BubbleMumble: A Serious Game for the Dissemination of Scientiﬁc

Results in Secondary Schools

Alessandro Signa

1,2 a

, Manuel Gentile

1,3 b

, Sabrina Picciotto

4 c

, Antonella Cusimano

4 d

and Salvatore Perna

1,2 e

Institute for Educational Technology (ITD), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Palermo, Italy

Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

Institute for Research and Biomedical Innovation (IRIB), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Palermo, Italy

Keywords:

Serious Game, Dissemination, GBL.

Abstract:

Disseminating the scientiﬁc results of a project, especially to young audiences such as secondary school stu-

dents, is a difﬁcult task. Often the worlds of research and school are so far apart in terms of communication

that there is a risk of dissipating dissemination efforts without achieving satisfactory results. Serious Games

are a tool that can respond to this problem by providing a fun and effective environment that is very close

to the world of young people, and that uses familiar language through which the educational content can

be conveyed. In this paper, we will present BubbleMumble, a Serious Game designed and implemented to

disseminate the results of the European project VES4US. We will also describe the project together with its

dissemination objectives, and ﬁnally, we will present the results of an experiment on the use of the serious

game involving 131 students of the secondary school.

1 INTRODUCTION

The dissemination of scientiﬁc results in research

projects is a key step. It is the process by which what

is achieved by academic efforts is transferred and

shared both with the rest of the scientiﬁc community

and with the wider non-specialist population. Tradi-

tionally, scientiﬁc dissemination takes place through

presentations and publications of scientiﬁc articles in

journals and conferences, channels that unfortunately

often remain conﬁned to the context of the scien-

tiﬁc community. The need to reach a wider audi-

ence, through the planning of effective strategies and

the choice of appropriate means of communication,

has recently been highlighted by the European Com-

mission in the context of the Horizon2020 Research

and Innovation programme (European Commission,

2014).

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5861-488X

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6288-0830

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5544-984X

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6811-5670

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2206-8172

As modern society continues to evolve through

new paradigms of communication and social interac-

tion, becoming increasingly intertwined with the dig-

ital world, traditional knowledge transfer patterns and

learning processes struggle to keep pace (Loganathan

et al., 2019). According to recent statistics, half of

the European population regularly uses video games,

with an average of nine and a half hours of gaming

per week (ISFE, 2021). This phenomenon is not con-

ﬁned to Europe, and similar numbers can be observed

in the United States (ESA, 2021) and China (Mcgre-

gor, 2021). While this trend is constantly growing, the

idea of using video games, their language, and fea-

tures to enhance learning processes is not new. The

idea itself that play is a serious matter traces back di-

rectly to Plato (Ardley, 1967).

Today, serious games (SG), i.e. games that do not

have entertainment or fun as their main objective but

rather educational goals (de Freitas, 2006; Charsky,

2010), are increasingly being used, also due to the re-

sults that research has produced in recent years. Al-

though the scientiﬁc community is still divided on the

impact of SGs on learning outcomes (Kalogiannakis

Signa, A., Gentile, M., Picciotto, S., Cusimano, A. and Perna, S.

BubbleMumble: A Serious Game for the Dissemination of Scientiﬁc Results in Secondary Schools.

DOI: 10.5220/0011043000003182

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2022) - Volume 2, pages 467-474

ISBN: 978-989-758-562-3; ISSN: 2184-5026

467

et al., 2021; Subhash and Cudney, 2018; Zainuddin

et al., 2020; Ad

c et al., 2021), several studies show

the positive impact they can have on students’ engage-

ment and motivation (Subhash and Cudney, 2018;

Bakhanova et al., 2020; Papastergiou, 2009; Filsecker

and Hickey, 2014; Connolly et al., 2012; Boyle et al.,

2016; Hamari et al., 2016).

