Serious Games (SG) are entering more and more the educational
world. Games in education make it possible to overcome practical
constraints of real-world settings and explore the far greater
boundaries of virtual spaces. Modern
Game-Based Learning (GBL) approaches
are commonly build
on applications that have defined learning outcomes and are designed to
promote active participation and interaction, balancing the
learning objective with the game play, in order to enhance the ability
of the learner to retain and apply the knowledge gained to the real
world while being completely involved and thus more receptive. SGs often exploit narratives, storylines, visual elements and other features
common to entertainment games, such as scoring and social networking in
order to motivate and engage players in a learning activity.
Educational gameshave learning goals and structure, but in addition are adaptive and interactive and most importantly they provide enjoyment, pleasure, motivation, gratification and emotion, in order to achieve learner engagement and
involvement.
Games
create simulated environments that
facilitate immersion, allowing learners to explore alternative approaches to
situations virtually, in order to directly experience practical
and emotional consequences of their actions. Through these approaches,
GBL allows learners to directly though virtually experience the
real-world by developing their awareness of consequentiality through
doing and experiencing. For example, SGs can combine a wide range of
different kinds of inputs and outputs for understanding complex social
issues like poverty or immigration. This requires adopting multiple
viewpoints and scenarios to analyse cause and effect.
SGs provide an environment for active,
critical learning, allowing users to explore skills, methods, and concepts rapidly within a safe
experiential environment designed with behavioural learning components.
The potential learning outcomes include changes in participants’
behaviour, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and/or levels of functioning.
Workshop Structure
Investigating creative learning with SGs, the proposed workshop will bring together innovative methodologies
to SGs and case studies of real-life applications of GBL, which, after being briefly introduced, will be
intensively discussed with the audience.
The workshop will be
structured in two parts: the first part will feature relevant paper presentations and the second short demonstrations of innovative
GBL solutions (Interactive Exhibition).
Overall six paper presentations are
foreseen (of 10 min each), addressing the following generic topics:
Pedagogical approaches for Serious Games
Development of Serious Games Storyboards
Case studies of creative learning with SGs
For each topic a brief introductory presentation is planned, evolving
around state-of-the-art research work in the respective area.
The workshop will last for 3,5 hours.
The organisers will hold the introductory presentations, which will
last 10 minutes each (total 40 minutes). Six more presentations by
participants will take 10 minutes each (total 60 minutes).
The duration of the Interactive exhibition and overall discussion
session will be 110 minutes.
FIRST PART (Introductory
Presentations): Methodologies behind Serious Games and Case Studies
Pedagogical approaches for Serious Games
The
topic shall be introduced by
Dr Aristidis Protopsaltis, who will shortly present the pedagogical
approaches applied in the framework of the e-VITA project for intergenerational learning.
“What is behind a Serious Game?” (10 min)
Under the e-VITA project, a set of games has been developed to
promote European cultural awareness by conveying cross-border and
inter-generational experiences based on four different pedagogical
approaches, exploratory, experiential, narrative and problem-based.
This workshop will focus on these pedagogical approaches and will
explore and scrutinise their benefits and shortcomings in relation to
serious games development.
Development of Serious Games Storyboards
The
topic shall be introduced by Ms
Sonia Hetzner, who will highlight issues concerning Storyboard
development and will discuss the benefits of and feasible methods for
using Storytelling for the development of Serious Games Storyboards.
“How to match Storytelling with Serious Games?” (10 min)
Storytelling fulfils important criteria of innovative pedagogical and
didactical approaches: It is learner-oriented, motivating, creative and
free of structure. Moreover, Storytelling can be a very adequate means
for transporting and sharing information. In the scope of the workshop
an innovative approach to transpose told stories into storyboards to
develop Serious Games for Game-Based-Learning will be presented and
discussed.
Case studies of creative learning with
SGs
The topic
shall be introduced by Ms
Dimitra Pappa and Ms
Lucia Pannese, who will discuss
real-life applications of GBL. The introduction will include a brief
presentation of two examples of SGs designed and developed within
European projects.
