analytics for serious games in three different scenarios: (1) validating and deploying a game to raise awareness about cyberbullying, (2) validating the design of a game to improve independent living of users with intellectual disabilities and (3) improving the evaluation of a game on first aid techniques. These experiences show different uses of game learning analytics in the context of serious games to improve their design, evaluation and deployment processes. Building up from these experiences, we discuss the results obtained and provide lessons learnt from these different applications, to provide an approach that can be generalized to improve the design and application of a wide range of serious games in different educational settings.

title: A Meta Analysis of Use of Serious Games in Education over a Decade
abstract: It seems necessary to review the literature to explore the effectiveness of serious games in education, since the number of studies on serious games is surging up. This study systematically reviewed the literature within around a recent decade. The trend of the number of publications related to use of serious games in education was firstly clarified based on the data retrieved from major databases. Secondly, various factors were determined that influenced the effect of serious game assisted learning. The major section identified both advantages and disadvantages of use of serious games in education. Use of serious games in medical science has been rising in a recent decade, which is thus highlighted in this study. Attitudes toward use of serious games in education were explored, as well as the new development of use of serious games in education. Future theoretical and practical exploration might need interdisciplinary cooperation.

title: Facilitating sustainability transition through serious games: A systematic literature review
abstract: Exploring aspects of how innovative methods can truly attain a sustainable society is necessary for the future of our planet. This study focuses on serious games, and how users can increase their understanding of sustainability issues and their familiarity with sustainable development strategies. "Users" of serious games consist of all possible target groups that are interested in attaining knowledge of sustainability through the use of games that are designed for a purpose beyond entertainment, in this case for sustainability education. This paper follows the systematic literature review method to deliver a study of serious games featuring sustainable development practices and policies. In order to provide a thorough analysis of their dynamic features, 77 games were explored in this study. The findings show the growing number of serious games that seek to educate in sustainability and the categorization of these games according to the triple bottom line of sustainability, giving clarification hints to users wishing to select the relevant tool that offers an understanding of specific sustainability issues. The purpose of such research is to reveal the contribution of serious games as effective tools in facilitating sustainability education and to group them according to their nature and direction in relation to sustainability. Limitations in their effectiveness are also identified and a research agenda for new, relevant serious games is proposed that will enhance holistic knowledge and make it easier to clarify their pedagogical basis. The recipients of the findings will be all those future users and trainers who are interested in accessing sustainability education patterns through the use of serious games. This study will enable them to select the serious game that best serves their needs.

title: Gamification and serious games: A literature meta analysis and integrative model
abstract: In recent years we have witnessed a growing number of companies and institutions embedding game mechanics and game design techniques in all types of information systems, applications, and services. Following this trend, it is possible to find an increasing number of publications studying these subjects. With this meta analysis we synthesise and integrate all the earlier literature and information available on gamification and serious games, assessing the current state of the art in the field, filling a literature gap on this subject. We calculated meta analysis effects from a total of 54 studies and 59 datasets collected from the literature. Attitude, enjoyment, and usefulness are the most relevant predictors of intention to use gamification. Intention, enjoyment, and usefulness are the most relevant predictors of the brand attitude towards gamification. Our results allow us to present a theoretical model that will be of value to future gamification studies.

title: A Meta Analysis of Use of Serious Games in Education over a Decade
abstract: It seems necessary to review the literature to explore the effectiveness of serious games in education, since the number of studies on serious games is surging up. This study systematically reviewed the literature within around a recent decade. The trend of the number of publications related to use of serious games in education was firstly clarified based on the data retrieved from major databases. Secondly, various factors were determined that influenced the effect of serious game assisted learning. The major section identified both advantages and disadvantages of use of serious games in education. Use of serious games in medical science has been rising in a recent decade, which is thus highlighted in this study. Attitudes toward use of serious games in education were explored, as well as the new development of use of serious games in education. Future theoretical and practical exploration might need interdisciplinary cooperation.