Another huge advantage of SGs is that they offer

a complex simulated virtual environment in which to

experience safe, cost-effective, and less stressful than

reality. This is immediately evident in speciﬁc sim-

ulation games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator X,

where the level of realism is so high that it can be

used as an effective tool for training and the evalu-

ation and study of ﬂight-related phenomena (Kortel-

ing et al., 2016; Karmakar et al., 2019; Mohammed

and Khaled, 2021), but at the same time it is also true

for games that were not created as faithful simula-

tors. This is the case with games such as SimCity

and Roller Coaster Tycoon (RCT), which started as

commercial games aimed at pure entertainment and

which over time have been used as virtual environ-

ments in which to experiment and learn skills and

competencies transferable to real-life (Sierra, 2019;

Roose and Veinott, 2017; Bereitschaft, 2021; Prama-

putri and Gamal, 2019; Arnold et al., 2019).

For these reasons, it was decided to use Seri-

ous Games to disseminate the research results ob-

tained within VES4US, a three-year project (2018-

2021) funded by the Horizon 2020-Future and Emerg-

ing Technology (FET) program, that involved 6

organizations from as many European countries

(https://VES4US.eu). The project aims to realize and

develop an innovative platform for the efﬁcient pro-

duction of extracellular vesicles (EVs) starting from a

biological and renewable culture: microalgae. The in-

novation introduced by VES4US lies in the intuition

that microalgae could represent a natural source of

EVs that at the same time is cheap, sustainable, and

easily scalable at the industrial level.

It is in this framework that BubbleMumble comes

to life, the Serious Game that has the task of spreading

the contents of the VES4US project to students aged

between 13 and 16 years old. BubbleMumble is com-

posed of two distinct parts, two separate and indepen-

dent games: BubbleMumble Kart and BubbleMum-

ble Lab. The ﬁrst one is meant to teach players about

elementary biological concepts related to the world

of EVs, and it does so by transporting players to a go-

kart race that takes place inside a cell. The second

one is set in a laboratory and it is aimed to disclose

the processes of characterization and functionaliza-

tion of EVs, remaining faithful to the methodological

processes developed within the project VES4US.

In this work, we will deal exclusively with the sec-

ond of the two games, BubbleMumble Lab, which for

brevity in the following will be called just Bubble-

Mumble. The game, once complete, has been the sub-

ject of experimentation that has involved 131 students

of both lower and upper secondary school.

In the following chapters, the game will be pre-

sented, together with its design. Then the experimen-

tation carried out will be described and results will

be shown and discussed. Finally, conclusions will be

drawn from the experience collected and future works

will be considered.

2 THE BUBBLEMUMBLE

SERIOUS GAME

BubbleMumble is a serious game designed to dissem-

inate the activities of the VES4US project. The game,

in its entirety, is composed of two independent games.

The ﬁrst aims to make the players aware of the biol-

ogy concepts underlying the processes of vesicle gen-

eration. The second is aimed at disseminating the pro-

cesses developed within the VES4US project used to

characterize and functionalize extra-cellular vesicles.

In this chapter, we will describe the second of these

games, since it was the object of the experimenta-

tion presented in this work. The processes to be con-

veyed through this game are therefore the isolation of

nanovesicle cultures, their functionalization, and their

characterization. This entire process is determined by

a very speciﬁc sequence of steps, each with its pecu-

liar parameters. The various steps have to be carried

out in a precise order and the value of the parame-

ters involved has to be set accurately to complete the

process successfully.

The idea that guided the design of this game

was to consider the isolation, functionalization, and

characterization production chain as a kitchen recipe,

where sequencing and dosage are two essential fac-

tors. It was therefore identiﬁed the commercial video

game Overcooked as a source of inspiration for the

design of this portion of the BubbleMumble game.

In Overcooked, the player has to work with his team

to cook, plate, and serve a variety of dishes to eager

customers. The main feature that makes the game

extremely fun and addictive is the constant state of

’frenzy’ that forces the player to sharpen his reﬂexes

and keep his attention level high at all times. The

game ﬂow within each level is characterized by a se-

ries of simple operations (e.g. slicing a vegetable).

Simple operations in series must be carried out one

after the other so that the ﬁnal dish can be served.

The ingredients scattered around the kitchen must be

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

468

identiﬁed, collected, and used according to the recipe

using the available utensils.

