Serious Games: current uses and emerging trendsInvited talk at ICWL 2015, Guangzhou, China

Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon balta@fdi.ucm.es , @BaltaFMe-UCM Research Group , www.e-ucm.es

South China University of Technology, 06/011/2015

2

WhatA couple of informal definitions

3

Serious Games

• Any use of digital games with purposes other than entertainment (Michael & Chen, 2006)

• The use of digital games for educational purposes

• Other terms frequently used:– Educational games, – Applied games, – Game-like Simulations, – Games with Purpose, – Simulations– Edutaiment

4

Gamification

• Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts to obtain some kind of improvement (to increase user engagement)

• Games and gamification are two sides of the same approach. Educational games immerse the student in the game, where content and curricula are delivered or juxtaposed. Gamification aims to incorporate elements of games, such as levels and badges (but also via quests and other strategies) into non-game activities.

(The NMC Horizon Project: 2013 Higher Education Edition)

• Many times the distinction between serious games and gamification is blurring– e.g. learning languages with Duolingo

(www.duolingo.com)

5

WhyBut first let me tell you a story ….

Question:

Which instrument reduce the rate of deaths and complications in surgery by more than one third ?

N Engl J Med 2009; 360:491-499

7http://www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/en/index.html

8

9

When implementation leaders did not explain why or show how the checklist should be used, staff neither understood the rationale behind implementation nor were they adequately prepared to use the checklist, leading to frustration, disinterest, and eventual abandonment despite a hospital-wide mandate

Conley, et at (2011). Effective surgical safety checklist implementation. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 212(5), 873–9

10

A Model of Learning Objectives

11

Games for learning

• Games are a natural way of learning– Humans learn very complex behaviour playing

(e.g. social skills)

• Characteristics of games– Backstory or Story line– Rules and game mechanics– Graphical enviroment– Interactivity and reactivity– Challenge /competition

12

Key game elements for engagement1. Interactivity: Players’ opportunity to initiate actions andreceive evaluative information about their actions.2. Feedback: The often immediate information players receive about the efficacy of their game actions.3. Agency or control: The player’s ability to manage aspects of gameplay such as the use of control mechanisms and influencing story line.4. Identity: The player’s opportunity to become a game character via an avatar and/or to form relationships and linkages with game characters.5. Immersion: A player’s sense of presence, transportation,or integration within the game.

Flow in games

Chen J. Flow in games (and everything else). Communications of the ACM. 2007;50(4):31.

Games characteristics

• Basically, a game is an abstract world where some goals should be obtained following some rules

• Engagement elements– Conflict and challenge– Fantasy and curiosity– Perception of the advance– Progressive difficulty– Feedback

15

Games for learning

• Games provide an adequate environment for acquiring or applying knowlege– Fail safe

• Authentic Learning

• Deliverate practice (Ander Ericsson)– Clear learning objective– Adequate and increasing level of difficulty– Repetitive practice with informative feedback

16

How to make a game?

http://www.slideshare.net/dings/would-the-real-mary-poppins-please-stand-up-49259549/35-and_snap_the_jobs_a

17

Games as educational tools

• Videogames can be instrumental in acquiring abilities and skills like– Spatial perception and recognition– Development of visual discernment and separation of

visual attention– Development of inductive logic– Cognitive development in scientific/technical

aspects– Development of complex skills– Spatial representation– Inductive discovery– Iconic code construction– Gender construction

Aguilera M de, Mendiz A. Video games and education. Computers in Entertainment. 2003;1(1):10

18

Benefits of playing videogames

Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. The American Psychologist, 69(1), 66–78. doi:10.1037/a0034857

19

Who

20

Who play videogames?

• One of the most popular entertainment activities • One of the largest entertainment industries

– Bigger than movies

• USA– 55% of the population plays videogames– 42% of them play for at least three hours per week– average player age of 35 years

• Over 70% of children and teenagers in the EU, and over 90% in the USA, play videogames

2015 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. Entertainment Software Association (ESA).ISFE. (2014). GameTrack Digest : Quarter 3 2014. Retrieved from http://www.isfe.eu/sites/isfe.eu/files/attachments/gametrack_european_digest_q3-14.pdf

Serious games at school (USA)

Takeuchi, L. M., & Vaala, S. (2014). Level up learning: A national survey on teaching with digital games. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

• 62% teachers have used games to simulate and supplement learning.

• (Harris Poll, 2014 –Pearson-, 1000 teachers K12, USA)

22

What

23

Serious Games use?

• Serious Games have probed to be educationally effective in several domains– Medicine, military, business, corporate training

• But still is a low adoption of Serious Games in mainstream education

• Serious Games considered usually as a complementary content– Mainly used for motivational purposes– No actual impact on the final mark

24

Military: America’s Army

http://www.americasarmy.com/

25

ReMissionIntended for young people with cancer and oral chemotherapy

(Cole, S.W. et al 2012), (Kato, P.M, 2008) •effective tool that supports treatment adherence •sense of power and control over their disease

26

Games for school: TreeFrog

More educational games at http://centerforgamescience.org

http://play.centerforgamescience.org/treefrog/

27

Serious Games Repositories

http://www.gamesforchange.org/

http://gameswithpurpose.org/

28

Issues &Fixes?

