Involving Teachers in the Educational Video Games

Design Process

Natalia Padilla-Zea

, Francisco L. Gutiérrez Vela

, Nuria Medina-Medina

and Carina González

Software Engineering Department, University of Granada,

C/ Periodista Daniel Saucedo, Aranda, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

Engineering of Systems and Automatic Department, University of La Laguna,

Campus de Anchieta, Avda. Astrofísico Fco. Sánchez, s/n, 28204 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Abstract. Teachers usually have problems to find games properly designed to

teach their subjects since the ones included in textbooks are not fun enough to

catch the students’ attention. They would like those games to be as fun as the

ones which students play at home. The main problem is that designing an edu-

cational game is complex and people with different goals are involved. In order

to allow teachers to participate in the educational video games design process

more easily, we here present an approach with which teachers are able to de-

scribe the contents they want to include in the game. This educational contents

organization eases the latter design of video games’ challenges and allows re-

lating both levels in order to obtain an approximate mark of the learning

achieved.

1 Introduction and Related Work

Educational computing has been a focus of study for several years due to the incorpo-

ration of New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in learning pro-

cesses, both in schools and at home [1]. A particular example of ICT being used as an

educational tool is that of educational video games, which attempt to combine the

advantages of using video games [2] with the learning of a particular subject in the

educational curriculum. However, despite the motivating effect of video games in the

classroom, students still demonstrate a lack of motivation.

Our research focuses on the video games with implicit educational content, where

the educative contents are hidden. The efficiency of educational video games could

be improved, in our opinion, through the use of a specific development method which

easily allows the definition of both educational and recreational goals.

Many of the difficulties of using this kind of video games in classrooms come

from a lack of fun games for specific educational contents. The design of these video

games is complex and people from different areas are involved in it. This makes the

development process difficult because teachers and game designers seem to talk dif-

ferent languages. The approach we here propose is based in an educational video

games design process whose main goal is to maintain a balance between educational

Padilla-Zea N., L. Gutiérrez Vela F., Medina-Medina N. and González C..

Involving Teachers in the Educational Video Games Design Process.

DOI: 10.5220/0004604401520157

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Interaction Design in Educational Environments (IDEE-2013), pages 152-157

ISBN: 978-989-8565-65-5

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

and recreational tasks. And, in consequence, a derived objective is to fill de gap be-

tween teachers and designers, allowing them to talk the same language. We achieve

this purpose by providing the specific content each of them needs to know from the

other team. In this way, the video game obtained is more like a fun video game

through which the player can learn the educational content hidden within.

There are several works which propose general recommendations or guidelines to

design educational software. For example, Fernández Antelo and Cuadrado Gordillo

[3] proposed a set of constructivist principles for the development of educational

software (although not games in particular), highlighting that in this way it is possible

to obtain educational results similar to those obtained by traditional teaching methods.

Although several proposals about design guidelines and architectures can be found

in the field of educational video games, one of the most important is the platform e-

Adventure [4], which integrates a design method and an architecture to support the

design process. This framework is mainly focused on the development of educational

tools, although it can also be used for non-educational video games [5].

The design of educational games using e-Adventure involves an interdisciplinary

team comprised of game writers, artists and programmers who use specification lan-

guages and development environments specific to the e-Adventure platform. To

support the design process, there are a set of guidelines designed to facilitate the inte-

gration of adaptive and measurable games in online learning environments [6].

Finally, Sauvé [7] presents an interesting philosophy to make the design of on-line

educational video games easier, allowing the creation of different games starting from

the same general structure.

While some guidelines for creating educational videogames do therefore exist, we

believe there is a need for a more specific tool for teachers, with which they can easi-

ly indicate the contents to be taught.

In the section 2, we briefly describe the design process for educational contents

that we propose within a broader design process covering all aspects of the educa-

tional video game. We focus on this aspect because it is usually the most neglected

aspect in the development of educational games. And, undoubtedly, is one of the most

important, since, along with didactic resources, integrates all aspects of teaching and

learning. Finally, in section 3, we outline some conclusions and further works.

2 Educational Contents Design

The first step to design educational video games is defining which contents are going

to be taught. In this process, teachers have a very important role and their task has to

be facilitated in order to enhance their participation in the EVG design process. By

involving teachers in this task, we think they will show more interest in using them.

For that reason, based on our set of models previously proposed [8], we have de-

fined a process of educational design. This process is especially intended to promote

the teachers’ involvement and can be divided in two phases:

 Design of General Dictionary: Definition of Knowledge Areas, Educational

Goals and Educational Tasks.

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 Design of Educational Model: Instantiation of the General Dictionary.

First of all, Knowledge Areas must be established. A Knowledge Area is a collec-

tion of knowledge characterized by the homogeneity of the object of study. For each

area, the teacher must indicate the name, the recommended age expressed as a range,

and a general description of the Knowledge Area.

