Game Learning Analytics: Learning Analytics for Serious Games

Video games have become one of the largest entertainment industries, and their power to capture the attention of players worldwide soon prompted the idea of using games to improve education. However, these educational games, commonly referred to as serious games, face different challenges when brought into the classroom, ranging from pragmatic issues (e.g. a high development cost) to deeper educational issues, including a lack of understanding of how the students interact with the games and how the learning process actually occurs. This chapter explores the potential of data-driven approaches to improve the practical applicability of serious games. Existing work done by the entertainment and learning industries helps to build a conceptual model of the tasks required to analyze player interactions in serious games (gaming learning analytics or GLA). The chapter also describes the main ongoing initiatives to create reference GLA infrastructures and their connection to new emerging specifications from the educational technology field. Finally, it explores how this data-driven GLA will help in the development of a new generation of more effective educational games and new business models that will support their expansion. This results in additional ethical implications, which are discussed at the end of the chapter.

Performance assessment in serious games: Compensating for the effects of randomness

This paper is about performance assessment in serious games. We conceive serious gaming as a process of player-lead decision taking. Starting from combinatorics and item-response theory we provide an analytical model that makes explicit to what extent observed player performances (decisions) are blurred by chance processes (guessing behaviors). We found large effects both theoretically and practically. In two existing serious games random guess scores were found to explain up to 41% of total scores. Monte Carlo simulation of random game play confirmed the substantial impact of randomness on performance. For valid performance assessments, be it in-game or post-game, the effects of randomness should be included to produce re-calibrated scores that can reasonably be interpreted as the players´ achievements.

Making sense of game based user data: learning analytics in applied games

Digital learning games are useful educational tools with high motivational potential. With the application of games for instruction there comes the need of acknowledging learning game experiences also in the context of educational assessment. Learning analytics provides new opportunities for supporting assessment in and of educational games. We give an overview of current learning analytics methods in this field and reflect on existing challenges. An approach of providing reusable software assets for interaction assessment and evaluation in games is presented. This is part of a broader initiative of making available advanced methodologies and tools for supporting applied game development.

Evaluation of Serious Games: A Holistic Approach

Digital games constitute a major emerging technology that is expected to enter mainstream educational use within a few years. The highly engaging and motivating character of such games bears great potential to support immersive, meaningful, and situated learning experiences. To seize this potential, meaningful quality and impact measurements are indispensible. Although there is a growing body of evidence on the efficacy of games for learning, evaluation is often poorly designed, incomplete, biased, if not entirely absent. Well-designed evaluations demonstrating the educational effect as well as the return on investment of serious games may foster broader adoption by educational institutions and training providers, and support the development of the serious game industry. The European project RAGE introduces a comprehensive and multi-perspective framework for serious game evaluation, which is presented in this paper.