DISCO, a Formal Model of Serious Games to Help Teachers at the

Design Stage

Mathieu Vermeulen

, Nadine Mandran

and Jean-Marc Labat

LIP6, Sorbonne Universités - UPMC, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France

LIG, Université Grenoble Alpes, 110 av. de la Chimie - BP 53, 38041, Grenoble, France

Keywords: ILE, Serious Games, Formal Model, Case Study, Design Method, Higher Education, Teacher.

Abstract: This paper proposes a formal model of serious game understandable and usable by teachers in higher

education. Serious games are often mentioned in higher education, but their use is restricted other than for

teachers always looking for renewal. Indeed, there is a lack of tools to facilitate their creation and use,

especially for teachers. This article presents serious games of the type case study designed empirically. To

overcome this empirical aspect, we derive a formal model of serious play and methodology closely

associating teachers in the creative process. We want to improve no only the design stage but also the use of

serious games produced by teachers with their students. This model, called DISCO, will be the basis of a

current work including an experimental approach taking into account the context of the job of teachers.

1 RESEARCH PROBLEM

In recent years teachers are faced with many

changes in their job due to various factors: the new

generation of connected students, onset of MOOC or

use of serious games. In particular, serious games

are now widely present in the world of

business. Many achievements have shown their

interest in the transfer of skills and knowledge by

developing the attractiveness and promoting the

motivation to learners. Nonetheless that interest is

tempered by the lack of tools and methodologies for

the design and production (Mariais et al.,

2011). Meanwhile, the world of higher education is

impacted, but with less enthusiasm. Additional

factors may explain this phenomenon such as:

a. A need of large initial investments for the

acquisition of expert skills and a reduced

public limiting the return on investment

(Marfisi et al., 2013),

b. specific dedicated developments, non easily

reusable without strong adaptation (related to

the choice of the teacher) (Marne, 2012),

c. complex authoring tools that require

computer skills (Djaouti, 2011) (Marfisi,

2013).

These last two points merit attention: in fact,

teachers in higher education, even those that are

convinced of the potential of digital education, have

difficulties adapt Serious Games to their pedagogy.

Furthermore they have more difficulties in

appropriating the authoring tools to build their own

resources. The design of educational resources by

themselves, or even just their participation in the

design, would however probably guarantee a better

use, as teachers want to remain masters of the

resources they use.

The problem is to define models, methods and

tools for the creation of serious games that strongly

implicate teachers, which is a guarantee of better

use.

2 OUTLINES OF OBJECTIVES

Our research has the following objectives:

a. To analyse serious games, specially serious

games of the case study type.

b. To derive a formal model and to give the

associated method to design serious games of

the case study type.

c. To define and to specify artefacts reifying this

model and to find links between each of them.

d. To produce instantiation of the model with

the target audience (teachers) and to test these

serious games on the field with students.

Vermeulen, M., Mandran, N. and Labat, J-M.

DISCO, a Formal Model of Serious Games to Help Teachers at the Design Stage.

In Doctoral Consortium (DCCSEDU 2016), pages 3-8

e. To recover and to analyse traces in order to

improve it.

3 STATE OF THE ART

The « serious games » term (or learning game for

our case) has several definitions depending on the

context and authors such as (Abt, 1970) or (Chen

and Michael, 2005). (Alvarez and Djaouti, 2011)

provide a definition clarifying the ambiguity of the

concept: a serious game is a computer application

for which the original intention is to combine with

consistency, serious aspects, in this case learning,

with playful elements taken from the video

game. This definition involves the coupling of a

pedagogical scenario and a playful scenario.

As we have already noted, teachers conceive

serious games as complex resources to design and to

implement in their teaching. In general, their

creation is seen as a difficult exercise, including

accustomed designers. Thus, although relatively

new, research has been undertaken to facilitate the

task of the creators of serious games.

The methodology MISA (Paquette et al., 1999)

is an iconic design method for ILE (Interactive

Learning Environment). It aims at specifying and

starting the design and implementation of an ILE

based on different expert actors. MISA offers a

sequential approach unsuited to the creation of

serious games, and where different experts work in

cooperation rather than collaboration.

(Djaouti, 2011) offers a model for generic design

of serious games, the DICE model. An initial

definition phase is followed by an iterative

development cycle comprising three stages:

Imagine, Create and Evaluate. This approach,

inspired by the work around the creation of purely

entertaining video games, brings an agile dimension.

Proposed by (Yusoff, 2010), the Serious Game

Conceptual Framework is a serious game design

framework that introduces the idea of pre-combine

fun elements and learning outcomes, themselves

drawn from the targeted skills. It gives the different

types of involved actors but does not detail their role

in the process.

(Marne et al., 2012) presents a non-sequential

design framework, the six facets of serious games

design (Figure 1). These facets are design elements

involving two broad categories of expertise

(educational and playful), which must be taken into

account when developing a serious game. This

model, besides to help design and streamline the

work, allow analysis of existing serious games.

Figure 1: The 6 facets of serious game.

