INTEGRATING SERIOUS GAMES INTO E-LEARNING PLATFORMS, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Abstract

Simulations and Serious Games (SGs) are very promising educational tools as they include new powerful characteristics such as learner engagement or authentic environment for learning. Therefore SGs offer to the teachers an innovative and interactive instrument that can be used to support new models of teaching. Currently, there is a discussion about what are the contexts and educational settings where SGs can be more adequate and cost-effective. But it is clear that the interactions of students while playing SGs can generate a tremendous amount of valuable information that can be useful to teachers. If this interaction data is available is available and presented in an coherent way it can be used with different purposes such as learner assessment, to evaluate the usefulness of the game in the curricula or to discover game design errors. To achieve these goals there are several open issues that should be addressed: (i) how is the SG delivered and how the learner access to it?, (ii) what data is gathered and how is stored? and, (iii) how this data can be used for learner assessment?. This paper presents our experience integrating SGs into existing e-learning platform and which are the models we have applied to be compliant with the existing e-learning specifications and standards. Moreover the paper proposes how the current trends in the area of technical e-learning standards will affect the integration of serious games on the existing and future educational platforms. The paper also presents two use cases of the most prominent integration methodologies of both present and future using the e-adventure platform.