BubbleMumble has been designed based on the

above-mentioned features to achieve the objectives of

dissemination while engaging the players in fun activ-

ities. The game is set in a laboratory with all the nec-

essary tools for the production of nanovesicles. Here

the player plays the role of a young researcher. The

game has two distinct modes: Internship and Produc-

tion. These have different objectives: the Internship

mode aims to train and tutor the player in the game

environment and the concepts it conveys, while the

Production mode serves to verify and reinforce what

was learned during the training. In the Internship

phase, under the guidance of a more experienced vir-

tual researcher (non-player character), the player will

discover the various ”recipes” that lead to the devel-

opment of algae cultures and the selection of various

types of nanovesicles. In Production mode, the player

will have to produce the vesicles, using the recipes

discovered and the tools available in the laboratory, to

meet the delivery requests coming from the market.

Each request is characterized by a maximum time that

the customer is willing to wait to receive his order: the

player will therefore have to manage the various steps

of the process, even carrying out several cultures in

parallel, to respond to as many requests as possible

within the time limits.

2.1 User Interface

The serious game, in both modes, allows the player to

move in third-person inside a three-dimensional lab-

oratory in which there are several tables with all the

instruments necessary for the procedures he/she will

have to carry out. The interface has been designed

keeping in mind the purpose of the game and the de-

vices on which it will be played, namely smartphones

and tablets.

For this reason, to control the character’s move-

ments there is a joystick on the left-hand side of the

screen, designed to be used with the left thumb. Its

counterpart, on the right, is a button that allows you

to interact with the elements present in the laboratory

(tools, tables, baskets, etc.). At the top of the screen,

the list of steps required to complete the extraction

process of the nanovesicles for the algae culture cur-

rently being carried by the character is shown. This

list presents the steps in the form of intuitive icons

and each of them is marked as soon as the relevant

step is completed by the player. The lower part of

the screen shows on the left the graphical indication

of the current quality value of the current culture and

on the right, there is a button that allows access to

the player’s notes. The notes, represented through a

full-screen panel, summarize synthetically and imme-

diately what the player has learned about the various

types of microalgae present in the game and about

some of the tools present in the laboratory. There

are also some elements of the interface that are only

present during the Production mode because they re-

late to game mechanics that are not active during the

Internship phase. In the top left corner of the screen,

there is an hourglass that indicates the time remain-

ing before time runs out. Also displayed nearby is

the player’s current score for the current session. At

the bottom of the screen, in the center, a list is dis-

played containing requests for nanovesicles from buy-

ers. Each request is represented through characteris-

tic icons and a slider that indicates how long the cus-

tomer is willing to wait for the fulﬁllment of his or-

der; during the game session, this list is continuously

updated. Finally, on the left margin of the screen,

an alert symbol is shown now and then, warning the

player about the immediate appearance of danger in-

side the laboratory.

2.2 Gameplay

Each production cycle starts with the selection of al-

gae (from 4 alternatives) from a special container and

continues through multiple steps to fulﬁll the ”recipe”

of the selected algae. Step by step, the player has to

add nutrients to the culture, adjust its ph, manage its

incubation, set up extraction and vesicle isolation cy-

cles, and ﬁnally check the quality of what is obtained.

The whole process, from selection to quality control,

is made up of sequential tasks, each of which includes

a mini-game whose score will have a direct impact on

the quality of the culture. The score will be higher the

more accurate the work done by the player in com-

pleting the mini-game. The overall quality of the al-

gae culture depends on the scores obtained in each of

the mini-games. If the player compromises the cul-

ture considerably by getting too low of a score, it will

be degraded and discarded and the player will have to

start over.

