Abstract:

Computer games are a typical way for today’s adolescents to spend their leisure time. Students like to play and have fun, and for this reason, games are employed in the school education process for motivating learners and as an imperceptible way of acquiring knowledge. A short overview of some existing platforms and tools for creating educational games is presented in the article.

The challenge for designers is to create an adequate gaming product with well-balanced educational content (subject matter) and interactive elements. In this regard, a suitable solution is teachers to have the opportunity to create or modify games for their specific needs, which is not easy especially for non-IT specialists. This fact motivates a group of researchers to start the APOGEE project (An innovative platform for smArt adaPtive videO GamEs for Education). In its frame, a platform for the automatic generation of educational video games is planned to be created that can be easily used by teachers who are not specialists in the new technologies.

At the beginning of the APOGEE project, the researchers investigated educators' opinion by means of a questionnaire. The aim of the survey discussed in the paper was to identify teachers’ needs and attitude toward using the platform in their school practice. The survey was conducted online between March and July 2018 among 208 Bulgarian teachers in both the primary and secondary school. The respondents’ profile is described for a correct statistical analysis of the results obtained. The paper presents an essential part of the results concerning a general question: are the school teachers ready to start using smart adaptive video games for education.

More precisely, these results address the following issues:
• teachers’ willingness to participate in the creation of educational games and other e-resources;
• the way of participation that would be suitable for them;
• teachers' willingness to recommend the platform to their colleagues, to use already created games or to try to create games using the platform;
• presence of smart NPC (non-playing characters) to help the learners;
• appropriate parameters for dynamic adaptation.

A discussion of the results and a short description of the upcoming work are presented.

Keywords:

Educational video games, School education, Survey-based study, Adaptive games.