Concepts Of Serious Game In Education

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International Journal Of Engineering And Computer Science ISSN:2319-7242
Volume 4 Issue 12 December, 2015 Page No. 15229-15232
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh, IJECS Volume 04 Issue 12 December 2015, Page No.15229-15232 Page 15229
Concepts Of Serious Game In Education
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh
Department of Computer Science,University of Human Development
As Sulaimaniyah – Kurdistan of Iraq
aso.darwesh@uhd.edu.iq
Abstract—using technology in Education is still very limited compare to other disciplines like
medicine. In recent years ago researchers focus on serious game, because of the importance of game in
learning and the enthusiasm of adults to play a game. Yet this process is in the research step. The
model of a serious game shows its concepts, which is very important to match with the concepts of
education. In this paper we try to suggest a model of serious game which includes most principles of
an educational model. Then expose how a game can be used in education.
Keywords—serious game; educational model; adabted education
I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
Developing a game is a crucial issue, especially
when there is a pedagogical objective in the
background of the game or what we name “serious
game”. Essentially there are questions left unclear,
does a serious game is a video game basically
designed for learning with a very little
entertainment purpose? Or any game (physical or
electronic) can be consider as a serious game? How
can a game be used in education? What are the
concepts of education to be taken in consideration in
a game to be serious? What are the concepts of a
game? What is the main difference between a
general game and a serious game? Have an
entertainment purpose in a serious game? If no, how
can we attract users to play a serious games?
As defined by [1] a game and video games are
contets played according to certain rules either with
a computer in video games or without, and if there
is a strategic objective to governorate it becomes a
serious game.
But in general games have different
characteristics other than fun and leisure. Because
games are not just a way to communicate from
distance but also have potential to foster children’s
ability to learn how to communicate and interact
with others [2]. If we look at serious games
specially we can find a fundamental point. Because
this kind of games are designed to entertain and
educate players and to promote behavioural change
via the incorporation of prosocial messages
embedded within the game play [3].
Looking backward to the history, we can find
that the notion of game comes from real life events.
If we compare games with life “games consist of
goals and rules. Players should comply with the
rules in order to achieve the goals.” [4]. Even there
are different opinion on the first occurrence of
serious game, but upon [5] the term “serious game”
for the first time was used in a digital context in
2002, with the initiative of starting the Serious
Game lead by David Rejeski and Ben Sawyer in the
US [5].
After this short presentation of serious game it
must attempt to find a convenient answer of all
above questions. For this purpose we have to look in
detail at the process of
education apart and concepts of a serious game
in another part. We think there is no game without
an educational objective and there is no pedagogical
method without entertainment. In next sections we
will explain these two sentences and answer all
above questions.
II. EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
Basically education is a process of learning a
knowledge to a non-educated person. At first
education has aim to control the behavior of
learners, but in last century when the notion of
education has been developed the process of
learning also has been transformed to a new method
of teaching concepts in a way that learners
dependably is a center of the process and s/he takes
the responsibility of teaching him/her self.

DOI: 10.18535/Ijecs/v4i12.25
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh, IJECS Volume 04 Issue 12 December 2015, Page No.15229-15232 Page 15230
Today education is just to throw light on the way
for learner to continue on it. Find the talent faculties
of the learner to choose the common excellent way
that is applicable for all learners.
The use of technology in education is new and
still very limited. Especially the use of game in
classroom is yet in the research step. There are
many reasons, we can classify them into two
categories; psychological and social. By
psychological reasons we mean teaching method
followed by institutions and teachers, curriculum
selected for particular subject, and the learning
objectives. And social reasons are the environment
of learning, and the relation between actors of
learning process.
Dewey [6] believed that the child's instincts and
ability are very important in educating them.
Although majority of child teach same subjects
without asking them about their interest. May be
because of the complexity of the educational
process or because of lack of using technology in
education. We can think about adaptive education
by using new technologies and especially
gamification. Actually this may be very difficult in
real classes because curriculum developed for a
physical class, but it is possible in near future in
view of the fact that new technologies will affect
deeply educational system.
