Characterization of Serious Games Guided by the

Educational Objectives

October 2014

TEEM’14 Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multicultirality Conference

Afef GHANNEM

Higher Institute of Computer Science and Management

afefghannem@yahoo.fr

2

General Context

Introduction

A Grid of Evaluation

Pedagogical Goal Ontology

Case Study

Conclusion and Future Work

Outline

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General Context

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Serious Games are video games incorporating pedagogy as different types of knowledge allow immersion and interaction with a virtual world that can be used to support training

SG are designed to meet the needs of learners / players in the acquisition of knowledge and / or entertainment

This satisfaction we bring back to evaluate the usability of serious games according to the content, learning objectives, target audience and other criteria to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of SG in order to integrate them into learning process

Introduction (1/2)

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We need characteristics which can classify the existing SG through their educational objectives

We find certain adequacy between the objectives of course and the objectives of SG

In order to evaluate SG, we need a method to help the teachers for choosing games

Proposal of an instructional method that provides guidance for teachers to select an appropriate SG Grid of evaluation Ontology

Main Actor: Course designer (Teacher, Trainer,..)

Introduction (2/2)

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A new analytical framework that will be a benchmark for evaluating serious games in favor of learning

This benchmark must be reusable and accurate as possible and will cover all relevant aspects for a complete and qualitative evaluation

Defines a preliminary list of criteria and features for a good SG required that we use later to evaluate the potential usefulness of a selection of games to learning

A Grid of evaluation (1/3)

TEEM 20146

The grid is dedicated to guide the teacher in evaluating SG based on the knowledge and skills that he wanted to give students through play

From the viewpoint teacher, grid emphasizes the usefulness of knowing:

For what the profile of learners such game is relevant?

What is the point of the game for the learner? For

classroom?

What are the limits of such game (i.e. no possibility of

going back)?

A Grid of evaluation (2/3)

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The teacher may have: Presentation of such SG Clear decision on whether to adopt such a game

in his learning process Synthesis of learning (script and objective

progression) proposed by such SG

Our work is based on theories of learning modeling such as the IMS Learning Design specification and Bloom's taxonomy to define the levels of cognition and the game theory

A Grid of evaluation (3/3)

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IMS Learning Design allows scripting and pedagogical structuring learning

activities It represents also the objectives of the activity as well as

the necessary prerequisites IMS Learning Design has the advantage of providing a

formal description of the scenarios The game theory

allows the definition of the rules of the game that is the game units (player against player, player against machine or group against group)

allows the description of the actions of players in all situations of the game together with the payoff that gets the player when he is following a well determined action or strategy

A Grid of evaluation: The tools (1/2)

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Bloom's taxonomy Define and classify the learning objectives and

to assess knowledge and skills It defines the objectives under the form of action

verbs which classify objectives into three types namely cognitive objectives, affective objectives and psychomotor objectives

A Grid of evaluation: The tools (2/2)

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The pedagogical Goal Ontology

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The semantic reference for pedagogical objectives of SG Presents a formal model that can provide the processing

and interpretation of educational objectives that are the most interesting part in a SG

It facilitates the extraction of the contents of such a game through its objectives

A SG is characterized by one or more objectives Actions that compose it, the skills to develop among players/

Actions that can accomplish the objectives, also used to describe and develop the skills covered by the game

A pedagogical goal can be affective, cognitive or psychomotor

Pedagogical Objective accomplishes a number of skills such as knowledge, know-how and know-be

The pedagogical Goal Ontology

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Case Study (1/2)

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Figure 1. Rules query

Case Study (2/2)

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Figure 2. SWRL rules inference

We provided a toolbox to facilitate the evaluation of serious games referred to pedagogy

We exposed a comprehensive solution while defining generic criteria of evaluating and analysis of serious games

We used the game theory and the standards of pedagogy modeling as IMS-LD and The Bloom’s Taxonomy

Next step: fully automating the evaluation process and content extraction of serious games

Conclusion and future work

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Thank you for your attention

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TEEM’14 Conference