Digital technologies have increased the pace of knowledge creation, sharing, and the way in which learning is being undertaken. This chapter considers how Serious Games (SGs) as a digital technology endeavours to support effective lifelong learning. Three fundamental characteristics of the SG ecosystem, namely, game mechanics, interoperability, and assessment, are considered here as strategic elements that impact upon how SGs are to support learning, how they affect the learning environment, and ultimately, the SG development process. A prospective deconstruction of SGs into its pedagogical elements and its game mechanic nodes is presented to make aware the interoperability modus from which topical (domain) frameworks or architectures can be structured and assessed. To this end, the chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings through a case study on the eAdventure platform and argues that the key elements form the foundation for strategic development and implementation of SGs.

The process of learning involves interaction with the learning environment through our five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). Until recently, distance education focused only on the first two of those senses, visual and auditory. Internet-based learning environments are predominantly based on visual with auditory components. With the advent of haptic technology we can now simulate/generate forces and, as a result, the sense of touch. The gaming industry has pushed the "touch" on the "wire," allowing complex multimodal interactions online. In this article we provide a brief overview of the haptic technology evolution, potential for education, and existing challenges. We review recent data on the 21 st century students' behaviors, and share our experiences in designing interactive haptic environments for education. From the "Community of Inquiry" framework perspective, we discuss the potential impact of haptic feedback on cognitive and social presence.

Abstract. Narratives are used to construct and deconstruct the time and space of events. In games, as in real life, narratives add layers of meaning and engage players by enhancing or clarifying content. From an educational perspective, narratives are a semiotic conduit for evoking critical thinking skills and promoting knowledge discovery/acquisition. While narrative is central to Serious Games (SG), the relationships between gameplay, narrative and pedagogy in SG design remain unclear, and narrative's elemental influence on learning outcomes is not fully understood yet. This paper presents a purpose-processing methodology that aims to support the mapping of SG design patterns and pedagogical practices, allowing designers to create more meaningful SGs. In the case of narrative, the intention is to establish whether Narrative Serious Game Mechanics (NSGM) can provide players with opportunities for reasoning and reflective analysis that may even transcend the game-based learning environment.

The challenge of delivering personalized learning experiences is often increased by the size of classrooms and online learning communities. Serious Games (SGs) are increasingly recognized for their potential to improve education. However, the issues related to their development and their level of effectiveness can be seriously affected when brought too rapidly into growing online learning communities. Deeper insights into how the students are playing is needed to deliver a comprehensive and intelligent learning framework that facilitates better understanding of learners' knowledge, effective assessment of their progress and continuous evaluation and optimization of the environments in which they learn. This paper discusses current SOTA and aims to explore the potential in the use of games and learning analytics towards scaffolding and supporting teaching and learning experience. The conceptual model (ecosystem and architecture) discussed in this paper aims to highlight the key considerations that may advance the current state of learning analytics, adaptive learning and SGs, by leveraging SGs as an suitable medium for gathering data and performing adaptations.

Abstract. Serious games (SGs) have been used in the education of students and professionals for decades, but still have not reached their full potential, despite the large consensus they have gained recently. The entertainment game industry is a rapidly developing phenomenon, with a high market potential, enabled and enhanced by technological innovation. The question examined in this paper is: Did serious game designers learn from Entertainment Game (EG) designers in building a successful game? This paper presents three case study examples of games that have good learning outcomes to explore this question. This paper discusses the salient aspects and the differences between the examples and suggests how SGs could learn more from successful EGs.