Serious game will be a phenomenon in the
coming years and the use of game in education will
become a simple daily routine because of the
simplicity and the expansion of using smart devices
by children. Even if there is a limited use of this
kind of game today because of social reasons. As
most of parents want to prevent their child to spend
his/her time by gaming. But, they will not have the
same reaction for serious games if they are sure of
its utility. With a serious game the player learn
when s/he game. Also producers of serious game
think about different design for their product to have
a fun similar to general games. Because most of
actual serious games are not very attractive.
III. SERIOUS GAME CONCEPTS
Serious game interested by researchers for using
in learning basic concepts in different levels.
Actually the use of this kind of game is not very
popular, instead used in some fields like health care
and business marketing. We think this may be
because there is no solid model of such game that
can be connected to the process of education. In this
paper we define a model and we hope it will be the
base for further research on this topic.
Once we defined the game and we give a short
description of educational process, it is now time to
explain concepts of serious game. We define six
concepts of serious game which are used for
educational purposes. These concepts are Scenario,
Enthusiasm, Interactivity, User's traces, scoring and
learning. In this section we explain each of them
briefly.
Fig. 1. Figure 1: Model of concepts of serious game
A. Scenario
The main purpose of serious games is to use
game technologies for non entertainment purposes
[7]. When we design a serious game we think about
learning a concept by players. i.e., there is a
curriculum to be taught through a scenario. This
concept is much related to the study program in
classical classrooms; learn a set of simple concepts
in different levels through distinct techniques. The
problems in serious games are well ordered [8]
which facilitate writing scenarios.
May be we can say that there is a basic
difference between scenario and curriculum. By
scenario we mean a very short curriculum to give an
idea about simple concept. And there may be no
more curriculums related to it. But in classrooms
there is a solid study program which is related to
other programs in different levels. Even taught that,
it is possible to have levels in a serious game related
together.
B. Enthusiasm
We think about a game in educational process to
make learners more enthusiastic in teaching. Today
most of students does not like learning from
classical method by using papers and pens. But the
Learning
Scoring
User’s traces
Interactivity
Enthusiasm
Scenario
Serious
game
concepts

DOI: 10.18535/Ijecs/v4i12.25
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh, IJECS Volume 04 Issue 12 December 2015, Page No.15229-15232 Page 15231
Federation of American Scientists shows that kids
spend about 50 minutes per day playing video
games on average. Adult males, instead, spend 7.6
hours per week playing videogames and females
spend 7.4 hours per week using different electronic
devices [9]. If we can profit their challenge in the
process of learning it will be a great step in the
design of new educational system. We know the
main aim of using serious games is not for
entertainment, but it is very important to develop a
very attractive game to engage players by using
very popular game techniques to be played by most
of teenagers. We must be careful about action
games, because it may helps violence.
C. Interactivity
Interaction between player and game’s user
interface is a matter of many researches. To engage
players with a game it is very important to have an
interactive interface. In the same time it helps
communication not just between user and the
interface but also between users. Interaction
between users helps improving different skills in
addition to which players learn during the game. For
example, practice another language, or learning new
social aspect. This sometimes is the main objective
of the game itself, as in games for learning
language.
During the game, player thinks that s/he has an
avatar in the simulation word and forms a goal that
the player attributes to his or her surrogate in the
world [10]. And then follow rules and regulations of
that world to achieve it. This helps learning that
regulation in addition to the notion in which the
game has in its background.
Basically all games are interactive. But it must
organize this feature in serious game to help
learning not just to have a fun. Today it is so
simpler to have such interface especially because of
the wideness use of touch screens in new electronic
devices.
D. User’s traces
Education is a very hard responsibility. In
learning process everything must be documented
like student’s exam copies, marks...etc. if we can
also analysis some of these data for example, marks
of students in one question in one subject in one
stage, sure we will find an interested information
that may be help the tutor and the educational
institution to improve the quality of teaching such
subject. This is very essay when we use serious
game, because we have all user’s traces in
electronic format which can be analyzed quickly.