In Internship mode a non-player character will

support the player during the process, highlighting

the key concepts of each production step and guid-

ing the player explicitly through the correct sequence

of steps. In this phase, additional guides will be pro-

vided to the player both to facilitate his spatial orien-

tation in the laboratory and to suggest the best way to

complete each mini-game in the sequence. The aim

of this mode is to provide the player with the detailed

knowledge, often numerical, needed to carry out the

correct steps: he/she will have to select, for example,

BubbleMumble: A Serious Game for the Dissemination of Scientiﬁc Results in Secondary Schools

469

the right amount of vitamins for the culture medium,

adjust the pH and remember whether a certain micro-

algae needs fresh or saltwater to grow properly. Once

all the necessary steps have been completed, the qual-

ity of the product obtained is communicated to the

player as soon as he inserts the mixture into a quality

control machine. This machine, simulating the con-

trol on markers, homogeneity, and quantity, returns

to the player a certiﬁcate containing the ﬁnal judg-

ment on the vesicles he has produced. This phase

thus plays the role of the game’s tutorial, in order to

give the player a chance to become familiar with the

dynamics and mechanics of the game. As soon as

an entire production cycle is successfully completed

in the Internship phase, notes about it will be added

to the player’s handbook, which will then always be

available for consultation, in every phase of the game.

During the Internship, without any game contingen-

cies and without any time limit, the player will be

able to learn, at his own pace, what is necessary to

be independent and efﬁcient in the production phase.

In the Production mode, the mechanics described

above remain, but the presence of guides during the

production cycle is reduced. In this mode, however,

some mechanics are introduced to increase engage-

ment and encourage the consolidation of the knowl-

edge acquired during the apprenticeship. The player

will have to satisfy the requests coming from the mar-

ket, each of which will be characterized by a type of

seaweed and an indication of the quantity to be de-

livered. Each request must be fulﬁlled within a time

limit, after which the customer will no longer be inter-

ested in the product. Each request completed within

the time limit will give the player a higher score if the

customer is satisﬁed with the product. Customer sat-

isfaction is inﬂuenced by the speed with which the re-

quest is completed, the quality of the compound pro-

duced, and the correctness of the vesicle isolation cy-

cles. The player’s ultimate goal will therefore be to

obtain the highest possible score within the time limit

of the game session in production mode, which equals

10 minutes.

To make the game less linear, and therefore more

fun and engaging, during the Production mode there is

a random generation of obstacles that the player must

avoid in order not to lose precious time. During the

course of the game, in fact, ﬂasks containing liquid

will shatter on the ground, making the area slippery

and posing a frequent risk of falling to the player. In

the laboratory, there are also some elements that are

not strictly functional to the completion of the process

but are certainly of help to the player. In fact, there

are some empty tables scattered around the room that

allows the player to temporarily place the algae cul-

ture he/she is holding in his/her hand, thus allow-

ing him/her to carry out several processes in parallel.

There are also baskets that allow the player to throw

away or discard the held culture if it has become use-

less or unsatisfactory. Finally, a microscope placed on

a table on the left side of the room allows the player to

see the enlarged detail of his/her own culture, show-

ing the cell bodies of the microalgae at the base of the

compound.

3 METHOD

3.1 Participants

The experiment involved numerous students from dif-

ferent Italian schools located in the cities of X and Y.

In particular, two classes from the third year of lower

secondary school and four classes from the second

year of upper secondary school (one from the ﬁrst

year, one from the second and two from the ﬁfth)

participated. Although the target design was students

aged between 13 and 16, it was decided to include stu-

dents from the last years of upper secondary school

in order to assess the impact of the game on them.

The selection of the classes was random. In total,

the activities were carried out by 131 students (aver-

age age=15.69, sd=9.13), of which 49 belonged to the

lower secondary school and 82 to the upper secondary

school. 54.96% (n=72) of them identiﬁed themselves

as female, 38.93% (n=51) as male, and 6.11% (n=8)

preferred not to indicate any gender.

3.2 Materials

Students played the game using their personal mobile

devices (tablets and smartphones). The Serious Game

was made available on the main stores (App Store and

Google Play Store) completely free of charge. The

researchers gave a short presentation to the students

about the basics of biology related to the world of

extracellular vesicles, as well as the context of the

VES4US project and the game and its purpose. Fi-

nally, a questionnaire was administered to the stu-

dents in order to detect their perception regarding the

usefulness of the game, the level of engagement, the

concepts at the center of the dissemination objectives,

the level of clarity of the instructions provided, the

interest in the topics dealt with and to provide feed-

back on the game itself. The questionnaire consists

of 22 items on a ten-point Likert scale. The items are

listed in Table 1. Before answering the questionnaire,

the students also answered some questions aimed at

collecting demographic data such as age, gender and

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

470

Table 1: The items of the questionnaire given to the students.

