Challenges in the Development and Evaluation of Immersive Digital Educational Games

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, we describe a conceptual framework and address the related issues and solutions in the identification of three major challenges for the development and evaluation of Immersive Digital Educational Games (IDEGs). These challenges are (i) advancing adaptive educational technologies to shape learning experience, ensuring the individualization of learning experiences, adaptation to personal aims, needs, abilities and prerequisites; (ii) providing technological approaches to reduce the development costs for IDEGs; by enabling the creation of entirely different stories and games for a variety of different learning domains, each based, more or less, on the same pool of story units; patterns and structures; (iii) developing robust evaluation methodologies for IDEGs by the extension of ISO 9241 to include user satisfaction, motivation and learning progress and other User Experience (UX) attributes. While our research and development is by no means concluded, we believe that we have arrived at a stage where conclusions may be drawn, which will be of considerable use to other researchers in this domain.

Evaluation of learning outcomes using an educational iPhone game vs. traditional game

“…Moreover, several important issues have not usually been considered in the design and development of educational computer games. From our point of view, which is shared with previous suggestions, it is important to use a pedagogical foundation in order to design educational computer games (Lai-Chong Law et al, 2008). It is also very important to use a control group to evaluate learning outcomes (e.g.…”

“…As explained in Section 3.1, the experiential learning theory of Kolb (1984), and Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (1983) were used in the design of our game. Other works have pointed out the importance of considering national curricula in the development of educational computer games (de Freitas & Oliver, 2006;Lai-Chong Law et al, 2008). We have taken the Spanish national curricula into account to design our game.…”

Learning efficacy and user acceptance of a game-based social skills learning environment

“…To bring about engaged learning, ideas, designs and strategies that game designers incorporate in games should be guided by strong theoretical foundations (Dickey, 2005;Kafai, 2006). Law, Kickmeier-Rust, Albert, and Holzinger (2008) propounded that a lack of sound instructional models, based on pedagogical standards and didactical methods, is…”

Interactive Game Based Learning: Advantages and Disadvantages

“…Lai-Chong Law et al [12] argue that it is necessary to test educational games with real users. The success of an educational game is, to a large extent, based on what is called User Experience (see, e.g., [7]).…”

“…Approaches like heuristic evaluation are not appropriate in this context. Lai-Chong Law et al [12] also point out that mixed-method evaluation is advisable because of the possibility of triangulation of multi-source data. Barton and Maharg [2] posit that discovery learning should not only be studied in the laboratory, but also "in the wild".…”