title: Conceptualizing Serious Games as a Learning Based Intervention in the Context of Natural Resources and Environmental Governance
abstract: The use of serious games in the governance of natural resources and the environment is progressively increasing and includes games used for research and data collection, teaching and training, and fostering a change of practices. However, this diversity remains underexplored and underreported. In view of a growing interest in the use of serious games in natural resource and environmental governance, the absence of discussions about how differences in intended use and delivery influence the performance, assessment, and outcomes of games is problematic. Here we present an inventory, and a description, of such different uses then, by focusing on serious games used as interventions, we discuss when, and how, games could be used to generate learning and social learning. To that end we use a narrative review of selected literature, and insight from research on social learning, to develop an inventory of game use, and within that inventory we conceptualize the use of serious games as a social learning intervention. Also, by means of an illustrative case of a serious game (developed as part of the Assessing the Learning Effects of Games on Attitude of Stakeholders toward Sustainable Shrimp Farming ALEGAMS research project) we reflect on a few key aspects of game use. We suggest that developing a serious game needs several iterations and, although the learning outcomes can be assessed, the impact of games aiming at changes in current practice and policy will likely fall beyond the timespan of usual project periods. This is something future research should consider as it has implications for the research design and methodology.

title: Why and How Serious Games can Become Far More Effective: Accommodating Productive Learning Experiences, Learner Motivation and the Monitoring of Learning Gains
abstract: This paper aims to improve the design methods for serious games (games for learning) by identifying a set of well established pedagogical misconceptions and presenting design guidelines to avoid these. It analyses the pedagogical principles and models that are commonly used in serious game design, and contrasts these with evidence and advances in instructional psychology and instructional design research. The paper particularly focuses on 1) the concept of experience based learning, which many serious games comply with, 2) the concept of learner motivation, which most games strongly claim to support, and 3) the score systems that many games use to track and display progress. Structural design weaknesses are exposed and countered with a large body of research evidence from the literature. A set of practicable design guidelines are presented that help to avoid the pedagogical flaws and contribute to improving the design methods for serious games.

title: Serious Games in Surgical Medical Education: A Virtual Emergency Department as a Tool for Teaching Clinical Reasoning to Medical Students
abstract: Serious games enable the simulation of daily working practices and constitute a potential tool for teaching both declarative and procedural knowledge. The availability of educational serious games offering a high fidelity, three dimensional environment in combination with profound medical background is limited, and most published studies have assessed student satisfaction rather than learning outcome as a function of game use.  This study aimed to test the effect of a serious game simulating an emergency department "EMERGE" on students' declarative and procedural knowledge, as well as their satisfaction with the serious game.  This nonrandomized trial was performed at the Department of General, Visceral and Cancer Surgery at University Hospital Cologne, Germany. A total of 140 medical students in the clinical part of their training (5th to 12th semester) self selected to participate in this experimental study. Declarative knowledge (measured with 20 multiple choice questions) and procedural knowledge (measured with written questions derived from an Objective Structured Clinical Examination station) were assessed before and after working with EMERGE. Students' impression of the effectiveness and applicability of EMERGE were measured on a 6 point Likert scale.  A pretest posttest comparison yielded a significant increase in declarative knowledge. The percentage of correct answers to multiple choice questions increased from before (mean 60.4, SD 16.6) to after (mean 76.0, SD 11.6) playing EMERGE (P<.001) The effect on declarative knowledge was larger in students in lower semesters than in students in higher semesters (P<.001) Additionally, students' overall impression of EMERGE was positive.  Students self selecting to use a serious game in addition to formal teaching gain declarative and procedural knowledge.

title: Affective patterns in serious games
abstract: We discuss affective serious games that combine learning, gaming and emotions. We describe a novel framework for the creation and evaluation of serious affective games. Our approach is based on merging pertinent design patterns in order to recognize educational claims, educational assessment, best game design practices, as well as models and solutions of affective computing. Bjork's and Holopainen's game design patterns have been enhanced by Evidence Centered Design components and affective components. A serious game has been designed and created to demonstrate how to outline a complex game system in a communicative way, and show methods to trace how theoretically driven design decisions influence learning outcomes and impacts. We emphasize the importance of patterns in game design. Design patterns are an advantageous and convenient way of outlining complex game systems. Design patterns also provide favorable language of communication between multidisciplinary teams working on serious games.

title: Simva: Simplifying the Scientific Validation of Serious Games
abstract: Serious games validation is a highly complex and burdensome process. To ensure that games meet their intended educational goals, it is necessary to have a clear experimental design and the necessary tools to minimize the errors that may appear in the process. In this article, after describing the most common problems that we have found while validating our own games, we present Simva, a tool designed to simplify the process of validating serious games with formal questionnaires and relating them with learning analytics data, reducing time, cost, and error rates.