effect of a serious game on aviation vocabulary acquisition

Having proficiency in the standard aviation phraseology specified by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is of great importance for prospective pilots in communication with air traffic controllers and other pilots. The ambiguity in the standard phraseology could be a disaster for the flight crews. That’s why; serious thought has been given at the policy of improving the precise communication in aviation. However, it remains unclear whether the serious game-based flight simulations can enhance the vocabulary intake of the learners who invest the majority of their time in studying the standard aviation phraseology. There is also a dearth of research pertaining to the association between serious gaming and aviation phraseology. The advancement of the technology has exponentially expanded the digital games and therefore began to be widely used in education. The current study thus sets out to investigate the effect of a serious simulation game X-Plane 11 offering invaluable learning experience on aviation vocabulary acquisition. This investigation takes the form of a quasi-experimental mixed-method research by retrieving convenience sampling (15 subjects in experimental group, 15 subjects in control group). The findings indicated that there had been strong evidence of the positive effects of serious gaming on the learners’ outcome. Following the integration of the serious game, a significant increase with the medium effect size in the experimental group was recorded. This finding was also echoed by the majority of the interviewees who unanimously emphasized that the game was beneficial and motivating for language learning despite the minority challenges triggered by the level of language, hardware, and software types.

A Serious Game to learn English: The case of Bethe1Challenge

Current research in English language teaching reports that there is a tendency towards the use of mobile games and technology. However, there is a lack of research conducted that informs on the implementation of those strategies in high school contexts in Colombia. This article reports a case study aimed at exploring students’ perceptions towards the use of the Serious Game Bethe1Challenge supported with gamified activities, in a high school context during pandemic times. Accordingly, interviews, a pre-test and post-test were implemented and analyzed. It is concluded that participants perceived that Bethe1Challenge is an entertaining, fun, and enjoyable game that increases motivation and improves English learning as reported in the tests. Nonetheless, constraints related to the game were also discovered.

Editorial Vol. 8, Issue 4

Editorial of the fourth issue of the eighth volume of the International Journal of Serious Games

VAPBr: Values in Digital Games for Public Service in Brazil

In Brazil, many initiatives have emerged to promote the dialogue between citizens and public institutions using technology. This dialogue has been a challenging endeavor, and digital games have been proposed to stimulate interaction and understanding about public service process delivery. In this context, one fundamental aspect observed for the effectiveness of these games is the human values that the games can transmit. This paper proposes the “Values at Play Brazil” (VAPBr), a deck composed of 24 cards as a brainstorming tool to help designers identify values for public process-based digital games. The paper describes the design of VAPBr and its evaluation with 14 game designers aiming to obtain participants’ perception of VAPBr capability of clearly describing values and its usefulness for identifying them for a game. Results show a positive perception of VAPBr as a brainstorming tool to discover values to be designed in a public processbased digital game.

Design methodology of analytical games for knowledge acquisition

Analytical games explore a problem or a domain with a research purpose. Considerable research is ongoing to investigate improvements to analytical game design, execution and exploitation. Moreover, the fast-paced technological developments in many fields, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, make it even more compellingto account for the advantages and limitations of these new capabilities. In game design, the use of digital means is often regarded as a mere technical factor that relates to the platform selection, facilitator support and data recording processes. In this work a shift in perspective is proposed, to move from technology-oriented design selection criteria towards a broader assessment of the design choices. In fact, the introductionof technology (i.e., automation and autonomy) will not lead to a substitution of tasks, but will intrinsically change the game environment. This work introduces a framework to provide a structured guidance on the aspects to be factored in the different design phases of an analytical game, including the potential impact of the adoption of automation and autonomy. The proposed approach is based on previous research in the fieldof simulation-based serious gaming, model-driven engineering and human factors engineering. The framework is applied to Knowledge Acquisition Analytical Games as a case study.

