Abstract:

For nearly two decades there has been an increased interest regarding the exploitation of digital games in both formal and informal learning contexts with educators mainly focusing on ways of integrating them into their everyday teaching practices and researchers investigating their potential use as effective learning environments. According to existing research, digital games can provide their users with meaningful, interactive virtual environments capable of supporting learning within the context of a range of learning theories. Nevertheless, there is a number of factors (e.g. implementation costs, time restrictions, demands of existing curricula) that may hamper the broad adoption of a Digital Game-Based Learning approach. Thus, there has been a shift of interest toward the “gamification” of (technology-enhanced) learning by either infusing a game-like character to performed classroom activities, or integrating game-like characteristics into the design and development of digital educational environments. In this emerging gamification context there have been attempts to develop interactive educational environments that incorporate a number of characteristics, typical to digital games, such as 3D virtual worlds, appropriate virtual representations, on-time and/or on-demand help, and on-demand game-like feedback. However, educational activities, in these environments, usually occur as part of pre-designed and fixed scenarios. Given all the above, the aim of this contribution is to present a web-based digital platform, developed as part of an ongoing research project, for creating, sharing, and delivering gamified learning scenarios. More specifically, through the use of a built-in authoring tool, the proposed platform allows educators to create their own educational scenarios by defining a number of learning activities and their sequence. Each educational activity may be associated with learning objects retrieved from existing Learning Object Repositories (LORs), whereas gamification elements, available from a provided list, may also be used. Developed scenarios take the form of educational digital games delivered through a three-dimensional virtual world where the learner is represented by an avatar. Thus, depending on the learning needs, a number of gamified educational scenarios are available or can be created from scratch. By providing a detailed account of the employed design and development methodology, as well as the system’s architecture, it is our intention to analytically present the platform from a technical point of view. However, there is also a specific focus on the underlying pedagogical framework that, among others, emphasizes the importance of fostering an expertise sharing culture by allowing educators to share their scenarios with peers, retrieve and use already developed ones, or even edit available educational scenarios, depending on the needs. Design choices at both the pedagogical and technical level have been documented on the basis of data derived from the users’ needs analysis. Finally, with respect to the platform’s evaluation, there has been a focus on the gaming experience and perceived learning effectiveness, from the learner point of view, as well as on usability issues, from the educator-educational designer point of view. In this context, evaluation results are used to shed light on the platform’s capacity to effectively support the design and delivery of gameful learning experiences.

Keywords:

Gamification, digital platform, educational scenarios, educational digital games, evaluation.