Example 1: Serious Games for European awareness (10 min)
Presentation of the e-VITA project, which aims
at promoting intercultural comprehension and an increased understanding
of the European integration process, by means of intergenerational
learning, enabled through the combined use of Serious Games and
Storytelling. The four designed SGs will be thoroughly described.
Example
2 : A Serious Game for political transparency (10 min)
Presentation, of an innovative and creative Serious Games approach to
eParticipation of European Citizens interested to learn about the
legislation process in the European Parliament. The work has been
carried out in the scope of the EU-Project VOICES, with several European
partners from different countries. The game will be released in
English, German and Spanish. Presenter:
Lucia Pannese
SECOND PART (Exhibition)
To better illustrate the concepts and methods
discussed in the workshop, during the second part all selected
presenters are invited to make a demonstration of the real-life
applications of their respective work.
At the final stage of the workshop all participants will have some
hands on experience on the games that have been created within the
e-VITA context. The participants will have the opportunity to
play the games and discuss the different methodological and pedagogical
approaches that drove its development.
These interactive, hands-on demos
will be playable after the presentations and will be discussed in an
informal atmosphere.
Interactive exhibition and
Discussion time: 110 minutes
PAPERS TO BE PRESENTED DURING THE WORKSHOP
These are the best five papers chosen to be presented by their authors during the workshop:
Towards a framework for learning in the OSMA Serious Game engine - Tanguy Coenen, Evelyn Cloosen, Frederik Smolders - Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg
The use of competition and creativity as key driver to promote scientific culture among students - Alberto Colorni, Susanna Sancassani, Simona Azzali, Alessandra Tomasini, Nicola Padovani - Centro METID Politecnico di Milano, Italy
The role of emotions in Serious Games - Luigi Anolli, Fabrizia Mantovani, Linda Confalonieri, Antonio Ascolese, Laura Peveri - University of Milan-Bicocca (Unimib), Milan, Italy
The character of successful trainings with Serious Games - Till Becker
A collective tool and new reflection questions in a virtual environment: fostering knowledge construction and scientific discourse - Michael Filsecker (Duisburg-Essen University), Daniel T. Hickey and Eun Ju Kwon (Indiana University)
Dr Aristidis Protopsaltis is a researcher at the Serious
Games Institute at Coventry University. His research interests lie in
the area of Information Processing, Human Computer Interaction, and
Serious Games. He holds a PhD and an MSc in Cognitive Science from the
University of Westminster, where he studied with a scholarship from the
Greek Foundation of Scholarships, and a BSc in Primary Education from
the University of Crete. Aristidis has spent several years as a
visiting
lecturer and researcher at various universities in the UK. He has
published a number of peer-reviewed conference and journal papers, and
served as a program and general co-chair at ACM SIGDOC conferences.
Sonia Hetzner, Institute for Innovation in Learning (FIM
NewLearning), University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, Coordinator of
the Project. Sonia Hetzner studied politics, sociology, and biology and
graduated in Geography. She is senior researcher and project manager.
She is responsible for conceptualisation, development, management and
evaluation of e-learning course environments for different target
groups. She is author of self-learning materials for different target
groups. She is an experienced manager of European projects and has
participated in several regional, national and European projects.
Dimitra Pappa, National Centre for Scientific Research
“Demokritos”, holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from
the National
Technical University of Athens Greece (NTUA), specialising in
telecommunication technologies. She has taken part in a number of
national and European research and development projects in the fields
of
telemedicine (GALENOS, MEDASHIP, EMISPHER), eLearning (PROLIX,
PROLEARN,
e-VITA, TEN-A, LIVIUS, ADAPT), eGovernment (eGOV), and eCommerce
(PRAXIS), as project manager and/or as member of the research team. She
has published several papers in journals and international conferences.
Lucia Pannese, imaginary srl, graduated in Mathematics,
has managing experience in (research) projects with special attention
to
technology enhanced learning solutions. In Feb 2004 founding partner of
imaginary s.r.l. a company designing and developing Serious Games and
simulation systems; at present covering the position of CEO and project
manager for international (research) activities. In Oct 2008 she founds
Games2Growth Ltd based at the Serious Games Institute, Coventry
University Technology Park.
