Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) a tool for real-time authoring of roleplay simulations for learning

The use of serious games in education and their pedagogical benefit is being widely recognized. However, effective integration of serious games in education depends on addressing two big challenges: the successful incorporation of motivation and engagement that can lead to learning; and the highly specialised skills associated with customised development to meet the required pedagogical objectives. This paper presents the Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) an authoring tool that allows educators/domain experts without games design and development technical skills to create bespoke roleplay simulations in three dimensional scenes featuring fully embodied virtual humans capable of verbal and non-verbal interaction with users fit for specific educational objectives. The paper presents the wmin-SGP system architecture and it evaluates its effectiveness in fulfilling its purpose via the implementation of two roleplay simulations, one for Politics and one for Law. In addition, it presents the results of two types of evaluation that address how successfully the wmin-SGP combines usability principles and game core drives based on the Octalysis gamification framework that lead to motivating games experiences. The evaluation results shows that the wmin-SGP: provides an intuitive environment and tools that support users without advanced technical skills to create in real-time bespoke roleplay simulations in advanced graphical interfaces; satisfies most of the usability principles; and provides balanced simulations based on the Octalysis framework core drives. The paper concludes with a discussion of future extension of this real time authoring tool and directions for further development of the Octalysis framework to address learning.

Immersive Learning Research Network

Computer games have now been around for over three decades and the term serious games has been attributed to the use of computer games that are thought to have educational value. Game-based learning (GBL) has been applied in a number of different fields such as medicine, languages and software engineering. Furthermore, serious games can be a very effective as an instructional tool and can assist learning by providing an alternative way of presenting instructions and content on a supplementary level, and can promote student motivation and interest in subject matter resulting in enhanced learning effectiveness. REVLAW (Real and Virtual Reality Law) is a research project that the departments of Law and Computer Science of Westminster University have proposed as a new framework in which law students can explore a real case scenario using Virtual Reality (VR) technology to discover important pieces of evidence from a real-given scenario and make up their mind over the crime case if this is a murder or not. REVLAW integrates the immersion into VR as the perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The paper presents the prototype framework and the mechanics used to make students focus on the crime case and make the best use of this immersive learning approach.