Serious games a journey from research to application Presentation done at the 2014 Frontiers in Education conference (IEEE)

1. Serious games: A journey from
research to application
Frontiers In Education 2014
Pablo Moreno-Ger, Iván Martínez-Ortiz, Manuel
Freire, Borja Manero, Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon
Baltasar Fernández Manjón
balta@fdi.ucm.es
@BaltaFM
Madrid
October 23rd, 2014

2. A turning point in research
 Early days (niche applications)
 Exciting but small
 Field-specific acceptance (e.g. military, medicine)
 Today (academic acceptance)
 NMC 2013/2014 Horizon Report
 European Projects - H2020 ICT2014-21ª
 Next few years (future serious games)
 New paradigms
 New technologies RAGE H2020 ICT2014-21ª
Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system

3. From niche applications
to academic acceptance

4. From niche to acceptance
 Authoring and engineering
 Instructor-oriented development processes
 Better understanding of educational game design
 New methodologies
 New authoring tools
http://e-adventure.e-ucm.es/

5. From niche to acceptance
 Stronger scientific foundations
 Demonstrate power and scalability, not only potential
 Solid research on learning effectiveness
 Outstanding results in many fields
Military
Healthcare
Language learning
History
Math
Soft-skills (e.g. leadership)

6. From niche to acceptance
 Assessment and evaluation
 Assessment of serious games
Learning effectiveness
Usability
Acceptance
 Assessment with serious games
Using games as tests
Game-based exams

7. From niche to acceptance
 Adaptive learning
 Personalized learning
 Games as a source of adaptation information
Outcomes
Detailed interactions
 Games as an adaptive medium
A very flexible (and complex) learning medium

8. From niche to acceptance
 Standardization of game-based content
 An important requirement to affordability
Development cost
Protecting the investment
 Applying lessons learned from e-Learning standards
There are some limitations
Ongoing work to improve serious games standardization

9. From academic acceptance
to the next generation

10. Fromacceptance to the future
 Stealth assessment
 Assessing games is still an open issue
Technical limitations
Complex tasks
 Games as intelligent assessment instruments
Non-disruptive assessment
Transparent grading based on analyzing interactions

11. Fromacceptance to the future
 Learning Analytics
 Ongoing research applying, Big Data, Business
Intelligence and Web Analytics techniques in eLearning
MOOCs
 The opportunities in serious games are even bigger
More complex interactions
Much bigger data sets per user

12. Fromacceptance to the future
 Accessibility
 Learning as a Universal Human Right
But serious games are rarely accessible
 We need a new generation of accessible serious games
Adapted input/output
Adapted design

13. Fromacceptance to the future
 Mobile gaming, new devices
 Inmensely rapid mobile expansion and evolution
Many devices
Many platforms
Many changes
 Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
New models based on students using their own devices
Requires support for heterogeneous platforms
 Games across devices

14. In conclusion…

15. Interesting times
 We are in the middle of a major generation leap in
serious games.
 Exciting challenges, significant opportunities.
 Research today to shape serious games in 4 years
 The next generation may be the first one to be widely
adopted
 Role of games in new educational scenarios (MOOCs)
 It may be the last chance too…
We will be working on it …

16. Our current projects
RAGE
H2020 ICT2014-21ª
Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system

17. Serious games: A journey from
research to application
Frontiers In Education 2014
Pablo Moreno-Ger, Iván Martínez-Ortiz, Manuel
Freire, Borja Manero, Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon
Baltasar Fernández Manjón
balta@fdi.ucm.es
@BaltaFM
Madrid
October 23rd, 2014