Pablo Moreno-Ger

Game Learning Analytics: Learning Analytics for Serious Games

Video games have become one of the largest entertainment industries, and their power to capture the attention of players worldwide soon prompted the idea of using games to improve education. However, these educational games, commonly referred to as serious games, face different challenges when brought into the classroom, ranging from pragmatic issues (e.g. a high development cost) to deeper educational issues, including a lack of understanding of how the students interact with the games and how the learning process actually occurs. This chapter explores the potential of data-driven approaches to improve the practical applicability of serious games. Existing work done by the entertainment and learning industries helps to build a conceptual model of the tasks required to analyze player interactions in serious games (gaming learning analytics or GLA). The chapter also describes the main ongoing initiatives to create reference GLA infrastructures and their connection to new emerging specifications from the educational technology field. Finally, it explores how this data-driven GLA will help in the development of a new generation of more effective educational games and new business models that will support their expansion. This results in additional ethical implications, which are discussed at the end of the chapter.

Using Docbook to Aid in The Creation of Learning Content

Creating web based educational (e-learning) applications is a complex process that poses several challenges. We are especially concerned with two aspects: the cost of production and maintenance of educational contents, and the personalization of contents to suit individual learners. The Learning Objects (LO) model was proposed in response to reusability and adaptability concerns. IMS, ADL, IEEE and other initiatives have proposed standards for metadata description and packaging facilities in order to facilitate the interchange of LOs across Learning Management Systems (LMS). Metadata and packaging description demand additional work from content developers. In this paper, we address how DocBook, an XML/SGML document model, facilitates the creation of learning content and allows the countless DocBook materials already existing on the Internet to be reused. The main goals are to simplify the creation of adaptive learning content following the LO paradigm and to study how DocBook and its associated tools facilitate the authors’ task when dealing with the XML documents needed for LO description and interchange.

Development of a Game Engine for Accessible Web-Based Games

The Web is rapidly shifting towards more dynamic and interactive content. One clear example is the increasing use of web-based digital games. However, the more interactive a piece of content is, the more difficult it is to make it universally accessible. Besides, users are increasingly demanding ubiquitous access to the content and applications they use (including games), resulting in a need for ensuring that Web content is also multiplatform. These trends are adding an extra technology challenge for ensuring content accessibility. In this paper we describe our technical approach to create an accessible multiplatform game engine for the new version of the eAdventure educational game authoring platform (eAdventure 2.0). This approach integrates accessibility as a core design principle instead of adding accessibility features a posteriori. We expect this to facilitate the creation of web-based digital games that are accessible regardless of the context (device, assistive tools available, situation, etc.) in which they are being used. In this work we describe the general architecture, as well as some specific examples of accessibility adaptation plug-ins already available.