Developing Serious Games

International Simposium of Informatics Education(SIIE 2013), Viseu, Portugal

Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon, balta@fdi.ucm.es , @BaltaFMe-UCM research group, www.e-ucm.es http://slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon

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e-UCM group and projects‣ CS Professor at Complutense U.

• Director of e-UCM‣ e-UCM research group about

Learning technologies• www.e-ucm.es• 15 researchers• Serious games

- Application to the medical domain

Based on our experience in creating and evaluating serious games

Serious games definition

‣ “any meaningful use of computerized game/game industry resources whose chief mission is not entertainment”

- Sawyer, B. (2007). The "Serious Games" Landscape. Presented at the Instructional & Research Technology Symposium for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Camden, USA.

‣ “A mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses entertainment, to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.”

- Zyda, M. (2005). From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games. Computer, 38(9), 25-32 (pp. 26)

Games as educational tools‣ Video games can be instrumental in

acquiring abilities and skills like• Spatial perception and recognition• Development of visual discernment and

separation of visual attention• Development of inductive logic• Cognitive development in

scientific/technical aspects• Development of complex skills• Spatial representation• Inductive discovery• Iconic code construction• Gender constructionAguilera M de, Mendiz A. Video games and education. Computers in Entertainment. 2003;1(1):10

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Serious Games use?

‣ Serious Games have probed to be educationally effective in several domains

• Medicine, military, business, corporate training

‣ But still is a low adoption of Serious Games in mainstream education

‣ Serious Games considered usually as a complementary content

• Mainly used for motivational purposes• No actual impact on the final mark

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Serious Games?The NMC Horizon

Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

‣ Games and Gamification

But not present in the 2013:

‣ Latin American Higher Education

‣ K-12 Edition

http://www.nmc.org/publications/

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Science Pirates, http://sciencepirates.com/

ReMission

Intended for young people with cancer and oral chemotherapy

(Cole, S.W. et al 2012), (Kato, P.M, 2008) • effective tool that supports

treatment adherence • sense of power and control

over their disease

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Learn how to be a teacher

Educational videogames challenges

‣ Identification of more large success cases • including scientific and formal evaluation

‣ Scalability and maintainability • reducing initial cost and TCO

‣ Take into account curriculum and involve educators

• Teachers are a key element in games use

‣ Include student evaluation into games

‣ Actual application in real educational settings• Taking into account current technical

infrastructures

Serious games: our vision‣ Wikipedia approach to serious games

• Reduce the cost of creating games

• Produce games that can be reused

• Simplify the integration of games in the pre-existing e-learning infrastructure

• Provide user with easy to use tools to create the games

• Apply first to domains or problems with clear added value

¿Serious games?

Margolis JL, Nussbaum M, Rodriguez P, Rosas R. Methodology for evaluating a novel education technology: a case study of handheld video games in Chile. Computers & Education. 2006;46(2):174–191.

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Scratch: visual programming

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Gamestar Mechanic

eAdventure game platformOpen code authoring environment for the production of point-and-click adventure games & immersive learning simulations

Multiplatform, Multilingual, now moving to HTML5 and tablets

Oriented to educators

No programming required

http://www.chermug.eu

With MGH-Harvard Universityhttp://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es

With ONT, educ@ONT

Games for English practice

Download from e-ucm or from CATEDUhttp://catedu.es/webcatedu/index.php/descargas/e-adventures

Other games

Based on The Foolish Lady by Lope de VegaThe game is available at http://damaboba.e-ucm.es/ and in Google Play

La Dama Boba

Game to learn XML basicsPlay at http://bit.ly/LiS-XML

Lost in Space

$300

$8K

$3K

$25K

eAdventure games

Science Pirates

Immune Attack

AAA games

Cost per minute of play

Educational videogames

‣ learning-by-doing‣ problem solving‣ narrative features‣ keep flow states

‣ …but (educational) games are difficult and costly to create and it is difficult to integrate all the required expertise

Educational Game Development Approach

Torrente et at (in press) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in Heathcare Education. IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies.

Domain experts

‣ Have the knowledge of the subject• Could be familiar with problems in learning

‣ Usually teach to others (training, mentor, etc.)