If we focus on serious game design support tools

issued from Research in ILE, many only deals with

the scenario of the game. ScenLRPG (Mariais, 2012)

is an authoring tool, for role-playing learning games,

that divide the scenario into educational activities

taking into account the intentions of the designers.

Legadee (Marfisi, 2013), an authoring tool for

the design of learning games, offers a partition of the

scenario in components with a cooperative approach.

It was tested with an audience of designers

(educational engineers, game designers, etc.). It

remains difficult to use with teachers because of the

necessity of learning Legadee interface.

MoPPLiq (Marne and Labat, 2014) is a generic

model able to describe the playful and educational

aspects of the scenario of a serious game in stages and

makes the scenario understandable and capable of

being manipulated by teachers. This model comes with

a tool called APPLiq enabling manipulation of the

scenario to fit it into the educational background of

teachers. MoPPLiq covers only part of the design but

provides a tool for scenario design that we will use.

These methods and tools provide a framework

for designing serious games but say nothing about

the computer models used to translate these serious

games design into artefacts. But experience shows

that without predefined templates, teachers have

difficulties to imagine objects to implement in the

design phase. The central objective of this work is to

define a proper formal model containing artefacts to

develop. This model will guide teachers more

closely in designing serious games, especially those

of the « case study » type.

4 METHODOLOGY

The chosen methodological posture is based on the

Design Based Research (DBR) (Wang and

DCCSEDU 2016 - Doctoral Consortium on Computer Supported Education

Hannafin, 2005). This posture is based on the

inclusion of teachers in the work environment, the

interaction between researchers and teachers to

advance proposals for research and confirm them on

the field. The DBR favors iterative approaches and

the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. This

context of collaboration and the mix of methods is a

posture suited to our research. In addition, this

former is situated in the field and in contact with the

teachers, and must follow an iterative cycle. At the

implementation level, the experimental approach

will be based on a user-centered approach adapted to

a research context (Mandran et al., 2013). The

methods used will be both qualitative to understand

the needs of teachers and quantitative to analyse and

evaluate the use of the serious game.

The experimental process will be conducted in

three stages:

a. The acquired observations and experience of

on the field will help to create a first proposal

for a formal model of serious games of the

case study type.

b. This proposal will be presented and tested

with teachers during an interview campaign

and focus group. The proposal could be

improved. Improvements include firstly the

model presented, but also the associated

design methodology.

c. Traces of teachers (and/or students) during

the use of serious games will be collected; it

will validate the proposed model.

For the first stage, we began this work in

September 2015 with an exploratory phase during

the collaborative design of serious games of the case

study type. This phase of co-design allowed to

generate, with designers, a document describing the

methodology (via interviews with them). An

analysis step followed to reach a proposed model of

serious games in this article. A first phase of

interviews with teachers allowed to refine the model

in December 2015.

The starting point of our work will be the

observation and analysis of the experience of the

creation of serious games with teachers, for a variety

of themes in university and higher education.

5 SERIOUS GAMES AND CASE

STUDIES

However, to create a formal model that is suitable

for a whole class of serious games, it is legitimate to

find a type of serious game compatible with the

largest number of themes addressed in higher

education. In fact, several studies have shown the

interest of the Case Method to create serious games

by teachers in higher education, particularly

following the collaborative project Generic-SG

(Marfisi et al., 2013). Indeed, the case studies are a

device based on a constructivist pedagogy and can

be applied to many fields of knowledge (law,

management, medicine, biology, physics,

mathematics, sustainable development, etc.). They

can be the basis of educational scenarios of serious

games. The case method established at Harvard for

many years (Dooley, 1977) refers in many areas. In

medicine, learning diagnostic techniques via the

Script Concordance (SC) tests (Charlin et al., 2000)

use real situations: the students have to choose

assumptions validated during design by a panel of

doctors in an uncoordinated manner, each expert

gives his solution to the situation in light of his

experience. The TOPAZE model was designed for

the editorial chain SCENARI (Quelennec et al.,

2010) (Gebers and Crozat, 2010) to facilitate the

digitization of case studies. Nonetheless, this model

is one of the tools used to produce the serious games

explained in the following paragraph.

Initiated in 2010, the Scientific and Practical

Case Studies for Higher Education and Research (in

french Les ECSPER) are case studies that combine

knowledge and expertise in a fictional setting based

on real events all in a playful environment. The first

case « Le Robot tueur » (killer robot) released in

2012 (Robot) (Figure 2), was made to demonstrate

the feasibility of the design and implementation of a

serious game in scientific topics by teachers.

Figure 2: Interface of the game "Le Robot Tueur".

Based on real situations, we introduced some

elements of a video game as challenge, graphics and

an ambiance borrowed from the comic, and

humorous situations. The playful approach here

offers a way to involve learners in a realistic world

DISCO, a Formal Model of Serious Games to Help Teachers at the Design Stage

(Sanchez et al., 2011). Furthermore, the « Robot

Tueur » is a game with intrinsic motivation

(Fabricatore, 2000) as opposed to serious games

where the game aspect is an added layer without

related learning content (extrinsic metaphor).