Item identiﬁer Item

Q1 How much do you like biology-related topics?

Q2 How well did you understand the objectives of the game from the start?

Q3 How keen are you to install the game on your device?

Q4 How motivated are you to continue playing with BubbleMumble?

Q5 How useful was the Internship mode for understanding the process of vesicle production and

selection?

Q6 How useful was the Internship mode in identifying the correct mix of elements for good and

correct vesicle production?

Q7 How useful was the Internship mode for understanding the differences between the different

types of algae?

Q8 How useful was the game in improving your ability to develop and apply appropriate time

management strategies and/or tactics?

Q9 How useful was the game to get a general idea of how a research laboratory works?

Q10 How useful was the game for understanding what extracellular vesicles are?

Q11 How useful was the game in identifying the correct ﬂow of play to make a vesicle?

Q12 How useful was the game in identifying the variables that affect the algae culture quality?

Q13 How useful was the game to associate the nutrients needed for each type of algae culture?

Q14 How engaging is the game?

Q15 How boring is the game?

Q16 How educational is the game?

Q17 How useful is the game?

Q18 How playable is the game?

Q19 How would you rate the game’s graphics?

Q20 How would you rate the game’s sounds?

Q21 How would you rate the game’s feedback?

Q22 How would you rate the game’s instructions and explanations?

school attended, together with indications of any prior

study of biology.

3.3 Procedures

All the experimentation-related activities were carried

out in the classroom within the school context. For

each class, two researchers belonging to the working

group attended the activities. They started by brieﬂy

presenting to the students the key concepts related

to extracellular vesicles, the context provided by the

VES4US project, the game, and its purpose. This pre-

sentation lasted an average of 5 minutes. At the end

of the presentation, students were asked to download

the game on their devices: to this end, students were

directed to the Apple App Store or the Google Play

Store, depending on the device. Before continuing the

activities, it was ensured that all students had down-

loaded and installed the game. At this stage, the re-

searchers helped the students by providing assistance

and guidance. Once the entire class had installed the

game, students were asked to begin playing the game

in Internship mode and complete a full production cy-

cle. At the end of this ﬁrst cycle, students were given

complete freedom on their choice of game mode and

were informed that they could switch between modes

(from Internship to Production and vice versa) at any

time. The students then played freely for 45 minutes.

At the end of this time, in order to increase engage-

ment and ensure that everyone played in Production

mode, a friendly ”competition” was opened to deter-

mine who would be able to get the highest score at

the end of a 10-minute session played exclusively in

Production mode. At the end of this small competi-

tion, where the students competed against each other,

a winner was named. Next, students were asked to ﬁll

out an anonymous questionnaire. The questionnaire

was administered via the Lime-Survey web platform

through the same personal devices that the students

used for the game.

BubbleMumble: A Serious Game for the Dissemination of Scientiﬁc Results in Secondary Schools

471

Table 2: Descriptive statistics of items.

Item identiﬁer Short Item description mean sd skew kurtosis

Q1 biology engagement 7.05 2.25 -0.92 0.59

Q2 initial goal comprehension 6.62 2.62 -0.53 -0.51

Q3 intention to install 5.75 3.02 -0.27 -1.18

Q4 intention to play 5.64 2.98 -0.17 -1.26

Q5 production understanding 7.03 2.50 -0.82 0.02

Q6 mix understanding 6.98 2.39 -0.87 0.20

Q7 algae understanding 6.34 2.65 -0.49 -0.64

Q8 strategy time improving 6.00 2.73 -0.43 -0.85

Q9 labwork improving 7.19 2.18 -0.85 0.48

Q10 vescicles improving 6.18 2.44 -0.55 -0.39

Q11 ﬂow of play 6.29 2.53 -0.69 -0.34

Q12 variables identiﬁcation 6.33 2.61 -0.64 -0.47

Q13 nutrients needed 6.34 2.50 -0.52 -0.34

Q14 engaging 6.77 2.46 -0.73 -0.19

Q15 boring 4.98 2.67 0.36 -0.77

Q16 educational 7.48 2.23 -1.09 0.87

Q17 useful 6.42 2.59 -0.64 -0.40

Q18 playable 6.37 2.46 -0.54 -0.38

Q19 graphic 6.09 2.35 -0.60 -0.48

Q20 sound 5.66 2.78 -0.31 -0.90

Q21 feedback 6.40 2.54 -0.59 -0.32

Q22 instructions and explanations 6.50 2.76 -0.68 -0.54

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Table 2 shows the descriptive analysis carried out on