Issues at school for SG use

30

How teacher selects SG

Game Cost per minute of play

$300

$8K

$3K

$25K

eAdventure games

Science Pirates

Immune Attack

AAA gameshttp://immuneattack.orghttp://sciencepirates.com/

32

e-Adventure Platform

Open code authoring environment for the production of point-and-click adventure games & immersive learning simulations

Oriented to educators

No programming required

http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-adventurewww.mockap.es

33

Scalability and maintainability

• Reducing initial cost (production or licensing) and the Total Cost of Ownership

• Once that the game became an educational asset it should be available independently of technological changes– e.g. Science Pirates now is being re-doit for the new

operating systems

• Should be possible to make changes into the game– To fix identified issues– To improve or update content …

34

Deployment

• Complex to deploy games at the school• Games are very dependent of the platform

• Requires extra work for the teachers

• Situaltion improving with new tecnologies (e.g.HTML5) and multiplatform authoring tools (e.g. Unity3D)

35

Methodologies to simplify SG creation

Torrente et at (2014) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in Heathcare Education. IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies. 7(1), 69-82

In the medical domain

http://www.chermug.eu

First visit to OR, with UCMhttp://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es

http://trasplant-game.e-ucm.es/

Uses of Learning Analytics in educational games• Game testing – game analytics

– It is the game realiable?– How many students finish the game?– Average time to complete the game?

• Game evaluation– From pre-post test to learning analytics evaluation

• Game deployment in the class– Real-time information for supporting the teacher– “Stealth” student evaluation– Knowing what is happening when the game is

deployed in the class

RAGE: creating the Learning Analytics infrastructure

Using interaction data for assessment • Evaluating the game• Discovering user problems

Formal evaluation pre-post• Off-line learning analytics• Formal evaluation of

games is very complex and expensive– Pre-test– Post-test

• Very few games have been formally probed to be effective

• Similar results with Learning Analytics than with pre-post test?

39

40

Why …But first let me finish to tell you the previous story ….

We created the Checklist Game

– Raise awareness about the checklist– Learn how to apply it properly and

consequences of not applying it – Let practice it application in a free-risk

environmentIn cooperation with UCM (Surgical Department),

Hospital Doce de Octubre, LCS-MGH

http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-adventure/files/games/checklist/

Checklist game

• Formative evaluation at UCM and MGH/Harvard• Final evaluation at 5 hospitals in Madrid (Clinico,

12 de Octubre, Santa Cristina, Puerta de Hierro)• Good results (in press)

43

TrendsSome trends in the field of serious games

44

Casual players, mobility, BYOD• More players on mobile devices (up to 30%)

– smartphones and tablets• Some schools are being equipped with tablets

• BYOD approach with games

• Simplify deployment

45

Gaming for good

• gaming approaches applied to solving complex problems in a collaborative way

Play to Cure™: Genes in Space - a mobile game in which players collaborate to analyse real genetic data (Cancer Research UK, n.d.)

http://centerforgamescience.org/portfolio/foldit/

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/play-to-cure-genes-in-space

46

More integration of SG with curriculum and better info for teacher

https://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/

SG and Brain Controller Interfaces

Ahn, M., Lee, M., Choi, J., & Jun, S. (2014). A Review of Brain-Computer Interface Games and an Opinion Survey from Researchers, Developers and Users. Sensors, 14(8), 14601–14633. doi:10.3390/s140814601

48

Geolocated games

• Plenty application in different domains such as teaching history and exergames

https://www.ingress.com/

49

SG and MOOCs: The case of EyeWire and edX

SG as MOOCs exercisesIn-browser WebGL client,

EyeWire servers with APIthat is queried from edX

Manuel Freire, Ángel del Blanco, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón (2014): Serious Games as edX MOOC Activities. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) Page 867-871

Educational versions of commercial games

Miller, J., Vázquez-cano, E., & Obligatoria, S. (2015). Exploring Application, Attitudes and Integration of Video Games: MinecraftEdu in Middle School. Educational Technology & Society, 18(3), 114–128.

Publishing companies producing games

'Big Three' Publishers Rethink K-12 Strategies - http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2013/02/06/02textbooks.h06.html

52

Are virtual worlds dead?SecondWorld and othersVirtual World Framework• A fast, light-weight, web-based architecture for

creating and distributing, scalable, collaborative, and component-based virtual spaces

• Design Goals– HTML5 and Web-based standards– Open source– JavaScript for simulation logic– Replicated computation

• They could be used as simulations, courseware, interactive training, or games.

http://www.adlnet.gov/tla/vw-sandbox.html

53

Thank you!•¿Questions?• Mail: balta@fdi.ucm.es• Twitter: @BaltaFM

• GScholar:  https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=eNJxjcwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao • ResearchGate:  www.researchgate.net/profile/Baltasar_Fernandez-Manjon• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon

Our current projects

BEACONIGH2020 ICT2015Project 687676