Serious games for higher education: a framework for reducing design complexity

Abstract

Serious games open up many new opportunities for complex skills learning in higher education. The inherent complexity of such games though, requires large efforts for their development. This paper presents a framework for serious game design, which aims to reduce the design complexity at both conceptual, technical and practical levels. The approach focuses on a relevant subset of serious games, labelled scenario-based games. At the conceptual level it identifies the basic elements that make up the static game configuration; it also describes the game dynamics, i.e. the state changes of the various game components in the course of time. At the technical level it presents a basic system architecture, which comprises various building tools. Various building tools will be explained and illustrated with technical implementations that are part of the Emergo toolkit for scenario-based game development. At the practical level, a set of design principles are presented for controlling and reducing game design complexity. The principles cover the topics of game structure, feedback and game representation, respectively. Practical application of the framework and the associated toolkit is briefly reported and evaluated.

Students' attitudes toward playing games and using games in education: Comparing Scotland and the Netherlands

“…Zimmerman, 2004; Westera et al, 2008). Playing a game becomes meaningful and supports learning when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernible and integrated into the larger context of the game.…”

Performance assessment in serious games: Compensating for the effects of randomness

“…Whatever game approach is chosen, player-led decision taking is the very basis of game-based learning. It goes with active involvement, freedom of movement, problem ownership, adopting a certain role and responsibility, and the empowerment to change the game´s state (Westera 2008). Conceptually, however, playing a game is not very different from taking a multiple choice test, be it that the game style and context may easily conceal the underlying multiple choice nature.…”

“…A wide range of serious games have demonstrated to provoke active learner involvement through exploration, experimentation, competition and co-operation (Westera 2008). Aldrich (2005) distinguishes between four basic approaches to serious games:…”

On the cybernetic arrangement of feedback in serious games: A systems-theoretical perspective

“…They all start from the premise that learning is greatly fostered by the experiences we have in the world that surrounds us. This points at dynamic and ill-structured learning environments with lots of unstructured content and occurrences rather than wellestablished drills, instructions or tutorials (Westera et al 2008). Also competences needed for the information age, which include information skills, self-regulation, networked cooperation, problem solving strategies and critical thinking, suggest an inherent richness and complexity of the learning environment.…”

“…Various approaches for creating responsive, adaptive systems are available, for instance, adaptive hypermedia approaches (Brusilovsky 2001), rule-editing approaches, standards-based instructional design (e.g. SCORM and IMS Learning Design) and semantic web approaches, but these all suffer from complexity of design (Westera et al 2008). …”