all the items of the questionnaire. In general terms,

the data show a good level of engagement with the

BubbleMumble activity.

Speciﬁcally, students seemed to be interested in

biology-related topics (Q1, avg=7.05, sd=2.25). This

helped us to exclude potential bias in the students to-

wards the topics covered by the Serious Game Bub-

ble Mumble. Similarly, the response to question Q2

(avg=6.62, sd=2.62) highlights a possible difference

in the way the introduction to the experimentation was

conducted by the researchers prior to the start of the

game activities. The low mean value ( although pos-

itive), along with the two standard deviation points,

highlight the need in the future to standardize this

introduction so that it is the same regardless of the

researchers conducting it and the classes in which it

is carried out. Similarly, in order to achieve greater

clarity in the instructions provided to students, it may

be appropriate to revise the instructions given by the

avatar during the Internship phase to make them more

concise and clear.

The positive results of the responses to items Q5,

Q6 and Q7 conﬁrm the ideas that guided the design

phase: the choice to create a mode in which the stu-

dent could learn outside of the time-pressure typical

of the Production mode turned out to be successful,

and the players showed that they consider this mode

useful for understanding and learning the concepts

at the core of the nanoalgosome production process.

The overall good response to items Q8 to Q13 also

shows that students ﬁnd the game useful for learning

the biology-related content at the core of the dissemi-

nation aim. This is also conﬁrmed by the positive val-

ues found for items Q16 and Q17. The greatest criti-

cism is found in the responses to item Q20 and is ad-

dressed to the audio component of the game. Conse-

quently, greater attention to elements such as sound-

track and audio effects (and potentially voice dubbing

of instructions) could lead to an improvement in the

overall perception of the game by students and thus

increase its effectiveness.

A further positive point of this experimentation

is the overall positivity of the responses found, es-

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

472

pecially in the classes of the ﬁrst order secondary

school, despite the fact that the game was only avail-

able in English, and not in the mother tongue of the

students. In this regard, a localization in more lan-

guages could help to increase the effectiveness of the

game and its distribution in more countries. It is also

important to note that a more detailed analysis of the

responses of the last classes (ﬁfth year of high school)

brought to the surface a decisively negative trend.

These students found the game less engaging and use-

ful and generally made more criticism of the graphi-

cal component. This unfortunately conﬁrms the initial

target design and discourages an expansion of the age

range in which to use the game.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORKS

This study represents a ﬁrst step toward reﬁning the

game and how it is administered and used within the

school setting. Many lessons can be taken from this

experience. In regards to the levels of perceived en-

gagement and boredom of the game, although the val-

ues detected are probably explained by the presence

within the experiment of students with ages outside

the design target group, it pushes to reason on how

the game could be made even more engaging. Taking

again inspiration from the Overcooked game, the in-

troduction of multi-player modes (both direct, such as

co-op play, and indirect, through the addition of ele-

ments such as leaderboards) could improve students’

perception and actually increase the game’s effective-

ness. At the same time, the variance in the students’

understanding of the tasks to be completed within the

proposed activities deﬁnes the need to formalize an

introduction that can be directly integrated within the

game and that, consequently, does not require the in-

tervention of an external person. Moreover, following

the indications provided by the students’ feedback, an

improvement and, above all, greater attention in the

design phase to the audio component of the game is

necessary. Finally, while this experimentation was

more useful to assess the level of enjoyment of the

game and the activities carried out, it is important to

plan and verify through a rigorous study the actual

transfer of knowledge implemented by the game, to

validate it as a tool for content acquisition.

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