Abstract:

Serious games can be used as educational resources in higher education to support student learning. They have been applied to language learning and the development of essential professional skills. These games can adopt various genres, such as graphic adventure, simulation, RPG… We focus specifically on graphic adventure games. This genre places the player in control of a character, who advances through the narrative by overcoming challenges, and solving puzzles. The player interacts with characters and objects that enable progression withing a story-driven conflict.

This type of video game has been implemented in multiple educational experiences, yielding notable benefits for teaching and learning. In addition, there are tools that enable the creation of such games without prior programming knowledge, allowing a wide range of users (including teachers, students, educational researchers, and other professionals in the field of education) to design their own games. We have developed several serious graphic adventure games to teach topics relevant to students in education programs, including issues currently central to the field of school organization. For this purpose, we followed technical, pedagogical, serious-game, and graphic-adventure design criteria.

Withing this framework, our serious games incorporate elements commonly associated with graphic adventures, as highlighted in the literature: characters, dialogues, settings, scenes, objects, inventory systems, plot, and environment. Below, we outline several examples. In the serious game addressing algorithmic bias in the context of Generative Artificial Intelligence and its implications for teachers and schools (as part of the research project “Design, development, and evaluation of a serious game as a digital teaching material to address AI safety controversies from an ethical and pedagogical perspective”, University of Salamanca), the main character is a student who has recently been making extensive use of GenAI tools to complete coursework. The player interacts with various characters, including an assistant who provides support, as well as other characters who assign specific tasks. The player must collect objects such as reports, films, and books. These items are gathered across different scenes and stored in an inventory from which they are later delivered to the corresponding characters.

In the serious game on personal data protection, an issue of particular relevance in schools due to the management of data on students, families, and professionals (part of the Teaching Innovation Project ID2022/184 “Design and evaluation of a serious game for university students’ learning in school organization courses within education degree programs”, University of Salamanca), the main character is a pre-service teacher completing an internship in a school. The character must solve various problems related to data protection. Additional characters, such as teachers, present challenges which the player must resolve. Each teacher awards the player a badge, which must be stored in the inventory and ultimately delivered to the school principal.

In conclusion, graphic adventure serious games can be useful for learning about topics related to school organization. Their usefulness is reinforced by the availability of tools that allow users without programming experience to design educational resources.

Keywords:

Serious game, adventure video games, school organization, personal data protection, artificial intelligence, education, higher education.