SERIOUS GAMES IN HIGHER EDUCATION: STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS - THE CASE OF SCHOOL OF FRENCH OF ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI

In recent times there has been a great evolution in the creation of educational games, known as Serious games (SG). SG are environments that were designed based on a playful approach to learning for educational purposes.

Empirical studies and researches have shown that SG can provide to players innovative and student-centered pedagogies and help them become autonomous learners. They can also enhance students’ motivation and engage them in inductive experiential learning.
The purpose of this paper is to present findings of a study that was carried out in the School of French of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The study also explores the students’ perceptions of serious games.

Specifically, we proposed to 30 undergraduate students of the School of French to use SG as part of learning activities that were designed for learning the French language and precisely games, which can be used to improve students’ lexical, grammatical and semantic competence. This case study took place during class time but also outside timetables hours. On completion of the game, students filled in a survey, which focuses on students’ prior experiences of ICTs and game-based-learning and their perceptions of the use of SG in the development of linguistic competences.

Therefore, in this paper we will firstly mention the educational benefits of the use of SG in Higher Education (HE) as they appear in previous research papers. Then, we will describe the methodology that was used in the current study, and present the results. Finally, we will discuss the findings and draw conclusions.