‣ Usually not open to learn new ways to describe their knowledge

‣ Don´t know how to create games

Game authoring

‣ Complex procedure

‣ Generally involves several different experts: • Educational expert, domain expert, game

programmer• Communication problems

‣ No predefined process• More an art than a science

‣ Open questions• Maintenance, new versions with required

educational changes, etc

Sample games

Important that domain experts, educational designer and programmers have similar expectations

=

Improving collaboration

Knowledge explicitation known by the expert

‣ Case-based teaching‣ Problem-based learning

Simple representations ‣ Correct knowledge‣ Common errors‣ Incremental process

Rapid prototyping‣ Expert play it to check it

Cases and flow diagrams

‣ Specific cases: Easy to communicate

‣ Flow diagrams: Understandable by everyone

‣ Establish game flow and other requirements

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Game elements

Game designers propose game elements + game mechanics

Rapid prototyping

‣ eAdventure allows progressive addition of multimedia resources

‣ Easy to test concepts before capturing resources

‣ Reduces changes to resources, which are the costliest part of development

Assets & prototyping

Evaluation Questions for Serious Games

‣ Does it work? (beta-testing)‣ Is the content accurate and appropriate for target

audience? (content review)‣ Is it easy to use and easy to learn to use? (usability-

navigation)‣ Is it compelling/engaging for the target audience?

(realism, satisfaction)‣ What are the learning goals? (learning)‣ How well do the learners achieve those goals?

(learning)‣ What else are they learning? (learning)‣ Does it track the learner’s performance? (learning

management system)http://simworkshops.stanford.edu/06_0626/pdf/Evaluating_serious_games.pdf

Educational Game Development Approach

Torrente et at (in press) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in Heathcare Education. IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies.

Case study:First-aid game‣ Game to teach first aid (or basic vital

support) to high-school students

‣ Developed in collaboration with medical professionals and educational experts

‣ Three basic situations• Choking• Heart attack• Unconsciousness

‣ Based on accepted international medical procedures (ILCOR'11)

http://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es

First-aid game

Individual scores to make students visit all paths

Random changes to encourage replayabilityDifferent media to transmit and reinforce

knowledge

Evaluation of the first-aid game‣ 342 high school students, 4 different middle

and high schools‣ Control group with 2 emergency medical

doctors

Experiment group

‣ After a short introduction of the game students play for up to 50 minutes

Control group

‣ Best educational situation available‣ Same time but with 2 emergency medical

doctors • A medical mannequin• An automatic defibrillator

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Results: acceptance

‣ Students‘ opinions based on tag cloud selection

BoringFun

UselessUseful

DifficultEasy

ComplexSimple

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112

40

36

7

1

0

5

Results: learning

‣ Pre and post test to evaluate student knowledge

With the game

Marchiori EJ, Ferrer G, Fernández-Manjón B, Povar Marco J, Suberviola González JF, Giménez Valverde A. Video-game instruction in basic life support maneuvers. Emergencias. 2012;24:433-7.

Discussion

‣ Games are not the silver bullet but can be a very powerful educational resource if included in the learning flow

‣ Systematize the game design• Include the educator early in the loop

‣ Simplify the task of the teacher• Facilitating the integration of games in Virtual

Learning Environments, just as another learning resource

• Include automatic assessment for game-based learning activities

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Thank you!

balta@fdi.ucm.es

@BaltaFM

Slides will be available at http://slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon

References• eAdventure. http://e-adventure.e-ucm.es/• MGH Learning Lab. http://www.massgeneral.org/learninglab/• First Aid Game. http://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es/• Marchiori EJ, Ferrer G, Fernández-Manjón B, Povar Marco J, Suberviola González JF,

Giménez Valverde A. Video-game instruction in basic life support maneuvers. Emergencias. 2012;24:433-7. (download PDF)

• Pablo Moreno-Ger, Javier Torrente, Julián Bustamante, Carmen Fernández-Galaz, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, María Dolores Comas-Rengifo (2010). Application of a low-cost web-based simulation to improve students’ practical skills in medical education. International Journal of Medical Informatics 79(6), 459-467 (doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2010.01.017).

• Brian Johnston, Liz Boyle, Ewan MacArthur, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón (2013). The role of technology and digital gaming in nurse education. Nursing Standard, Vol 27, No 28, pp 35-38, March

• Ángel del Blanco, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, Pedro Ruiz, Manuel Giner (2013). Using videogames facilitates the first visit to the operating theatre. Medical Education. Vol 47, Issue 5, pp. 519-520

• Borro-Escribano B., Martínez-Alpuente I., del Blanco A., Torrente J., Fernández-Manjón B., Matesanz R. (in press) Application of Game-Like Simulations in the Spanish National Transplant Organization. Transplantation Proceedings Journal.

• Borro-Escribano B. et Al. (in press) Developing Game-Like Simulations to Formalize Tacit Procedural Knowledge: The ONT Experience. Educational Technology Research and Development Journal. Springer

Check www.e-ucm.es/publications/ for updated references

Our current projects

Increasing patient safety using games

Modelling/teaching medical procedures atNational Transplant Organization