Effectiveness of serious game designs for software developers
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Ζαρκαδούλα, Καλλιρρόη
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Abstract
Games are generally considered to be motivating and engaging. Nowadays, people, especially
the young, spend a lot of time playing different subgenres of games. Serious games, games
that expand the traditional notion of gaming and have a different purpose other than pure
entertainment, can be used in Computer Science education and propose a different type of
learning and discussing relevant topics. Games are not only used in many ways in computer
science education but also consist of a great part of students’ extracurricular activities. The
main purpose of serious games sessions is to put their suitability to the test and discuss
whether they can be considered as an efficient teaching method.
The challenge of digital serious games is to identify which of these are most effective in
meeting educational outcomes, enriching computing education and fitting into existing
teaching methods. In serious games, we can define points of interest like player’s role,
functionality, level of engagement, connection to other players, etc. Using and tweaking these
dimensions we can thereafter produce not only an educational outcome but also an approach
towards Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods and techniques.
This Master Thesis targets to analyze serious games for Computer Science education in two
ways: 1) for their design elements and 2) for the evaluation of their effectiveness. While
thinking of the design elements, one can decide upon them by analyzing the mechanics,
dynamics, and aesthetics of the game. All of them are essential and valuable parts of game
design and comprise interconnected and interrelated concepts. Also, the main aim of the
study is to focus on the design, development, and evaluation of different subgenres of games.
The initial approach is to design, develop and evaluate games that will consist of different
interfaces, but both are designed and developed for software developers and target
accordingly fundamental programming concepts. Participants of the experiments will be users
with an elementary knowledge of programming that will be invited to play one of the
subgenres of the game with randomly assigned interfaces and activities.
The effectiveness of each game genre will be evaluated concerning the interface by using
experimental methods and conducting interviews with the participants asking their opinions
regarding the comprehensibility of each game genre. All collected data will be used for
revisions and improvements if needed, and the results of the evaluation will be used to
summarize and conclude to what extent the defined goals are achieved.
Description
Keywords
Serious games, Human-computer interaction, Programming, Game-based learning