Evaluation of HackLearn COFELET Game User Experience for Cybersecurity Education

HackLearn is a scenario-based hacking simulation game for teaching cybersecurity concepts while providing hands-on hacking experiences to the learners. HackLearn design is based on the COFELET framework, which assimilates modern learning theories, well-known cybersecurity standards, and built-in scaffolding and assessment features. Aiming at evaluating the user experience perceived by HackLearn’s users, we describe the process of adopting it in a real educational environment based on the didactic framework for simulation games. Additionally, we present the evaluation methodology elaborated, based on the serious games’ quality characteristics framework. We discuss the evaluation results which indicate that HackLearn is engaging, motivating, usable and effective in teaching cybersecurity concepts and hacking strategies and techniques. The evaluation results revealed the HackLearn’s aspects that can be improved such as the scaffolding feature and the communication mechanism with the game’s back-end facility. The presented work validates and finalizes prior work elaborated on the COFELET framework (e.g., COFELET ontology and the COFELET games life-cycle), whereas it provides directions for future work in the development and evaluation of cybersecurity serious games.

Security Awareness Level Evaluation of Healthcare Participants Through Educational Games

The purpose of this paper consists of implementing an educational board game to evaluate the information security awareness level of healthcare personnel. The National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) Information Security Acceptable Use Policy was used as a basis to generate the educational content of the board game and Lev Vygotsky’s social development theory was followed for the learning process of the participants. Two evaluations were carried out during this study. The results obtained during the first evaluation showed that it is fundamental to design the board game based on a set of rules in information security enacted by an organization to properly guide the participants with the knowledge they need to counter security incidents. The second evaluation showed that redesigning the content of the board game based on the information security policies of the NHSGGC, resulted in a more effective way of guiding participants on the procedures required for compliance with the policies of this health institution and offer them an understanding of the risks behind security incidents. This was demonstrated during this evaluation since the results obtained gave an approximation that it is possible to increase the level of awareness of information security in people regardless of their area of work or studies.

Introduction to the Special Issue on GaLA Conf 2020

This special issue of the International Journal of Serious Games offers very valuable extensions to the best papers of the 2020 edition of the GaLA conference. The local organization committee was composed of computer scientists of Laval (France), affiliated to Le Mans Université. From the 9th to the 10th of December 2020, 500 participants attended to a well-organized conference, through their virtual avatars, and listened to 37 presentations on Serious Games and Gamification. A special session was related to Virtual Reality, in a pedagogical and gaming context. The four extended papers, published in this journal, significantly extend their original work, and were accepted through a regular peer-review process for this special issue.

Editorial. Vol. 8, Issue 3

This issue includes four papers selected among the best presented at the Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GaLA Conf), that in 2020 was held in the Laval virtual world, organized by the University of Le Mans. Beside the special issue, this number of the International Journal of Serious Games also features two regular papers, that I briefly introduce in the following.

Reflections on Ludification: Approaching a Conceptual Framework – And Discussing Inherent Challenges

This article discusses the relatively new concept of ludification with the attempt of laying the theoretical groundwork for further studies. Although ludification ties in with both gamification and the concept and practice of transmedia it possesses unique characteristics and qualities of its own, primarily evolving around games and playful ways of structuring stories. The focus point is how traditional media such as tv-series and movies incorporate game-like traits and structures into their narrative structure. This concerns both the narrative structures that users can and cannot interact with. Among other things, we consider a deep understanding of ludification vital for the more practically oriented approach to learning through (serious) games. Thus, this paper serves as a prolegomenon to the interpretation of works of ludification, as well as to the diverse field of deploying gamified material in didactical and pedagogical context. In addition to the conceptual groundwork for understanding ludification and how it manifests itself we propose an analytical method for unearthing the traits and structures of ludification: we have coined this method the ludo-interpretation. Furthermore, this article discusses the merits and shortcomings of ludification and the ludo-interpretation in the final section where we deploy a Popperian inspired three-levelled falsification and refutation technique.