Maartje Bakhuys Roozeboom is a researcher at TNO, Leiden, The Netherlands. Her main interests are in the area of the evaluation research in various domains such as occupational health and serious gaming. Gillian Visschedijk is a researcher at TNO, Soesterberg, The Netherlands. Her main research interests are in the area of serious games in various domains such as education, health, crisis management and military. Her work is characterized by both design projects and validation studies. Esther Oprins is a researcher at TNO, Soesterberg, The Netherlands. Her main research interests are training design, assessment, evaluation and validation research of training with new technology (serious gaming, simulation, simulators), in which she has a PhD, in various domains such as education, aviation and military. Address for correspondence: Ms Maartje Bakhuys Roozeboom, TNO,
AbstractAlthough serious games are more and more used for learning goals, high-quality empirical studies to prove the effectiveness of serious games are relatively scarce. In this paper, three empirical studies are presented that investigate the effectiveness of serious games as opposed to traditional classroom instruction on learning features as well as learning outcomes. All three studies used a similar longitudinal case-control study design and measured the same set of learning features (control, challenge, feedback, engagement and social interaction). Learning outcomes were measured by self-report and knowledge tests. Results of the three studies show that students that played the serious games scored higher on features associated with high-quality learning. Furthermore, the studies show that serious gaming is more effective on self-reported learning outcomes than traditional classroom instruction. Effects of serious gaming on the knowledge tests were not found. The studies serve as a first step to the development of a generic evaluation framework for serious gaming.
The aim of this study was to provide a design rationale for game interventions targeting health-related behaviors. We developed a coherent program design in which both health behavior change and usability factors are addressed. The IM protocol can serve as a useful guide for decision making in program development and evaluation.
The training of tactical decision making increasingly occurs through serious computer games. A challenging aspect of designing such games is the modelling of human emotions. Two studies were performed to investigate the relation between fidelity and human emotion recognition in virtual human characters. Study 1 compared five versions of a virtual character that expressed emotions through different combinations of posture, facial expression, and tone of voice. Results showed that emotion recognition was best when all three behavioural cues were present; posture + face and posture + tone of voice were joint second best. In study 2, these three versions were supplemented with contextual information. Cross-variant comparisons yielded marginal differences in emotion recognition and no differences in tactical decision making. Together, these findings suggest that the combination of posture with either facial expression or tone of voice is sufficient to ensure recognition of human emotions in tactical decision-making games.
IntroductionTactical decision making denotes the ability to choose which actions or solutions should best be taken to accomplish a goal or task. The decisions that emanate from this process can literally be of vital importance to professionals such as police officers, fire fighters, security guards and military commanders who operate under dangerous or threatening conditions. The development of tactical decision-making skills increasingly occurs through serious games that, due to advanced computer technology, enable commanders-in-training to make tactical decisions in situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost and time (Kiili, 2007;Knerr, 2006).
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