Developing Serious Games for 12-16 Year Old Students

Abstract

Three serious games were developed for the same age group (12-16 year old students): one for teaching geometry, one for civic education and a third multimedia drug guide to prevent drug use. The software packages have been given a friendly interface so that they are easy to use, even by computer novices. All three of them deliver totally different knowledge; therefore their design is also different. These designs are described in this article and the following questions are investigated: How does design influence students' motivation? How does operational method influence usability?Hungary's borders opened some 20 years ago, and this -besides all of its positive effects -introduced a number of negative tendencies as well. Today, one of the most acute problems is teenager's drug use.The third tutorial was written for the young. This was the reason we chose a multimedia presentation format. The "Multimedia tutorial drug guide" is available as a CD-ROM. It has been produced with Macromedia Director. It can be used in secondary schools as part of a 'tutor group' or form-teacher's class".It has been tested by eighth grade students in the following three different ways: (1) individual use of the CD-ROM at home, (2) use of it in the school's computer laboratory and (3) comparing the effectiveness with a class discussion with teacher guidance without using the CD-ROM. The paper also deals with the evaluation of these tests.

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