Abstract:

There is empirical evidence that playing educational video games can lead to positive impacts in terms of motivation and learning outcomes. Students seem to like the game-based approach to learning and find it motivating and enjoyable. However, the huge development cost of educational video games is hampering their use and adoption in education. A possible solution to overcome this barrier is to use authoring tools that allow teachers to create educational video games that can be tailored to specific contexts.

Although there has been extensive research on educational video games, there is still a lack of studies examining the effectiveness of educational video games created by teachers using authoring tools. The main reason for this research gap is that the number of authoring tools to create educational video games available to educators is still very low and that, generally, these tools are hard to use or allow to create games which are much simpler and limited compared to most entertainment games.

This paper examines the students’ perceptions toward the use of web educational games created by teachers using an authoring tool in a secondary education setting. The authoring tool used to create the games was the one provided by the SGAME platform, which allows users to easily create web educational games by integrating learning objects into existing games. This game authoring tool allows the integration of any learning object compliant with the SCORM e-learning standard into the educational games. Therefore, teachers can integrate existing resources or create learning objects from scratch using e-learning authoring tools. For the latter case, teachers can use an online authoring tool to create SCORM-compliant interactive slideshows provided by the SGAME platform.

In order to collect data about the students’ perceptions toward the use of the teacher-created educational games, an online survey was conducted. This survey was completed by a total of 62 students who played the games during a two-hour class. Results show that students had a very positive overall opinion on the teacher-created educational games and that they found these games easy to use and beneficial for their learning. Results also show that students agreed that the teacher-created educational games made learning fun, that they prefer the use of educational games over traditional teaching materials, and that they would like to use educational games like the ones created with the SGAME platform in more occasions.

Keywords:

Game-based learning, educational games, serious games, authoring tools.