Three cases were constructed empirically (two in

physics, one in project management) since 2010.

Their use in various institutions of higher education

and with different teachers (Fronton et al., 2015)

received the recognition of educational community

and ICT engineers (FFUP2013). Furthermore, due to

the need expressed by many teachers, there has

emerged the requirement of a formal model that

facilitates the design and creation of serious games

of the case study type and methodology adapted to

the model.

6 FIRST OUTCOME

The first case was built around the role of scientists

commissioned by a judge to carry out an expertise

on a piece of evidence. A first action was to define

initial objectives, what is recommended for ILE by

(Paquette et al., 1999): What should the student

performed? What will he learn? Which knowledge

or skill does he confirm? And how? What will he do

at the end of this serious game? What are we

assessing? The choice fell on two aspects: the

validation of knowledge viewed in courses and the

acquisition of solving methods corresponding to this

expertise.

A first model of the domain, D, was proposed

simply based on the experience of teachers. This

initial model, very brief, took the form of a simple

text file and contains the necessary initial knowledge

of the learner. The collect of expertise is a difficult

task for teachers (for different reasons: cognitive,

psychological, organizational) and a delicate point in

process of developing a serious game, that requires

the establishment of an effective and rigorous

approach (Marne, 2014). We have worked in parallel

on the simulation domain and the potential

interactions between the students and the serious

game: teachers must present the articulation between

knowledge, so that these interactions allow the

acquisition of knowledge.

At the same time, we defined with the teachers

the learning objectives, O, the conditions of use of

the serious game, C, and worked on a first scenario,

S. This last was initially built using post-it, then it

was digitalized using a mind map tool to facilitate its

evolution (Figure 3). Simultaneously an author of

comics, accustomed to video game scenarios,

worked with teachers on the playful scenario of the

serious game.

Figure 3: Sample of scenario graph of a case study.

At this stage a rapid prototyping was

needed. Indeed, this conception « just in time » and

without using validation tool can generate scenarios

containing dead ends and difficult to detect

loops. To detect these imperfections and improve the

script, the prototype of the game was designed on

paper and then implemented in PowerPoint. Multiple

iterations on this prototype and dialogues between

teachers and the author of comics allowed the

finalization of the scenario, but also a reflection on

the players progress in the serious game and

validation of playful aspects. This iterative design

with rapid prototyping can be found in the

literature (Marne and Labat, 2014).

Once the different authors validated the scenario,

each stage has been reviewed to incorporate the

interactions selected into the panel of available

interactions. We implemented it using the tool

SCENARI and Topaze documentary model. This last

was designed to digitalize multi-linear case studies

(Quelennec et al., 2010) (Gebers and Crozat, 2010).

After this phase, the first tests with teachers

started. Initial feedback (obtained trough informal

discussions) reported on the media and the scenario

quality. Nonetheless, the conditions of use have been

modified to fit with the educational practices of each

(especially regarding the evaluation of students). We

then launched to students a survey in the form of a

questionnaire. Unfortunately, responses, too weak

and too imprecise at this time did not allow

achieving meaningful and usable numbers.

With this first exploratory phase, we pointed out

the research questions that will be the subject of our

future research. We have induced this first iteration

the following result:

A serious game type case study can be

considered as a 5-tuple containing the objects D, O,

I, S and C such as:

DCCSEDU 2016 - Doctoral Consortium on Computer Supported Education

 D: Domain Model, a graph whose nodes are

the knowledge or skills domain and arches

reflecting the prerequisites links. This graph

must include the necessary initial knowledge

of the learner.

 O: Objectives, a sub-graph of the graph of

domain model with possibly an indication of

the expected level of performance.

 I: Interactions, a set of available interactions

with the simulation of the domain model. For

example, the completion of puzzle or drag

and drop are possible types of interactions.

 S: Screenwriting, a scenario defined as a

directed graph, each node is the complete

realization of a problem, giving great

flexibility in screenwriting. The links (as

proposed MoPPLiq model) reflect the

teacher's expertise. Each teacher can freely

modify and adapt them to his own use.

 C: Usage Context, a sentence explaining the

context and associated constraints.

This gives the DISCO model.

7 STAGE OF THE RESEARCH

In this article, we presented a formal model of serious

game type case study where the teacher plays an

important role at the design stage (in addition to its

traditional role of prescriber). We should now refine

the model DISCO, specify and describe each element

of this 5-tuple and the links between them. We should

also provide the tools to facilitate the work of teachers

within the model for the creation of serious games of

the case study type. Finally, we should validate this

model by creating and experimenting serious games

built using the DISCO model with authors and/or

users. These serious games and prescribed to students

by teachers generate data for analysis.

The analysis of these traces will also respond to

our initial problem: with a strong implication of

teachers in the creation of serious games, based on

the use of a formal model based on the use of design

methodology, should we see a better use of serious

games? This framework will also give the

opportunity to design a significant number of serious

games, increasing the returns to serious game

designers and researchers.

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