Games for Learning

CELSTEC is looking into innovative ways of learning, that are more experiental and enable the acquisition of professional competences at a distance. With the EMERGO method users will be supported in making effective educational games while at the same time minimizing development effort.

(Introduction, Manual, Publications, Partners, Contact)

Introduction

Societal changes demand education to apply new pedagogical approaches. Many educational stakeholders feel that serious games could play a key role in fulfilling this demand, and smack their chops when looking at the booming industry for leisure games. However, current toolkits for developing leisure games show severe shortcomings for the development of efficient and effective serious games. Furthermore, developing serious games asks for a specific approach which differs from the approach used in developing leisure games. EMERGO provides both a method and generic toolkit  for developing and delivering serious games aimed at the acquisition of complex cognitive skills in higher education.
The EMERGO method has proven to significantly decrease the amount of development time (we observed an average production ratio of about 1:25), while maintaining the quality of the serious games examples it produces (evaluations show high satisfaction amongst developers and students). The method is based on ADDIE, a well-known phasing approach for developing instructional materials, and applies it to case-based serious games development. ADDIE is an abbreviation of Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (see Figure 1).

Early 2008 the project has been evaluated as succesfull and its products were awarded the Comenius seal of approval in June 2008. It is intended from 2008 onwards that the number of online cases and partners will increase, and that the functionality of method and toolkit will be improved, in consecutive succeeding projects building on EMERGO, like Skillslab.

{read more}

During analysis, the why, what, and for whom are specified and it is sketched how the case will be integrated within other instruction materials. The case idea globally describes the case and its context of use. During design, successive steps lead to the documents framework scenario, ingredients scenario and detailed scenario. The detailed scenario describes for every case character which activities are to be carried out with which persons, which tools and resources can be used under what circumstances. This provides input for development where data-entry for the flow and resources takes place, and the case is tested. During implementation, it is specified how and for whom the case will be available and how their case progress can be monitored. Finally, an evaluation of whether the case functions as intended is performed. Do users interact with the case as expected? 
Although all phases can be conducted in this order, it is recommended to use iterations. In other words, use a Unified Process approach with cycles instead of the classical waterfall approach. Design assumptions and expectations can be tested during development, and gradually a uniform picture can arise that is supported by the whole project team. Being based upon ADDIE and Unified Process, the EMERGO methodology prevents overspending and minimizes risks of failures. Case parts will be developed and tested in cycles, which results in more intense and frequent – but not necessarily more time consuming – communication between various stakeholders. An important precondition for enabling shorter cycles is the ability to carry them out quick and easy. The EMERGO toolkit caters for this need.

Manual

A more elaborated manual for the analysis and design phases, is available as EMERGO deliverable 1.4b: description of the method (in Dutch) https://www.surfgroepen.nl/sites/emergo/Shared%20Documents/Deliverables/EMERGO%201.4b%20Methodiekbeschrijving_definitief.pdf

Publications

A more detailed description of the EMERGO phases (and toolkit) has been published in two articles that have appeared in:

- Conference proceedings of ISAGA 2007 (accepted article for ISAGA 2007)

-  Simulation & Gaming, issue: Games and adaptive eLearning (september 2008) https://www.surfgroepen.nl/sites/emergo/Shared%20Documents/Literatuur/Simulations%20and%20Gaming_EMERGO.pdf

For a short and more popular publication (in Dutch) containing some personal experiences, see the November 2008 issue of 12-18: het Vakblad voor het Voortgezet Onderwijs, pages 18-19

Partners

EMERGO was a two year project (January 2006 until December 2007), partially funded by SURF. Project partners (all dutch) were Open University of the Netherlands (chair), University of Maastricht, Nijmegen University, and the University of Utrecht.

Contact

If you want to get involved in the EMERGO project or receive more information, you can contact the EMERGO project leader Dr. Hans Hummel, Tel: +31 45 5762651, e-mail: hans.hummel@ou.nl