José Rafael López-Arcos

Continuous Assessment in Educational Video Games: A Roleplaying approach

Evaluating competency-based learning requires a continuous assessment process which enables the skills and capabilities that students develop to be detected. Using video games allows a great deal of information to be recorded and merged effectively, which makes them an advantageous option in assessing this kind of learning. Consequently, in this paper we present a design process for educational video games to enable learning and assessment on the basis of competencies. In addition, a mechanism to assess education and games is presented, which allows feedback to be given to students in a similar way to role-playing games, as well as informing the teacher about the learning progress of players. Both proposals have been applied to a video adventure game designed to foster the competency of reading comprehension.

Introducing an interactive story in a geolocalized experience

Pervasive games are one of the types of gaming experiences that currently causes the most impact on players. They break the usual environment of the game in a spatial, temporal or social dimension. The integration of the narrative with the interactivity and the geolocalization of these games requires a model that represents and structures the story and its integration with the rest of the elements of the game. In addition, this model should allow us to analyze the effectiveness of the story and how it helps to create a good user experience. In this paper, we propose a strong structuring of the narrative that includes geolocalization support. Through an example of the design of an interactive geolocalized story, we explain several characteristics of the model that make possible the creation of a good interactive narrative.

Implementation of continuous assessment in educational video games what, how and where to evaluate

In order for educational video games to continue aiding in the teaching / learning processes it is necessary to continue advancing, first, in their educational effectiveness and, secondly, in their ease of use for the teacher. This ease of use is multifaceted; one aspect is the assessment of learning achieved by students. In an educational environment where continuous assessment is a requirement and the acquisition of skills becomes element analysis, teachers have had to greatly increase the amount of work related to the assessment of students. And this problem grows when the number of students is very high, since the time available to meet the needs of the learning process decreases with the increasing time spent taking notes and analysing data in order to give a rating. Therefore, in this paper we address the aspect of assessing competencies through continuing evaluation, presenting a proposal that includes such assessment as part of the game itself. This proposal is in line with the latest laws of Spanish education, and refers to what to assess at each point of the game, how to do it and where to perform the evaluation itself, showing that these three issues need not coincide in time.

Evaluating emotions in educational videogames: the particular case of children

Evaluating games with young children presents a set of features that makes the techniques used for adults may not be completely effective. For this reason, although there are methods to analyze the emotional impact a game causes in the player, changes are needed in order to be used when players are between 3 and 5 years. Furthermore, the use of these techniques when using an educational video game may require some additional adjustments. Here we present a method to perform this evaluation and results obtained from experimentation.

Architecture for Monitoring Learning Processes Using Video Games

PLAGER-VG is an architecture used to design, execute, analyze and adapt educational processes supported by video games, especially those that include collaborative activities and which use collaborative learning techniques. In this paper, we have focused on the monitoring and adaptive processes in order to customize activities both within the game and the learning process to improve the results obtained from using these collaborative video games. To perform these processes we propose a mechanism based on the use of a set of specialized agents included in this architecture to collect relevant information and to process it in order to obtain the necessary adaptation actions.

Designing Stories for Educational Video Games: Analysis and Evaluation

The use of video games as an educational tool initially causes a higher degree of motivation in students. However, the inclusion of educational activities throughout the game can cause this initial interest to be lost. A good way to maintain motivation is to use a good story that is used as guiding thread with which to contextualize the other video game elements (characters, scenarios, challenges, scores, etc.). A method is necessary for analyzing the effectiveness of the story in a video game. The authors propose an analysis method that includes user-centered techniques. This method has been applied to several cases of study. In this paper, they describe its application to the design of an educational video game in the field of mathematics and an adventure game for training the reading skills.

Interactive Narrative design for geolocated experiences

Current computation paradigms allow us to interact with the technology through several devices at the same time. Virtual tools and interfaces belong to the real world. This is the reason why the number of pervasive and geolocated games has been increased. This kind of games mixes activities in the real world with technology typical from video games. These characteristics offer new challenges when designing interactive experiences and they give new ways of teaching through technology. Stories help to motivate participants. However, designing stories for video games is a hard task, due to the interactive characteristic of this media. Players can change the story flow with their own actions. Thus, writers and designers of the game must find the balance between the freedom of the player and the control of the quality of the story. In the present work, we propose a set of technics to design and evaluate a story aimed to lead a geolocated educational experience.

The importance of emotions in the interactive stories design

Video games benefit from the power of narrative to make the user feel immersed in the virtual world that they offer. The different context switches within the range of game mechanics can be justified by these stories. This keeps the motivation through immersion and favors, therefore, teaching through games. The required link for taking the receiver of the story involved with the characters is achieved thanks to the emotions that are transmitted in the story. The design of video games stories is complex due to its interactive nature. In this paper, we expose the basis of our proposal to design and evaluate these interactive stories and include them in a game, paying particular attention to the evaluation of emotions contained therein.