Aad Slootmaker

EMERGO: A methodology and toolkit for developing serious games in higher education

Societal changes demand educators to apply new pedagogical approaches. Many educational stakeholders feel that serious games could play a key role in fulfilling this demand, and they lick their chops when looking at the booming industry of leisure games. However, current toolkits for developing leisure games show severe shortcomings when applied to serious games. Developing effective serious games in an efficient way requires a specific approach and tool set. This article describes the EMERGO methodology and generic toolkit for developing and delivering scenario-based serious games that are aimed at the acquisition of complex cognitive skills in higher education. Preliminary evaluation results with case developers using the EMERGO methodology and toolkit and with learners using EMERGO cases are presented.

Architectures for Developing Multiuser, Immersive Learning Scenarios

Multiuser immersive learning scenarios hold strong potential for lifelong learning as they can support the acquisition of higher order skills in an effective, efficient, and attractive way. Existing virtual worlds, game development platforms, and game engines only partly cater for the proliferation of such learning scenarios as they are often inadequately tuned for learning. First, this study aims to identify architectures that more effectively support the development of multiuser immersive learning scenarios. Second, this study takes up the challenge to define and assemble more flexible architectures that cater for fast and easy development, which will become important in the current period of economic breakdown. Third, this study describes how such architectures should enable research into guidelines for multiuser immersive learning scenario design and development. This study outlines a method for defining and setting up such architectures by using experts and existing literature.

Collaboration Scripts for Mastership Skills: Online game about classroom dilemmas in teacher education

Serious games are seen to hold potential to facilitate workplace learning in a more dynamic and flexible way. This article describes an empirical study into the feasibility of an online collaboration game that facilitates teachers-in-training to deal with classroom management dilemmas. A script to support these students in carrying out such practical tasks, independent of teacher intervention and in collaboration with peers, was designed and worked out in both a face-to-face and an online version of a ‘mastership’ game. After assigning and discussing practical dilemmas during a small group play session, solutions are worked out individually in the form of small advisory reports, and assessed by both teachers and peers (co-players in the group). Learning effects were measured and satisfaction was questioned for 9 players that played the online version and 10 players that played the face-to-face version of the game. Results show that the collaboration of students on classroom dilemmas can indeed be successfully facilitated by this script, and that learning results do not differ for both versions. The latter holds potential for offering online and more flexible ways of workplace learning. Especially, students playing the online version reported needs for simpler structure and clearer task instruction. The optimal level of structure in collaboration scripts, therefore, appears an issue for further study.

Widget, Widget on the Wall, Am I Performing Well at All?

In collaborative learning environments, students work together on assignments in virtual teams and depend on each others contribution to achieve their learning objectives. The online learning environment, however, may not only facilitate but also hamper group communication, coordination, and collaboration. Group awareness widgets that visualize information about the different group members based on information collected from the individuals can foster awareness and reflection processes within the group. In this paper, we present a formative data study about the predictive power of several indicators of an awareness widget based on automatically logged user data from an online learning environment. In order to test whether the information visualized by the widget is in line with the study outcomes, we instantiated the widget indicators with data from four previous runs of the European Virtual Seminar on Sustainable Development (EVS). We analyzed whether the tutor gradings in these previous years correlated with the students’ scores calculated for the widget indicators. Furthermore, we tested the predictive power of the widget indicators at various points in time with respect to the final grades of the students. The results of our analysis show that the grades and widget indicator scores are significantly and positively correlated, which provides a useful empirical basis for the development of guidelines for students and tutors on how to interpret the widgets visualizations in live runs.

Evaluating the usability of authoring environments for serious games

Background. The EMERGO method and online platform enable the development and delivery of scenario-based serious games that foster students to acquire professional competence. One of the main goals of the platform is to provide a user-friendly authoring environment for creating virtual environments where students can perform authentic tasks. Aim. We present the findings of an in-depth qualitative case study of the platform’s authoring environment and compare our findings on usability with those found for comparable environments in literature. Method. We carried out semi-structured interviews, with two experienced game developers who have authored a game for higher education, and a literature review of comparable environments. Findings. The analysis shows that the usability of the authoring environment is problematic, especially regarding understandability and learnability, which is in line with findings of comparable environments. Other findings are that authoring is well integrated with the EMERGO method and that functionality and reliability of the authoring environment are valued. Practical implications. The lessons learned are presented in the form of general guidelines to improve the understandability and learnability of authoring environments for serious games.

Structuring Collaboration Scripts : Optimizing Online Group Work on Classroom Dilemmas in Teacher Education

Serious games can facilitate workplace learning, for instance when collaboration on solving professional problems is involved. The optimal structure in collaboration scripts for such games has appeared to be a key success factor. Free collaboration does not systematically produce effective learning, but imposing too much structure by design might easily disturb the genuine notion of spontaneous collaborative learning. In this study we compare a ‘high- structured’ and ‘low-structured’ version of a mastership game where teachers-in-training discuss solutions on classroom dilemmas. Adequate solutions are discussed and elaborated during small group play, reported in individual advisory reports, and independently assessed by both two teachers and the group peers. We collected data on the differences in learning effects and student appreciation. The most interesting result shows that reports delivered by students that played the low-structured version received significantly higher teacher grades when compared to the high-structured version. Clear differences in peer-assessments were not found. Practical implications of these findings for future research into collaborative scripting will be discussed.