A serious game is a video game designed with purposes beyond pure entertainment. Serious games are multimedia tools by nature. As a subfamily of videogames, they combine different types of media (animations, music, text...) to create immersive experiences for the players. Their versatility allows them to be used as tools with many applications in education, where they have become proven learning tools: they are used across many domains with multiple goals and formats, and their acceptance and effectiveness is almost always positive (Connolly, TM. et al, 2012).
Traditionally, a large percentage of serious games has been both developed and deployed by educational researchers, limiting their scope and reach. This trend is starting to change. Nowadays, widespread use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) allows for the application of serious games in unprecedented scales. To reach their full potential, serious games should adopt the latest advances in education and commercial videogames (Loh, CS. et al, 2015).
Online education has increased exponentially in recent years, and many students now learn through Internet-connected devices. This vastly increases the amount of educational data available for analysis. Disciplines such as Learning Analytics (LA) or Educational Data Mining (EDM) study the patterns inside students' interactions to better understand the underlying learning processes.
Serious games (and video games in general) are particularly well suited for data analysis. Their highly interactive nature, based on a constant loop of user input followed by game feedback, pose them as rich sources of interaction data. These interactions can be later analyzed to explore how users play, and, in the case of serious games, understand how users learn (Serrano-Laguna, A. et al, 2018).
In this conference session, attendees will first be introduced to the R.P.G reading + speaking solution for K12 second language learners, which applies the integrated model of second-language acquisition with multimedia to help learners expand their vocabulary and improve their reading and speaking skills on an English adaptive online reading platform I designed. This learning environment relies on a Role Play Game (RPG) with a series of coherent plots and scenarios.
Second, I will demonstrate the task annotation to show the attendees how the players play the game and what kind of the adaptive instructions and feedback is provided by the system.
Third, logging structure will be provided to show what data will be recorded in the data log and how to use it to better observe learners’ learning behaviors/motivations/performance, and also to improve and iterate the system design.
As a result of attending the session, participants will be able to 1). access the learning analytic solution that is responsive to the needs of end users of digital platforms and is informed by disciplinary research, developmental considerations, and psychological theories of learning; 2). discuss the use of digital technologies as they afford opportunities to engage in learning as understood vis-à-vis psychological theories of learning; 3). critically evaluate digital platforms about the functionality of their product and its support of learning and performance.
Reference:
Connolly, T. M., Boyle, E. A., MacArthur, E., Hainey, T., & Boyle, J. M. (2012). A systematic literature review of empirical evidence on computer games and serious games. Computers & education, 59(2), 661-686.
Loh, C.S., Sheng, Y., Ifenthaler, D. (2015). Serious Games Analytics: Theoretical Framework. In: Loh, C., Sheng, Y., Ifenthaler, D. (eds) Serious Games Analytics. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05834-4_1
Serrano-Laguna, Á., Manero, B., Freire, M. et al. A methodology for assessing the effectiveness of serious games and for inferring player learning outcomes. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 2849–2871 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4467-6
