Abstract:

Over the past decade, education systems embraced the use of software for teachers to allow an enhanced and more recognised approach to learning. Today, education software is high in demand, hence, leading a higher demand for software firms to produce a quality educational software. In perspective of software firms, software quality assurance is a process that takes place during the development and designing of a software, which focuses on providing the confidence that the quality requirements will be fulfilled, and ensures the thresholds of acceptability in the end-product is met. Educational game as an educational software provides learners to learn and expand the concepts while providing a learning experience, enhance motivation and engaging critical thinking to improve their cognitive skills. To identify that quality learning has been achieved, there has been recent studies that discuss the quality characteristics that can be used to evaluate the quality learning of learners through an educational game. With the dispersed literature on quality characteristics, there is a need to explicitly define what quality characteristics are, and how do they address the quality learning outcome through an educational game. Therefore, this paper systematically reviews and appraises the quality characteristics of an educational game that promote learning experience and learning outcome, while considering models/frameworks that evaluate and addresses the quality learning. In addition, the authors would like to draw a definition that can provide an umbrella for quality characteristics in an educational game. Not only that, the authors would like to critique and understand the correlations between the aspects of software assurance process in developing a software and educational game quality characteristics, where both lead to producing a quality learning experience. Lastly, this paper provides various future implication for researchers, game designers, software firms, game developers and academicians; to ensure the educational software (educational game) is quality assured.

Keywords:

Educational software, educational games, software quality assurance, quality characteristics, quality learning, learning experience.