And if a tutor uses the game in the class, s/he can
have a detail analyze of his/her class’s traces
instantly. And profit it in chining his/her strategy of
learning.
One of strong point in success serious game is
the ability to trace all players’ actions. Scoring (next
section) is one of the fundamental concepts of any
game. Traces used for scoring players level as well
as analyzing their actions. If we think about
adaptive education, we have to analyze elements of
player’s in one level of the game to indicate him/her
into the new step and giving adapted content. For
example if we have a game to learn a language, if
the player does not recognize letters, we cannot give
him/her complex words. But if a player can write all
letters and recognize some words, we can give
him/her simple sentences.
E. Scoring
Make concurrence between different players and
give different levels for same player may be is the
key to attract users play a game. Scoring is to give
points according to each correct action and deduct
for all incorrect ones. As mentioned in previous
section, user traces used in scoring and selecting
next scenario’s content. One of most popular
techniques available today is the ability to publish
player’s score on social networks. This is very
important because the concurrence becomes
worldwide which encourage players to achieve
highest level. And also helps in communicating [8]
especially in serious games for learning languages,
publishing player’s level on the web will helps
practice speaking or any other type of discussion
like chatting. This is a borderless process to
communicate and collaborate between players or
playing in groups.
Therefore scoring in serious game is one of main
concepts which can be taken into consideration to
make a game very enthusiastic. There is no game
without scoring, and there is no any educational
system without grading. Publish scoring inside the
same institution or school make challenges between
students more important when s/he try to be first
name in the list.
F. Learning
One of the very important concepts of serious
game is learning. Even as we mentioned in the
introduction, there is no game without educational
objective. But the learning concept in a serious
game is different in such a way that this game is
developed for learning. While a simple game can

DOI: 10.18535/Ijecs/v4i12.25
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh, IJECS Volume 04 Issue 12 December 2015, Page No.15229-15232 Page 15232
learn the player but basically it is not developed for
learning.
These goals can be different for different users.
For example, in business the learning objective can
be to teach a new employee how to work in his/her
new post. Or to teach employees of a company how
to present new product to clients. But for
educational institution, the objective can be how
much learners were taught by the game.
Learning can be seen both as a result and as a
process [8]. By interacting with digital games
player’s level will change because of interfering
with different notions during the game. And all
steps of the game have been putted sequentially so
that the player will learn during the game process.
By definitions of serious game given in previous
sections, serious game can help learning process in
two ways. The first way is by improving player’s
skill in a specific topic during one step or level of a
game and a set of topics in different levels. And the
second way is to control the behavior of player in
the simulation world by creating a virtual object that
has to follow rules of that world and thus learn
something by the consequence.
Nowadays serious games used for learning as
outside school activity. We anticipate a big change
in the near future in using serious games for
learning as a school activity.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
In this paper we presented concepts of serious
game which can be used in education. We tried to
find the answer of some crucial questions which
have been left unclear or not answered yet. Our
future objective is to develop this model to use it in
the adaptive education. We think it is possible to
talk about serious game as a tool for developing
adaptive education. Because in the near future this
last concept will be the phenomena in educational
system.
This is a model we designed inside the project
for developing a serious game “Jojo” for learning
Kurdish language using Arami alphabets
1
. Jojo will
be the first serious game developed for learning
Kurdish language. Our objective is to provide the
first version in primary schools for learning
adaptively Kurdish language by children.
Acknowledgment
1
http://www.kurdishacademy.org/?q=node/37
This paper is prepared in the context of the
project Jojo, a serious game for learning Kurdish
language. This project is now in development and
not testing on real students.
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DOI: 10.18535/Ijecs/v4i12.25
Dr. Aso Mohammad Darwesh, IJECS Volume 04 Issue 12 December 2015, Page No.15229-15232 Page 15233