Next, the teacher must create the Educational Goals. An Educational Goal is an

achievement that the student must accomplish at the end of the educational process as

a result of their experiences in the video game. At this stage, the teacher must provide

data about the Knowledge Area from those which have been previously defined.

Next, a name needs to be given to the Educational Goal and the recommended range

of ages must be established. This range must fall within the one indicated for the

selected Knowledge Area. In addition, the teacher must provide a description of the

educational content to be learnt in the goal. The explanation must be given in natural

language and should clearly explain what students have to learn in order to succeed.

Figure 1 shows the definition of the Educational Goal: “Learning to Build

Composed Words”, aimed at children between 10 and 12 years and located within the

area of “Language and Literature”. A list of additional learning topics is included in

the central field. This list is related to the Spanish educational law, but can be used in

other contexts. For Spanish, we would include mathematical reasoning, the physical

and natural world, information processing, social and civic competence, cultural

competence, artistic competence, autonomy and personal initiative, and learning to

learn as related competences.

Teachers must follow a similar process to establish Educational Tasks. An Educa-

tional Task is an instructive activity which will allow students to achieve one or more

Educational Goals. Therefore, once we have introduced all the goals and tasks, the

next step is relating them. One goal can be related to another as a sub-goal or one task

can be related to another one as a sub-task. We can also relate a task to a goal, mean-

ing that the task contributes to the achievement of the goal.

Graphically, the relations between goals and task can be seen as a tree. Thus, the

Knowledge Area is the top level of the tree. Once the complete tree has been generat-

ed, the Knowledge Area is completely defined and can be used by all users in the

system. Moreover, based on this definition, teachers can adapt goals, tasks and rela-

tions to the group of students who will play, or even to individual students if they

need a particular aspect to be reinforced or if they have a disability. These changes

are reflected in the Educational Models, which also include an order relation between

the elements they include. An Educational Model organizes a specific form of learn-

ing based on a subset of objectives and tasks.

To define an Educational Model the teacher may base it on a previous Educational

Model or construct a new one. In both cases, it is necessary to specify data about the

Knowledge Area to which the Educational Model relates, the name of the Educational

Model to be created and the educational age range. In addition, a brief description of

the contents being taught in the Educational Model must be included.

Once we have defined the main characteristics of the new Educational Model, it is

154

Fig. 1. Creating Educational Goals.

necessary to decide which goals, tasks and relationships it will include. To do this,

teachers add, modify or delete goals and tasks in the Educational Model. In an exist-

ing Educational Goal, the options available are: 1) Add a new sub-goal, if the new

goal is part of the previous one; 2) Add a related goal, if the new goal has an order

relation with the previous one or 3) Add itinerary, if the teacher wishes to define the

sets of tasks that users face to overcome the goal.

Finally, options available for a task are Add simultaneous task, if the task must be

performed at the same time as the previous one or Add next task, if the task must be

performed after the previous one. If some element is deleted the whole sub-tree be-

hind the element is also deleted. Figure 2 shows the second step in the creation of a

Educational Model, that is, the selection of a subset of tasks (drawn as ellipses) and

goals (drawn as rectangles), and the definition of order restrictions on Educational

Tasks and Goals. In the example, “Recognizing the Genre” is a simultaneous task to

“Recognizing the Number”, but “Distinguishing Common Nouns” is a previous task

to “Recognizing Genre and Number”.

Defining Educational Models is the last step in the educational design process, on

which the present paper is focused. Then it will be required to design the playful part

of the game: gameplay, narrative, storytelling, interaction mode, etc. and join the two

parts: educational content and entertaining content [8]. Consequently, after defining

all Stages and Levels of the video game as well as the Video Game Model, the only

will have to do is defining the relationships between the educational and video game

levels. To do this, we have to establish a relationship between the tasks in the leaf

nodes in both trees: a) the educational tree with the Educational Goals and tasks, and

b) the video game tree with the Video Game Challenges, Stages and Levels. In this

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Fig. 2. Building a new Educational Model.

way, when the player passes a Stage in the video game, the related Educational Task

is learnt.

3 Conclusions and Further Work

The field of educational video games is being studied by different research groups

around the world (for example, [3; 6; 8]). The studies prove that using these kinds of

tools is beneficial for students at both a personal and an educational level. In this

work, we have presented an approach to enable teachers to be fully involved in the

design of educational contents for the educational video games. That way, teachers

are able to provide their expertise to the video game development and to split the

contents suitably to be learnt gradually. In addition, those contents can be reused in

other video games and, thanks to the relationship between educational and recreation-

al contents, teachers can obtain an approximate assessment about the students’ per-

formance.

Nowadays, we are performing different test with a prototype that implement the

presented educational design process in order to solve problems which teachers could

find during its application. In addition, we are designing an educational video game

about nutrition by using this process.

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