Studying Thracian Civilization Through Serious Games and Storytelling

This chapter presents a novel learning approach for studying ancient Bulgarian history, civilization, and their cultural heritage, namely the Thracian civilization, through storytelling and serious game combinations. The chapter also provides an overview of serious educational games, digital storytelling, and game development tools that can be used to present ancient history and their cultural heritage. The combination of storytelling and serious games successfully helps instructors to motivate student learning, stimulate their curiosity, and make them interested. The authors developed a game editor and a game portal that facilitated the game's development by applying game templates, layout styles, and question pools.

Using Serious Games and Video Materials in Clinical Training in Nursing and Midwifery Education

The article presents the serious educational games and the video materials (video algorithms) as a means to improve the perception and increase the quality of education in Bulgaria of the students among the medical specialties Nurse and Midwife. The issue of creating models of serious educational games is considered. A serious educational game created with the help of the Kahoot learning platform is presented. The introduction of new technological innovations in the educational process is an important step towards the modernization of the education of today's generation of students. According to a study conducted among students, serious games and video algorithms are effective means of raising the level of education of future Nurses and Midwives. Along with traditional education, they contribute to the formation of highly effective knowledge, skills, competencies, and the acquisition of professional qualities.

Virtual Reality and Serious Games Using in Distance Learning in Medicine in Bulgaria

Thе paper presents the inclusion of new innovative methods in medical education in Bulgaria. Recently, schools around the world have had to move to distance learning for their students. The use of modern technologies in the virtual classroom today is the most important part of the educational process. Effective modern devices, user-friendly platforms and appropriate educational pedagogical methods prove to be the key to excellent training. The inclusion of virtual teaching methods and serious educational games contributes to the conduct of high-level training and the formation of future medics of knowledge, skills and experience necessary for the formation of their professional qualities. The paper presents the results of a survey conducted among trainers and trainees at medical universities in Bulgaria. The analysis of the results shows the readiness of teachers and students to apply the methods of virtual learning and serious games in the educational process.

Health Education Serious Games Targeting Health Care Providers, Patients, and Public Health Users: Scoping Review

Background Serious educational games have shown effectiveness in improving various health outcomes. Previous reviews of health education games have focused on specific diseases, certain medical subjects, fixed target groups, or limited outcomes of interest. Given the recent surge in health game studies, a scoping review of health education games is needed to provide an updated overview of various aspects of such serious games. Objective This study aimed to conduct a scoping review of the design and evaluation of serious educational games for health targeting health care providers, patients, and public (health) users. Methods We identified 2313 studies using a unique combination of keywords in the PubMed and ScienceDirect databases. A total of 161 studies were included in this review after removing duplicates (n=55) and excluding studies not meeting our inclusion criteria (1917 based on title and abstract and 180 after reviewing the full text). The results were stratified based on games targeting health care providers, patients, and public users. Results Most health education games were developed and evaluated in America (82/161, 50.9%) and Europe (64/161, 39.8%), with a considerable number of studies published after 2012. We discovered 58.4% (94/161) of studies aiming to improve knowledge learning and 41.6% (67/161) to enhance skill development. The studies targeted various categories of end users: health care providers (42/161, 26.1%), patients (38/161, 23.6%), public users (75/161, 46.6%), and a mix of users (6/161, 3.7%). Among games targeting patients, only 13% (6/44) targeted a specific disease, whereas a growing majority targeted lifestyle behaviors, social interactions, cognition, and generic health issues (eg, safety and nutrition). Among 101 studies reporting gameplay specifications, the most common gameplay duration was 30 to 45 min. Of the 61 studies reporting game repetition, only 14% (9/61) of the games allowed the users to play the game with unlimited repetitions. From 32 studies that measured follow-up duration after the game intervention, only 1 study reported a 2-year postintervention follow-up. More than 57.7% (93/161) of the games did not have a multidisciplinary team to design, develop, or assess the game. Conclusions Serious games are increasingly used for health education targeting a variety of end users. This study offers an updated scoping review of the studies assessing the value of serious games in improving health education. The results showed a promising trend in diversifying the application of health education games that go beyond a specific medical condition. However, our findings indicate the need for health education game development and adoption in developing countries and the need to focus on multidisciplinary teamwork in designing effective health education games. Furthermore, future health games should expand the duration and repetition of games and increase the length of the follow-up assessments to provide evidence on long-term effectiveness.

Matching serious games with museum’s educational roles: smart education in practice

PurposeThis study aims to present a meta-analysis of the use of serious educational games in museums. The analysis is based on a critical literature review that maps educational roles of museums against serious educational games used in support of those roles. The meta-analysis focuses on the specific context of informal learning in museums.Design/methodology/approachThe research design presented in this study is based on a meta-analysis research design that consists of a critical literature review, a multi-matrix representation of findings of the literature review and a conceptual visualization of the multidisciplinary area of the usage of serious games in support of educational roles in museums.FindingsClear and detailed categorizations of educational roles and serious games types for informal learning are presented. These are followed by matching these educational roles with published reports of the use of serious games within museums. The study concludes with observations and a conceptual map of the design of serious games for museums.Originality/valueThis study presents the first meta-analysis of research in this emergent multidisciplinary field. It will help serious game designers, museum educators and educational practitioners to make decisions regarding the choice of game type, customization and content design to support informal learning in the specific context of museum educational activities.

