Maria Popescu

New pedagogical approaches in game enhanced learning: Curriculum integration

Summary: Digital games continue to enable innovative learning in the classroom, however, its implementation into the educational system requires a fundamental approach to achieve its greatest level of effectiveness. New Pedagogical Approaches in Game Enhanced Learning: Curriculum Integration addresses the major challenges associated with adopting digital games into a standard curriculum. By providing fresh perspectives from current practitioners in the education field, this publication serves as a guide for successfully implementing game learning and provides a valuable reference for educators, professionals, and even parents.

Hot Issues in Game Enhanced Learning: The GEL Viewpoint☆

Abstract The territory of Game Based Learning has been widely explored, yet much has still to be done in the field. Both the methodological and the empirical aspects of adopting games for educational purposes require further in-depth investigation. What are, then, the current hot issues in the field? What relevant research questions are still to be answered? This is the a rea that this paper showcases, encapsulating in a nutshell the efforts of the GEL Theme Team, a working group on Game Enhanced Learning active in the framework of the STELLAR European Network of Excellence.

Interdisciplinary and international adaption and personalization of the metavals serious games

Serious Games (SG) in Higher Education should be able to be adapted to particular learning needs and different university contexts in a sustainable way. In this respect, this study aims to describe the adaptation and personalization mechanism through the analysis of a case study developed in three countries and learning contexts. The adaptation is analyzed through the perspective of the perceived usability, utility and ease of use of the game in Spain, the UK and Romania. First results point to a positive evaluation by users of adaptable games, in the particular field of SGs for adult formal education. Future releases of the MetaVals game will be addressed towards the implementation of a complete and multi-language management interface, together with an improvement of the present static design.

Supporting Human Capital development with Serious Games: An analysis of three experiences

Serious Games (SGs) are increasingly being used in formal educational settings and it is almost universally acknowledged that they have strong potential for bringing innovation to education and for enhancing learning, this way also contributing to the development of Human Capital. This paper proposes some reflections on the usefulness and effectiveness of SGs when used in formal learning contexts. The considerations are derived from a set of SG-based educational experiences carried out in three European countries: Italy, Spain and Romania. The paper briefly summarizes the key aspects of the three research experiences and, by referring to the main lessons learnt, it also draws some general conclusions as to the potential of SGs to support the development of Human Capital both from the cognitive and from the affective/behavioural standpoint.

Measuring the effectiveness of learning with serious games in corporate training

This paper discusses metrics for the effectiveness of learning of serious games in corporate training. Existing evaluation models are examined in order to verify their applicability to modern organizations in the knowledge economy. Designing metrics for learning requires taking into account different stakeholders, such as the employees, the employers and the management for the financial side. Game builders can also benefit from metrics that relate known game features, such as immersion, to learning effectiveness. Such metrics would allow an early assessment of the suitability of a game for training, thereby reducing the consequences of a wrong design and the development costs.

GEL: Exploring game enhanced learning

Abstract A brief presentation is given of the objectives and activities pursed in GEL (Game Enhanced Learning), a Theme Team initiative financed by the STELLAR Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) during year 2011 - 2012. Some of GELs main outputs relevant to the Serious Games research field are also outlined.

Supporting Collaborative Serious Game Studies Online

While a lot of papers have argued for the educational potential of serious games, the field is still young and methods and tools are needed in order to support effective and efficient design. The SG Studies Database is an instrument devised to allow sharing structured information about SGs. This information can be used by scholars and practitioners also to perform comparative analysis and identify components and modules that could be used in different games. The SG Studies database, which is freely available online on the site of the Serious Games Society, relies on a SG description model, that has been defined in order to allow a structured description of SGs, considering the perspectives of different stakeholders and contexts of use, and spurring the identification of SG components and their relationship with pedagogical theories and expected outcomes. The SG Studies database has already been used as a tool to support identification of reusable patterns and components in SGs, in order to identify best practices and favor module re-use. Other meta studies are possible in the future on the database by any parties.