Serious Game Design to Support Children Struggling with School Refusal

Abstract

A significant number of children worldwide struggle with school refusal. Games and digital tools represent a novel take on how to address this phenomenon. Our research aims to support children who are at risk or in an early phase of developing school refusal through serious games. In this paper we present current work, grounded in human-centered design, involving the application of a game design framework to elaborate on design elements and empirical evaluations of a serious game called Gnist (English: Spark). Based on this we discuss some implications for game design and key takeaways for researchers and practitioners working to design technologies for supporting children's well-being in attending school. We contribute to position serious games in a new context and anticipate our findings to be valuable to the Human-Computer Interaction community in general and specifically to the Child-Computer Interaction community.

School refusal: mapping the literature by bibliometric analysis

“…The review study conducted by Kearney (2008) stated that similar studies on school attendance problems and school refusal were undertaken primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. However, when the current studies on school refusal are examined, Spain ( Inglés et al, 2015 ; García-Fernández et al, 2016 ; Gonzálvez et al, 2016 ; Sanmartín et al, 2018 ; Gonzálvez et al, 2020 ), Norway ( Havik et al, 2014 ; Munkhaugen et al, 2019 ; Havik and Ingul, 2021 ; Høiseth et al, 2021 ), Finland ( Strömbeck et al, 2021 ), Belgium, ( Al-Husni Al-Keilani and Delvenne, 2021 ), and Turkey ( Bahali et al, 2009 ; Oner et al, 2014 ; Secer, 2014 ; Seçer and Ulaş, 2020 ) countries seem to be gaining momentum. As expected, this situation is similar in terms of the universities where school refusal studies are carried out, and University of Alicante, Central University of Ecuador, University Illinois, University Bristol, Leiden University, and University College London, Monash University, and University Paris universities are at the forefront of current studies.…”

Lëttëra web platform: A game-based learning approach with the use of technology for reading competence

“…These components were: the use of technology, gamification, self-directed learning, and metacognition through the underlining of PISA cognitive processes in the texts. Gamification refers to the incorporation of game design elements such as point systems, leaderboards, and rewards into non-gaming contexts (Høiseth et al, 2021). The goal of gamification is to increase motivation, engagement and participation in activities that are not inherently fun or interesting by making them more enjoyable through game-like (Bicen et al, 2022) Lettera web is based mainly on the gamification methodology.…”

Renal Ped: protótipo de serious game para criança em diálise peritoneal

“…Outros autores também destacam os serious game como importantes para o ensino e produzem aprendizado significativo (HØISETH et al, 2021;SADATI, MITCHEL, 2021;SENA et al, 2016). Mozzilli et al (2020), desenvolveram um aplicativo para crianças em tratamento oncológico e seus cuidadores, com minijogos que explicam de forma lúdica, a doença e o tratamento.…”