Educational Serious Games as a Service: Challenges and Solutions

Cloud computing is a distributed computing technology that facilitates access to resources in a dynamic and scalable way which is highly available. One of the service models is SaaS (Software as a Service) which allows executing Web applications flexible and elastically while offering collaborative characteristics. The integration of SaaS in educational environments promotes academic performance and facilitates knowledge management, allowing for storage, exchange, access, and synchronization of information. On the other hand, serious educational games promote among the people involved: collaboration, communication, social abilities, critical thinking, and problems solving. The present work analyzes the challenges that SaaS, with its collaborative and Multi-Tenant characteristics, offer to the execution of serious educational games, this is named JSEaaS –Serious Educational Games as a Service. The analysis was developed based on an exhaustive and systematic bibliographic revision with a qualitative methodological focus, which generated investigation questions, search strategies, keywords and inclusion and exclusion criteria that were applied to identify articles in different sources. This work allowed for the development of a list of the functional characteristics that the serious educational games will acquire when used as software as a service.

Health Education Serious Games Targeting Health Care Providers, Patients, and Public Health Users: Scoping Review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Serious educational games have shown effectiveness in improving various health outcomes. Previous reviews of health education games have focused on specific diseases, certain medical subjects, fixed target groups, or limited outcomes of interest. Given the recent surge in health game studies, a scoping review of health education games is needed to provide an updated overview of various aspects of such serious games. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to conduct a scoping review of the design and evaluation of serious educational games for health targeting health care providers, patients, and public (health) users. METHODS We identified 2313 studies using a unique combination of keywords in the PubMed and ScienceDirect databases. A total of 161 studies were included in this review after removing duplicates (n=55) and excluding studies not meeting our inclusion criteria (1917 based on title and abstract and 180 after reviewing the full text). The results were stratified based on games targeting health care providers, patients, and public users. RESULTS Most health education games were developed and evaluated in America (82/161, 50.9%) and Europe (64/161, 39.8%), with a considerable number of studies published after 2012. We discovered 58.4% (94/161) of studies aiming to improve knowledge learning and 41.6% (67/161) to enhance skill development. The studies targeted various categories of end users: health care providers (42/161, 26.1%), patients (38/161, 23.6%), public users (75/161, 46.6%), and a mix of users (6/161, 3.7%). Among games targeting patients, only 13% (6/44) targeted a specific disease, whereas a growing majority targeted lifestyle behaviors, social interactions, cognition, and generic health issues (eg, safety and nutrition). Among 101 studies reporting gameplay specifications, the most common gameplay duration was 30 to 45 min. Of the 61 studies reporting game repetition, only 14% (9/61) of the games allowed the users to play the game with unlimited repetitions. From 32 studies that measured follow-up duration after the game intervention, only 1 study reported a 2-year postintervention follow-up. More than 57.7% (93/161) of the games did not have a multidisciplinary team to design, develop, or assess the game. CONCLUSIONS Serious games are increasingly used for health education targeting a variety of end users. This study offers an updated scoping review of the studies assessing the value of serious games in improving health education. The results showed a promising trend in diversifying the application of health education games that go beyond a specific medical condition. However, our findings indicate the need for health education game development and adoption in developing countries and the need to focus on multidisciplinary teamwork in designing effective health education games. Furthermore, future health games should expand the duration and repetition of games and increase the length of the follow-up assessments to provide evidence on long-term effectiveness.

Effect of a Serious Educational Game on Academic and Affective Outcomes for Statistics Instruction

The overuse of lecture-based approaches for instruction in university courses may have limited student access to knowledge, particularly the transfer of complex concepts, such as central limit theorem in statistics. This study seeks to contribute to empirical research regarding the effectiveness of serious educational games (SEGs) to increase undergraduates’ conceptual understanding and affective interest in statistics. An experimental design was used to test the efficacy of an SEG, Deadly Distribution, which simulates a real-world context to learn and interact with statistics concepts, compared to traditional notes and homework problems, as supplements to instruction in addition to class lectures. Students who played the game had similar increases in academic growth of conceptual knowledge as students who studied traditional course material. Furthermore, this treatment group had a significant increase in affective outcomes compared to the control group. These findings extend the current literature, which is mixed and sparse, on the effectiveness of SEGs in the undergraduate classroom. In an undergraduate introductory statistics course, an SEG might be an effective substitute for traditional study time of course materials outside of class to increase their affect toward the subject matter and produce similar gains for students who might not otherwise study.